Dear Woman,

Dear Woman,

I am writing you this letter to tell you that you are enough.

You are a woman or a girl because you are one.

Not because you wear dresses or make up or high heels.

Wearing pink or lace doesn’t make you more female any more than wearing blue makes you more male.

If you prefer jeans  or mud, that doesn’t make less female either.

You are exactly as you are meant to be:

Perfectly imperfect. As we all are.

Choose lace.

Choose mud.

Choose lace and mud.

Just know that you are female, a girl, a woman not based upon the garb you choose to don.

Every person who ever put on clothes in the morning was dressing up to play a role. Maybe that role was MOM or CORPORATE MOGUL or ATHLETE. Maybe that role was CAREGIVER or COWGIRL or PRINCESS.

You define your roles. Don’t let them define you.

If I were a pirate every day and today I dressed as a princess, would that make me less of a pirate?

The same is true of our femininity.

If I am a woman every day and today I dressed as a pirate, would that make me less of a woman?

Dress up.

Dress down.

Dress the part of the role you play today. Rest assured that it is only a role and does not change who you are.

You are a girl, a woman, a female inside your heart and body, not outside of it because of your clothes.

Embrace yourself.

Love yourself.

Love,

Me

Generation M

I’ve been a little lax about posting in my Man Up and Womanly Arts categories. To be honest, it’s hard to maintain the energy needed to be that worked up about it all the time. So I throw in the towel sometimes for a while. (Obviously it has NOTHING to do with my focus challenges. At all.) Also, I have a little wiggle room because I am raising a man-cub and while there are lots of gender and gender role issues to deal with for boys, the boxes they are put in have a little more room. However, I do sometimes come across something that really needs to be shared. This is one of those things.

Generation M for Misogyny

“Another generation of women and girls is being trained to please men, to do whatever they can to not make men unhappy, to stroke men’s egos and to know their second class status and not complain about it” 

http://empowering-girls.blogspot.com/2011/08/generation-m-for-misogyny.html

“Girls today are raised around images of idealized beauty, where airbrushed perfection informs girls of the standards of beauty in our society, and it is also no accident that the words “Hot” and “Sexy” appear on almost every cover of teen magazines aimed at girls and where makeover tips are found throughout. It is against this background of idealized beauty, and the beauty industry’s insistence that girls and young women have many imperfections that this beauty industry thrives.” 

Please click through and watch the video. It’s less than six minutes.

Man up Monday and Womanly Wednesday: Dear Woman

I think this video is just Amazing. Even just hearing this said aloud is healing to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_uRIMUBnvw

I don’t really have much else to say about it.

Gorgeous!

Womanly Wednesday: Willow Smith

I want to be Willow Smith when I grow up.

The other day she was co-hosting with Oprah on her Amazing Kids episode and I have to say that I was pretty impressed with her poise and confidence.

I think that her parents are doing a great job of instilling these qualities in her.

I’ll admit that when her song Whip My Hair came out I didn’t get it at first. I thought the message was good, but the song a little annoying. It has started to grow on me. According to Willow, the song is about doing your own thing.

Willow is really very much on the cutting edge of fashion. And when you’re on the cutting edge of anything, sometimes you fall off. It’s the nature of the beast. Oprah asked her about being sometimes on the Best Dressed List and some times on the Not-So-Best Dressed List. She asked her which one felt better. Willow answered, “It doesn’t make any difference.”

I gotta love a girl who doesn’t give a flying flip about what the media says about her style. Most of us can’t get over what the lady at the grocery store might think.

So, I tip my hat to her (and her Mom and Dad) for her style, her boldness, and her confidence. Someday I hope I’m that girl.

Womanly Wednesday: Amazing Women Rock! and intro

I don’t think I’d be doing myself and future generations a service if I only blogged about the removing of men’s stereotypes and confining boxes. I am passionate about the betterment of women as well. If you take a peak on my blogroll, you’ll see Girl Effect which is a really good website for what we can do to raise women’s status around the world and thus, the world.

In honor of Women’s History (Herstory) Month and my new Womanly Wednesday posts, I’d like to highlight a new website I’ve recently found. It’s called

Amazing Women Rock.

This particular link is to a blog post describing the Incredible women who will be speaking at the TED Conference this year. You can also find TED over there in my blogroll. They are awesome, too!

When I get a little more time, I’ll be adding AmazingWomenRock.com to the list as well.

So, talk to you later!

PS. Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss!