Today is International Women’s Day. I am sure you are aware from all the social media posts and gratuitous sales offers, cloaked under layers of praise and well wishes. We love strong women. We particularly love strong women when they wear our t-shirts and eat our granola and burn our candles. We love Ukrainian women, and we want to help them, so here’s 25% off and if you buy something, we promise to give them one cent of the proceeds. We know our products are scandalously overpriced, but we are helping people. We are helping Ukrainian women and also, you. We are helping you. A woman. A strong woman who gets 4,234,459 junk emails and has the discerning eye needed to pick our email out of the pile. The best email. The best sales pitch. The best option. The only option.
And then, there are all the people who don’t want to sell you a product, but still, they do. NBC News blasted me today with the headline “Ukrainian women showing strength and resolve during crisis”. NBC News thinks that this is newsworthy. What is newsworthy? What does that even mean?
You know what I did, right? I Googled. I checked the Interweb. This is where we go for things we need to know, always. Well, the first search result was from the website for the Community College of Baltimore County. According to the CCBC, “[n]ewsworthiness is the term used to describe whether or not a topic is interesting enough for people to want or need to know. It’s the first thing the Media Relations team considers before pitching a story or drafting a press release” (What is Newsworthy? (ccbcmd.edu)). Of course, the CCBC is speaking of its Media Relations team.
However, if I spread this sentiment out, thick and gooey, I am to understand that each entity’s version of a Media Relations team is to decide whether a topic is “interesting enough for people to want or need to know”. Damn, that’s power, amiright?
Right about now, your liberal senses might be tingling. Who the fuck is this broad and is she about to spiral and talk some shit about women? No. Quite the contrary. Well, I can’t deny that there is some spiraling involved. However, there is no part of me, not one teeny, tiny part, not even a cell, that intends to talk shit about women. Nope. I’m an equal opportunist. I’m going to sweep everyone into my tornado of fury.
Let’s start with this. No fucking shit the women of Ukraine are showing strength and resolve during crisis. Women always show strength and resolve during crisis. We forget this, as a society. We talk about the high emotional factor of women and discredit their ability to get shit done. To rise above the insanity. To persevere. To push through. This isn’t just about women birthing life into the world. Oh no. This is about all the magical things that women do. All the ways in which we contribute. All the ways in which we care and think and feel and try.
You know what else? Women can be miserable. Really. Gross. Bitchy. Nasty. Mean. Rude. Careless. That too. We are human, us women. But some of us, many of us, are spectacular. Even the women who have rougher edges are pretty awesome. Even the ones who are difficult are often made of tougher stuff. This is not acknowledged and presumed though. Oh no. This, when it is “discovered” by someone, is newsworthy. This is a thing worthy of interest and attention. This is a thing worthy of a headline.
We’ve found some humans and they are women, and they are strong. Sound the alarms. Notify everyone. This is a staggering revelation. A lightbulb moment in the most momentous sort of way.
I’m here for LinkedIn and Facebook posts and ‘gram stories, but can we please, for the love of all things worthy, normalize the strength of women? You can be compassionate and empathetic and still move mountains. You can raise children and also, run a company. You can give the best hugs and also, be the fastest runner in the world.
Girl power.
Lift each other up.
Break the bias.
Be strong.
I mean. Are you fucking serious? This is the shit we need to tell each other on this day made for us. We have to. We don’t have a choice. We need to remind each other that we are actually equal (as declared by men, thank you very much) and we should support each other, and we should remain steadfast in our devotion to this club of same sexed humans.
Here’s what I am going to do for all the amazing women I know today. I am going to give you permission to breathe. Really. Breathe. Take a deep one. Fill yourself up from your unpedicured toes to your dyed hair tips. Just sit in the glory of the imperfect, perfect human that you are every single day.
Allow yourself to feel grumpy with your kids and slighted by your boss. Feel free to lament your wrinkles and cellulite. Feel resentful over the unreal ‘real’ women that companies are shoving in your face to try and make you feel better about not squeezing into a size 2 or feeling fabulous in a crop top. Forgive yourself for spilling your coffee and drying out the chicken and eating that weird candy bar that was left in the office kitchen.
It’s fine that you mailed it in at the gym and forget to send that email. It’s allowable that you asked your husband to discipline your daughter because you didn’t feel like being the bad guy, again. Who cares that you don’t make your baked goods from scratch and like to read the last page of a book first? Oh, and I know that book isn’t a non-fiction accounting of some mind-bending historical event. It’s fine. While you are at it, don’t apologize for loving ‘Bridgerton’. It’s just fucking fine.
Celebrate yourself. Celebrate the women of Ukraine, but not because you are surprised or because it’s newsworthy. Celebrate them because they are doing what women do, what they always do. They are being women. Bad ass, tough, smart, resilient, loving, humans.
I love you all, and then some. And some more than others (like the special bad ass women I work alongside and my crazy amazing mama and my beautiful friends and my delicious sister and my scrumptious niece).
X
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 