Read Megan Thee Stallion’s Emotional Glamour Woman of the Year Awards Speech

Megan Thee Stallion helped many of us get through the pandemic. It’s not just her songs, like “Savage” and “WAP,” that have provided much-needed escapism during difficult days. It’s her triumphant hottie energy, her choice to bring every single willing person with her on the journey to feeling good. 

It’s this and so much more that makes her our 2021 Glamour Woman of the Year. “The bigger my platform gets, I start realizing that I’m not the only woman that goes through what I go through,” she told us. “I want to bring things to light so other women don’t feel like they have to continue to be silent.”

At the Glamour WOTY ceremony in New York on Monday, November 8, Megan was honored by hip hop’s Salt-N-Pepa. “Take her in,” Pepa said. “She is Thee Stallion. Beautiful, bold, assertive, fearless. I love everything that she’s doing.” When Salt-N-Pepa started, she said, “Everything was a struggle. There were so few women in the game back in the day. We helped open doors, yes we did. But Megan, she came and kicked the door down, pulled up a seat at the table, ordered a big dinner and poured Hottie Sauce all over the damn thing. She is doing it well, henny. Pushing it real good.” 

“Just 26 years old, Megan is young, talented and powerful, the pride of Houston,” Pepa said. “She’s a Grammy-award winning rapper, a Popeye’s franchise owner—I love that!—and as of this fall, a college graduate with a bachelor’s of science in health administration from Texas Southern.” Pepa went on, “Even while she was dealing with recent loss and trauma, she continues to spread a message of positivity and empowerment for women: young women like my daughter Egypt. Young girls, thicc girls, always taking the time to look and listen, to educate and give back in so many different ways.”

“Megan represents what I stand for,” she added. “So many people out there trying to shut us down, but she reminds us to love every inch of who we are, to stay true to ourselves, to know our worth and to go for it.”

Megan took the stage, to huge applause. “I’ve been in tears all night because everyone is so inspiring,” she said. True to her reputation, she began her speech by systematically thanking just about every woman who helped her get to where she is, from her stylist Zerina Akers to the journalist who wrote her profile in Glamour, Zandria Robinson. 

Then, in a deeply emotional moment, she spoke about her mom, Holly Thomas, who passed away in 2019.

“I also want to thank my mom, that’s my woman. [crying] I was doing so good! I want to thank my mom because she taught me how to be the woman that i am today, she’s my best friend, my manager, she was my everything and I know she’s so proud of me today. My Big Mama—my great grandmother—she was like, ‘Megan I don’t give a damn how many songs you write as long as you get that degree. So I was like, ’You know what? I don’t give a damn how many songs I write! I’m gonna stay in school because I know my Mama and my Big Mama watching me and that’s what they’d want me to do.