Before the delivery of her twins on October, 23rd of 2010, Céline Dion gave a phone interview to the Québécois magazine named Châtelaine within the project « Femmes de parole ».

Listen to this nice interview on this website.

The Red Heads have translated it for english-speaking fans! See below.

Learn more about the project Femmes de paroles.

At the time of the shooting, Céline Dion was pregnant and resting outside of the country. She therefore gave us a phone interview.

The woman that inspired you?

This is not a difficult question to answer because the woman who inspired me is my mother, on every side. According to me she’s a saint and I admire her a lot.

The moment that changed everything?

The moment that changed everything for women is education. I listen to my mom talk about crazy stories, years ago women could not even go to school, couldn’t open a book, couldn’t be educated, everybody worked so hard physically but you did not have the right to be educated. So it’s like cutting someone’s legs. So now that people and women can now have access to education and open books, I think it was the least to do, it’s amazing that it has changed.

What have you learned?

What I learned through the years is that everything is possible. If you really want it, you can do anything. And when you’re 12 or 13 and you start asking questions… I had opinions about what I had seen in Charlemagne, in my sandy courtyard, I had not lived anything different than that. So seeing the whole world, recording studios, going to France, it was very difficult for me so what I learned is that everything is possible, yes. But that’s because I worked hard and I am still working hard. So when you want something, there are no secret how to reach it: you have to work hard.

What are you appalled by?

Many things piss me off. It is very difficult to see children suffer, useless wars, nastiness, violence. When a child is assaulted, physically or mentally, it is a scar for life, whether things change or not, that’s something they will live with for the rest of their lives. When there is violence on children it is unacceptable and just talking about it makes me angry. Making war to children is unacceptable.

What is left for women to achieve?

What can be done for women? For them to blossom even more! It doesn’t stop here, we have the choice. Now we have the chance to be educated we need to blossom for ourselves, we need to know what we want and be able to say “this is not for me, this is for me”. Before us, for example when our grandparents were here, there was no choice! They could not even say what they felt like, they couldn’t say why they were crying! But today people are open minded and now it is women’s aim to keep their heart’s eyes open.

Nowadays little girls are lucky because…

They are lucky because… well I’m not sure they are so lucky actually. I think that most little girls are missing directions. There are too many choices, it must be too difficult to follow. Today we tell them everything is possible, that girls can do anything which is a big chance if they take advantage of it. When you can choose and you point the directions for them and they are open-minded you can say “congrats”. They are usually left alone because no matter what happens, life pushes us to be very mature quickly. I hope that these girls, who have the chance to be able to choose, will use this opportunity.

What is beauty for you?

Beauty can be a lot of things… according to me beauty can be a sort of kindness, it can be read in someone’s eyes, on someone’s face, that’s for sure. According to me it’s also a child’s look. There is no mischief. There’s no war in that. When a child is playing, is happy, and says “I love you mom”, can it be more beautiful than that? It can’t be! When we go to the market and walk near a kiosque of peaches that are ready to be eaten, that’s also beautiful and it’s also good! It doesn’t stop when your heart’s eyes are open. Beauty is everywhere. Moments when I find myself beautiful are when I feel good. These moments occur when we are not on television, when we are not, according to some people, at our best. When we do not have a translucent skin, no makeup, no high heels. It’s an inside moment. And sometimes, it doesn’t happen very often, but you style your hair quickly because you don’t want to wet your hair, and you take a bath and you think “too bad I didn’t take a picture of that”. You have no makeup, nothing, but still your hair is beautiful, and it was beautiful even before you made it. But no one’s here to see it. It’s frustrating!