I woke up this morning with a question on my heart: Has there ever been a better time to be a woman? The answer is an emphatic NO. One only has to watch season one of Mad Men to realize how much has changed for those of us living today, how much freedom we have to think and act and be who we want to be. Thanks to the tireless work of the suffragists, the educators, the trailblazers, the leaders, the law changers, I get to live in a time of unprecedented opportunity. I can choose what job I want to have (homemaker!), what color to dye my hair (I'm thinking purple next...), what books to read (The Trumpet of Conscience, go read it NOW), who to vote for (that one's trickier since politicians suck as a rule). Don't even get me started on the advancements in menstrual care...from red tents and rags to those bizarre belts and toxic shock syndrome, and today researchers are hard at work finding ways for us to avoid that monthly debasement altogether.
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| Girl Power! (I'm in the yellow shirt) 2006 |
I shared last week how I feel about men, both the general men of the world and the men closest to me. It is because of these men who love me, my husband and father and sons, that I find my femininity. It is in response and in relation to them that I see who I was created to be, see all my strengths and weaknesses clearly. We have both, sisters, because we are whole people and we are flawed people. The weaknesses of our gender aren't too hard to discover. We wound with our mouths. We gossip and whisper, we exaggerate and lie, we criticize and we judge. And for all of the pain we inflict, we are mortally wounded when the tongues of others lash our skin. Chris Rock says, "Women would rule the world...if they'd stop hating each other." We allow envy to course through our veins and we forget to cheer each other on. We forget to embrace the positive side of womanhood.
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| BFFs 1998 |
Because we live in a world that says we have to be like men to be worthwhile, we have forgotten why it's so great to be a woman. We carry and birth new life. We are created to safeguard the next generation with our bodies, and are capable of so much love, tenderness, and nurture. If the children are the future like the song says, then ladies, it all begins with us, with our wombs and our breasts and our arms. Let us never forget to wonder and celebrate at what we bear within us. And closely related to our child-bearing is our child-birthing and ridiculously high tolerance for pain. I firmly believe that if men had to experience the process, the human race would die off. But we don't just stop there, with the necessary aches and groans of labor, we inflict more pain on ourselves in the name of beauty. Waxing and tweezing and high heels and underwire (not to mention the torture of Jillian Michaels) and we don't even bat our eyes. That's nothing. We can endure and we can triumph through it all. And our greatest strength is really the flip side of our greatest weakness. All the infighting and verbal assaults we wage against each other can very easily be steered towards good. Because our most feminine quality is our ability to go deep. We learn about each other. We open up about our hurts. When we let our hearts swell with love, we realize how much we actually care about each other. We realize that your victory is my victory and your pain is my pain. We learn how to join arms and hold each other up.
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| It takes a Village 2013 |
I went to high school. We all went to high school. So we all know how scary other women are. I chose to inflict pain right back at those who hurt me. That seemed like the only way to survive. But it's not. I've been learning the past few years about another way to go, about real, healthy female friendships. What it is to accept someone for who she is, to notice her abilities and her beauty and not feel threatened by it. I've learned how to be vulnerable because I know I'm with safe people. I know what it's like to be freaking out and scared and realize that my girlfriends (or sisters or roommates or classmates or whatever) are the last people I want to call. Which is a real shame, because I have a few ladies on speed dial that are better at talking me down than even my husband (that's really saying something, since this is the guy I chose as The One to talk me down for the rest of our lives). And WOW! When I can reach out and there's actually another woman there who doesn't make fun of me or criticize me or judge me? It's an incredible feeling ladies. It's what I want for us all. But we have to make it happen. We have to be the change we want to see. (Ghandi!!!)
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| Sisters (at Madame Toussaud's) 2013 |
For all that we have left to accomplish, the changes of the past several decades give me hope. We aren't "there" yet, but we can get there because of the advancements women have already made. We have platforms and microphones and education and spending power ladies! We have voices and passions and we were made to be part of the solution!
*All the women pictured are dearly, deeply loved by me (even Oprah), and I will always feel tremendous gratitude to each of you for being a friend, a sister, a mentor to me. You ladies rock!*
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