Narelle Kheng: Brave, Bold, Beautiful

Posted On 12 Oct 2015

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This Breast Cancer Awareness Month, NTU student and singer Narelle Kheng (Fly Entertainment) pays tribute to breast cancer warriors. Having lost her mother to cancer, she helps shed light on the cause.

What for you defines being bold, brave and beautiful?

There’s an aura of something extraordinary; I can’t fully define it. When someone is just absolutely 100% true to who they are. It honestly is an incredibly difficult thing to find, it means never being envious or jealous and completely loving and knowing yourself, and knowing for a fact that you like that bag or that smile you put on is yours. True joy and true confidence just can’t be faked, so I guess if I saw someone with that aura or even some sense of that, to me that’s bold and brave and beautiful.

What does female empowerment mean to you?
I actually don’t really know. I’m not a feminist, not because I’m against it, but because I don’t understand it and have never been in a detrimental enough position where I was denied something because I was female. I wouldn’t stand for a cause I don’t understand or feel for. But empowerment in general to me comes from within. It’s dangerous to rely on policies or societies to empower you. There’s always going to be stereotypes and biases that you can’t run from. To be empowered, to me, means that you need to know yourself fully, spending hours just thinking about what you want and how you’re going to achieve it and moving in your own journey.

How do you think fashion helps to make a woman feel more powerful and confident?
Imagine taking away everyone’s clothes and our shoes, and putting exactly the same thing on each of them, giving them the exact same haircut chucking them together to form this mass of people. How would you feel looking at them? Removing these items almost feels like removing their identity, so putting it on does the exact opposite. It helps, not just women, but people define who they are. It makes them think about who they are, what they like. And if I made a choice to buy this item and match it in a certain way and wear it today, then that’s a choice that I made. That’s power over yourself and your choices.

As you know, for this issue we want to celebrate women who have fought cancer, specifically breast cancer, since October is breast cancer awareness month. Do you have any advice for those diagnosed with cancer, or for those with a loved one who has been diagnosed with cancer?

Honestly, I really don’t know what to say. It’s an incredibly hard thing to do, and I would still find myself falling if it happened again. When my mom died, I was really young and I honestly didn’t know what was going on or even how to handle it. I didn’t even really understand grief fully till 4-5 years later. But if anything, I would say that you can’t handle it alone. I found a lot of comfort and catharsis through the years talking to my brother or my dad about it. It’s not an easy thing, I would imagine, to battle cancer. So stay with your loved one and really show endless amount of care and support. Will power is amazing, and it hard to stay positive when fighting such a disease so don’t let your loved one doubt that you are there, not even for a second.

What are some personal rituals or habits you have to make yourself feel more confident?
I guess sometimes it helps when I try to turn these feelings into ambition. I think about what I want to do and how I’m going to do it. Even something as simple as putting together an outfit that I like, or drawing or painting because it helps me zone into something and theres a tangible achievement in front of my eyes. (Other times I just wallow and distract myself with food and TV shows.)

You’re a final year student in NTU but you’re also having a fantastic career that many envy. How do you do it?
There are a lot of really talented kids in schools everywhere that have achieved a lot greater things than I. I don’t think the hard part is the work or the time, but its ensuring that you still love what you do and have time for family and friends. You’ve really got to know how you work best, and when to stop and do the things you love. I’ve always been a “do-what-I-like” kinda girl. It’s not necessarily good all the time, and sometimes you really have to force yourself to meet deadlines. But to me, time can always be found somewhere. It’s about balance and making decisions. I’ve come to learn that in life it’s really not about results but the experience of things, and thats something everyone has to learn themselves. This year I made the conscious decision to slow down from work (as much as I can), and just enjoy school life, experiment and just spend hours learning, because I won’t get that again.

Speaking of your career, do you have anything interesting to share about what is coming up for you individually, or The Sam Willows?
It’s a really exciting time for us (The Sam Willows) now because the album is coming out soon, actually it’s already up for pre-order, and will drop at the end of this month. Hopefully, that would be the start of the busy times (fingers crossed) because a lot banks on how well the album does, but we’re excited as the response has been so heartening thus far. We definitely have more singles and music videos on the way, as well as a huge concert at the start of next year which we’re going to try and pull out all the stops for, we’ll see how that goes. Kinda nervous! We are also going to be traveling through the region to do promotion work so that’s going to be fun. Individually, I’m currently writing and co-directing a short film for FYP (Final Year Project), so I’m taking a little bit of a “break”. But I did manage to find some time this year to do a bit of television work where I got to be an assassin and kick some butt, so thats quite interesting!