Growing Girls With Purpose

The blogosphere is confusing the hell out of me. Specifically the supposed advocacy blogosphere, which says it’s watching out for body image and female progress.

In previous years these advocates would argue that certain toy companies excluded girls from engineering type toys – maybe Lego for instance – by focusing on male narratives, often narratives that focused on violence and competition and conquer (Star Wars, Ninjas, Dinosaurs, Cars movie, Mind Storm, etc.). Certainly, one might argue, there was definitely room for Lego to make their product more inviting to girls. So they did.

And pro-girl advocates responded with a violent social media shit-storm that surely made their head spin.

We don’t need a “girl” Lego line. The line isn’t “smart” enough. Characters were beauticians wearing mini-skirts, sitting in hot tubs, drinking mojitos and this sells girls short. Did my friend Crystal – who is a beautician that wears mini skirts and sits in hot tubs drinking mojitos whenever possible – really sell herself short? I thought. Prior to this moment I had thought of her as a small business owner and artist who actually had a pretty rad life. Wait, I wear mini-skirts and so does Ainsley. We sit in hot tubs. We drink fancy drinks out of fancy glasses, mostly because it makes us feel fancy. What does this criticism say about us?

I guess the blogosphere was looking for the narrative to be more upscale, only narratives about women lawyers, doctors and corporate executives will be allowed. The “lowly” professions will now be considered “selling yourself short” for all girls no matter where their interests or skills lie. Only gay boys will be encouraged to be hair stylists from here on out and vacationing or relaxing, forget it. Is this where we’re headed?

Then we have the issue of body image. The blogosphere has been fighting women and girls being objectified by media and advertising. Namely posing models in sexualized poses that make them look like the entertainment. It’s degrading. It’s minimizing. It’s demoralizing. It dehumanizes us and it’s downright disrespectful. Right? Well, I guess that’s only if the girl or woman is emaciated and the blogosphere is jealous of her weight. I mean, that’s the only conclusion I can come to considering the accolades this photograph and article about plus-sized women being passed around by the exact same blogosphere that has been for years declaring that posing women like this is down-right wrong.

When I pointed out, on Facebook, that this was, in fact, a very popular pose in pornography I was told I was flat out wrong and they just didn’t see this at all.

Seriously? You don’t see that this woman is bent in half with her bottom and vag. exposed, ready to take it from behind, with her face to her knees (making her essentially faceless to her lover), except that it’s looking directly into the camera for the viewers’ benefit with a giant smile that says “I’m having a GREAT time in this completely unnatural and weird pose!” with her childish braid hanging to the ground, juxtaposed next to her super high heals?

Have I gone mad? Am I the only one who sees all the markings of pornography or has this woman’s size 8 thighs blinded everyone? I mean, plus-sized women hang out like this all the time, right? Folded in half exposing their asses for easy access in little girl braids and three-inch stilettos – that’s the cultural definition of “sexy” we’ve all agreed on and fat girls are “sexy” too damn it! Imagine if she was an emaciated girl. Then it’s objectification of women? Imagine if it’s a man. Then it’s just gross?

I thought plus-sized women were shooting higher than wanting to be included in being objectified by the media and in advertising. I thought they might want to get out of this cultural insanity with their dignity in tact. But, “this is art” I was told. Unlike all the other times when it’s just the media and advertising objectifying and sexualizing women and girls.

My mistake. This is progress. I guess?

I’m just not sure where the hell all this progress is going anymore.

I’m going through a massive transformation — it’s spiritual, it’s emotional, it’s physical, it’s psychic, it’s creative, it’s an upheaval of my soul and it’s awesome!

Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies/Women’s Wisdom, says that as women leave the hard labor years of young child birthing and nurturing and enter into their peri-menopause and near- and 40ish years they go through a massive psychic shift. They reframe their past and go through an emotional and psychic cleanse, casting off old baggage. They renegotiate their marriages, relationships with their children and other family and friends. They venture out more ambitiously into careers and the outer world. They redefine who they are and who they want to be for the next phase of their lives. If their spouses refuse to budge, they leave. If their friends take another path, they wish them well and go on their way, forging new friendships. If their careers no longer fill their needs, they start new ones. They reap the wisdom of the first 40 years and all the pieces start to fit together and they say, “I won’t make those choices again. I learned these lessons.” Ailments start to show up to point out what’s not working for them, if they listen they get well. If they don’t, they get sicker. If they renegotiate their lives and let old things go, they flourish like never before, if they don’t they decline.

This is happening to me.

As such The Girl Revolution is changing. I’ve been laying off the Watch Dog role, mainly because it makes me feel angry and frustrated and I don’t want to feel angry and frustrated. So, I will pass the torch to other fabulous bloggers who are much more passionate than I am about those causes.

The Girl Revolution sometimes dips its toe into spiritual waters. I’ve had feedback from readers saying I talk about God too much or I don’t criticize religion enough. If I try to please everyone I won’t please myself. If spiritual or religious matters offend you, seek elsewhere. I will write about it. If you have a desire to read criticism of certain religions there are plenty of blogs filling that role. There are plenty of religions that do plenty of damaging things to girls and women, that’s a fact, but I don’t go to those churches and you don’t have to either. I also don’t have to put my focus on their evil deeds. That also makes me feel frustrated and angry and I don’t enjoy feeling frustrated and angry.

The Girl Revolution has spent much time delving into the ways in which girls and women have been and are being discriminated against. This will stop now. There are plenty of blogs filling this role and thus I am not needed in this capacity. I believe in Law of Attraction and gender discrimination is not something I wish to attract for myself or for my daughter or for any other girl or woman on this planet. I do not wish to ignore it when it happens, but I do not wish to focus on it either. Again, it makes me angry and frustrated and I do not choose to feel frustrated and angry. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I’ve realized that the truth is I have not felt certain types of gender discrimination since leaving Texas. I have not felt other types of gender discrimination since the early 2000s and it’s now 2012 and I want to let it go and believe some things have changed. Honestly, I would have preferred a little gender discrimination in my favor when I became a new mother to allow me an easier time at working and raising a family because I now realize that I DO have different priorities than the majority of fathers I know — especially the one that lives in this house — and if that offends your sense of what equality should look like well, the numbers support my thesis.

Also the truth, I realized, is that my daughter has never experienced any real damaging gender discrimination. She is among the top of her class, always encouraged in her education and given the support she needs and desires. She is on sports teams. She is told she is pretty about as often as my son is told he is so dang cute. She is told she is smart and creative more often than my son is. He is told that he is more athletic, only because he is. The media’s gender messages effect her only as much as we allow media into our consciousness, into our home, onto our computers — it’s limited. We create more than we consume. She sees women in politics, she sees women doctors and dentists, we have women friends who own businesses and are professionals and we know stay-at-home-moms and her grandma is a minister and yes, one of our friends is also a beautician who wears mini-skirts and sits in hot tubs drinking mojitos quite often and we don’t think she sold herself short, we think she’s a business owner who made choices that work for her. I don’t believe my daughter has any reason to expect gender discrimination. She is not raised in a family or church that tells her to bow down to men. She is expected to go to college. She is encouraged to pursue her passions and dream big by everyone around her.

So what am I “fighting” for? What am I spending my energy pushing against? The past. My past experiences that are over now. I have already won. The joy is already mine. I am just going to proceed, look forward and rejoice.

So, what will The Girl Revolution transform into? A lot of major things are in the works that I’m not at liberty to discuss at the present moment. But, they are extraordinarily transformative. If you are meant to, you will travel with me. If your needs are better served elsewhere, I wish you safe travels and a life full of abundance and joy.

Last year I wrote a post about Jess Weiner’s body issues. I feel bad about it. I want to apologize and make amends. Jess Weiner’s body issues are Jess Weiner’s body issues. They are her issues whether she chooses to talk about them in public or private. My point could have been made without calling her out directly. Or I could have let the point go.

I don’t normally call people out personally, even if they are famous. I think it’s an international cop-out “they’re famous so they signed up for the entire world to say whatever they want about them.” No they didn’t. They’re famous and they are people and the entire world just uses this justification to allow their mean flag to fly.

This is one of the most effective ways we silence girls and women, especially politically and in important social activism roles. I’ve often thought that I’d make a good politician with effective with out-of-the-box thinking and lots of new ideas. But, I love myself and my children too much to go through the insane nonsense that we put politicians, especially female politicians, through in this country.

Oh, you made gang-bang porn with a Sarah Palin look-a-like? Hilarious! You forwarded a Photoshopped photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini carrying a semi-automatic weapon at a pool party to a billion people? So funny! Well, she did disagree with your politics and your sense of social right. She deserved it. (Yeah, not so hilarious. Really. Disgusting and disrespectful to all women is more like it.)

You’re a horrible mother!

You’re too fat!

You’re too skinny!

I can’t believe someone would marry you!

She’s a practicing Witch!

She’s a whore!

A woman would have to grow emotional armor the thickness of a T-Rex in order to withstand, to willingly subject themselves and their families, to this kind of treatment for being willing to serve . . . from other women who are supposedly on their own side (in their own political party or of their own social activist realm or religious denomination or whatever group or category a woman tries to make headway in).

So, to Jess Weiner, I’m making a public apology because I made public my criticism.

It’s a brand new baby 2012.

What I wish for you I wish for myself. My wishes come from the Sermon on the Mount. It is the Law, as delivered by Jesus, retold by Matthew.

What you ask for you will get.

Ask for better and more, expecting the abundance of the entire Universe.

Be more clever in your questioning.

Be wise enough to accept the answers.

Release that which no longer serves you to make room to recieve that which does.

What you seek you will find.

Be very selective about what you seek and where you seek it.

Remember you can only find snakes in a snake’s den. You won’t find a cuddly bunny there.

Look within. You won’t find self-worth in someone else. You won’t find your body image in advertising.

When you find what you seek, may you be brave enough to face it with a core of strength and boldness of action.

Knock and the door will be opened to you.

Though you tremble when you knock, may you dare walk through only the right doors with your head held high.

You don’t want to knock on every door you come to. Focus is the key to success. “For straight is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it.” (Matt.7:14)

You don’t have to walk through every door you knock on. You can just peek and let your inner wisdom change your mind.

Some Holy Warnings

Do not settle.

When someone tells you he’s a dog or swine, believe him and then collect your holy pearls and move on.

If you’re sitting under a tree that keeps bearing rotten fruit, ask better questions, then go find one that bears nutritious and delicious fruit.

If someone looks like a sheep, but you feel like you’re about to be eaten by a wolf — believe yourself — you are about to be eaten by a wolf. Run away.

You are wiser in 2012 than you were in 2011. Your life will be richer and more abundant because of it.

Reagan: Not A Viable Candidate for 2012

I find it so irritating when pundits declare a candidate “a waffler,” claiming that they lack a moral compass or they stand for nothing if they have had the good sense to change their mind about something in the last 30 years.

I call this growth and maturity. For me this is a primary criteria for relationships of any kind. If you have lived for over 30 years and you haven’t changed your mind about anything, then I don’t trust you enough to have a vote in congress or to be President of the United States.

Changing your mind signifies a couple of vital things:

• Admitting you could have been wrong about something in the first place. Changing your mind shows humility and a willingness to admit when you’re wrong. It shows you’ve got your ego in check.
• Acknowledging that something in the world has changed. Changing your mind shows that you agree that new research not supporting your original opinion or hypothesis might have been presented between the time you made your original opinion and your current one. Changing your mind only shows that you have been paying attention.
• Illustrating there has been some personal growth. If you don’t grow from personal experiences and that growth doesn’t inform your opinions and positions, then I don’t I trust you as my political representatives. Humans are meant to grow.
• A willingness to be educated or enlightened. Changing your mind is sometimes about being educated about something you really didn’t know anything about before, or about letting go of an unfair judgement about a group of people you really didn’t know before or even just saying, “I don’t get this, but I see that it’s important to you and it really doesn’t impact me, so I’m willing to concede the point and give you what you want.” It’s about allowing light and compassion in.
• An ability to compromise and listen to your constituents. A senate and house of representatives full of stubborn people, on the extreme right or left, who believe compromise is a moral flaw is a broken system going nowhere. Nothing happens. The deficit grows. Laws don’t get passed. No one gets anything they want. Because our lawmakers are being pigheaded. I think I can speak for the majority of Americans when I say, we’re sick of your childish pissing contests. We want balanced budgets. We want to pay off the deficit and we are willing to make sacrifices, though bitching and moaning on the Internet might be our hobby. Conceding a point or a position and allowing the other side to get something that’s important to them doesn’t make you a pussy and it doesn’t make you wrong. It moves things along. Stop thinking about your next election and do the next right thing. If the next right thing is raising taxes, raise them, equitably. We’ll suck it up. If it is outlawing second-trimester abortions, trade that for more funding of more forms of birth control like Plan B. If it’s letting gay people get married, just let them already; If you want to protect marriage, work on your marriage because it’s the only one that’s any of your business. Stop being dicks about everything. Pick your battles. Decide what’s really, really important to you and the people who voted for you and draw the line there. Don’t draw the line everywhere because at this point all of the people are sick of all of you.

Voters, consider the political, technological, medical, pharmaceutical and information advancements of the last 30 years and ask yourself why many candidates are using the same canned responses about teen pregnancy, drug addiction, crime, health care, abortion, education, immigration, world politics, global economics, the domestic economy, social security, entitlement programs and taxation as Ronald Reagan did. If it was such a great plan would we be having the same problems magnified now? If a candidate doesn’t understand that everything has changed since 1980 then we don’t want them in office in 2012.

If a candidate believes they knew everything they needed to know while cheering for Reagan at the Republican Caucus in 1979 or even if they solidified their political ideology while campaigning for Barack Obama in 2007 and they haven’t experienced a shift in perception about anything since, then they won’t serve us well in the present or the future.

We need candidates that are ready to respond to the issues that concern today’s rapidly changing global economic structures; who have new and reasonable ideas about our vastly changed and changing medical and pharmaceutical landscape and can achieve an affordable and equitable system; who understand today’s shifting global political climate and can be wisely diplomatic; who can look at new education research and can consider the possibility that all kids don’t think and learn the same; who can look at a correction system that fails us all; who can look at both parties and see one people.

We want people who understand they don’t know what’s coming next in the waves of advancement, but who have histories of responding to the flow of ingenuity, change and rapid upheaval with optimism and out-of-the-box thinking rather than digging their heals in the sand and screeching that the end of the world is near.

I want candidates who will say, “I didn’t foresee the impact of the Internet when I was in college,” “I didn’t have a full understanding of this issue when I ran in 1994,” “I was overwhelmed with anger and passion when I voted for Iraq and didn’t foresee a decade-long, extraordinarily costly war if I had I would have insisted we finance it differently, but I also feel there was a legitimate threat to world peace in Iraq,” “I wish I wouldn’t have spoken so adamantly about not raising taxes, I think that might be a good idea now to help balance the budget,” “I didn’t understand the impact of sex education or how Plan B really worked when I said that,” “I was an ardent supporter of the 2nd amendment and I still believe in the right to bear arms, I just don’t think you need a rocket launcher or an uzi to kill a dear or to defend your home, and also think gang members and teenagers probably should have less access to them.”

Whatever the position or opinion that has changed, I hope voters can spot signs of maturity and growth and signs of immature pigheadedness and realize that the latter serves only their own ego.