They tell us that being a woman means being held to a different standard. A standard by which people won’t respect you or treat you equally, a standard by which the terms of your happiness won’t be dictated by yourself or your dreams, but rather by the whims or powerful bends of men who try to tell you explicitly and unconsciously that they’re better than you.
They teach us that being a woman means recognizing forms of abuse — verbal, emotional, physical — are weapons of meaningless construct, cowardly attempts at dominance and control.
They tell us that being a woman means feeling afraid when walking by yourself at night, training your senses to become hypersensitive to the slightest of movements, sneaking wary glances over your shoulder at looming shadows. It means enduring catcalls and ‘endearments’ carelessly flung on the basis of the the way you look, dress, walk, and hold your head high.
They show us that being a woman means you need to work twice as hard to be acknowledged and twice as hard to be respected. It means you’re often the quietest presence in the room and the most overlooked. It means enduring injustices, double standards, double entendres, and baseless judgments. It means shuffling a stacked deck and drawing short.
Or so they try to tell us.
Being a woman means opportunity lies in the paths you and your mothers and their mothers before them have paved with weathered feet, wearied bones, and indomitable persistence. The internal voices urging forward march even when the cavalry sits exhausted, praying for reprieve.
Being a woman means beauty is neither an ideal nor a standard of measurements, images, and headlines of distorted fantasy. True beauty lies in the character of the heart, the ways in which we serve, defend, and preserve those ideals as old and timeless as our honor deserves and demands.
Being a woman means silence can be a placard and a picket that speaks louder than the most vocal of purports — the ability to listen well and empathize strongly with the pain and struggles of others, our peerless sword and shield. Being a woman means championing a cause, an existence that obliterates the lines between identity, meaning, objectification, and worth.
Being a woman means you can dream up the universe, light the skies with your thoughts, and design galaxies with your ambitions. Creation lies in every frustration, injustice, blessing, joy, and achievement; in the relationships we nurture, the lives we deliver, and the lives we lead.
Being a woman means we are sisters, daughters, mothers, pupils, teachers, warriors, dreamers, leaders; pillars of strength and guidance, stronger than the most immaculate ideals, who can accomplish more through love and nurturing than fists or guns ever will.
Being a woman is love and in being so, bestowing unconditional love to the world.
To my friends: the women around the world and the men who stand for and with us — let the passage of days in these turbulent times simply mean the ceaseless continuation of the overwhelming contributions, service, and accomplishments executed by women around the world day after day. Thank you for trail blazing and leading the way. Show them who you are, what you are made of, and what you are ready to do.
