Fierce AND Beautiful
July 9, 2008, by Melissa Howden
My brother recently sent me photographs of my nine-year-old niece Emily, playing soccer. The photos arrived (real prints in the mail!) at the same time I was pondering (deeply) the nature of social change and how long it really takes.
Like many others I know, I was deeply disappointed not to have a female presidential nominee this time around. But I will work my a** off to help get Senator Obama elected. I will gladly take progressive patriarchy and Michelle Obama as First Lady over the dark, stupid, evil epoch of the last eight years any day. Coinciding with my 51st birthday, the State of California began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. But as with many hard won victories over the years (Roe v Wade among them) we will have to fight continuously to maintain the rights we should have had in the first place. Change is slow, but fighting, work and vigilance make it possible.
Looking at the pictures of my niece running on the soccer field, I feel immense pride, a “big happy” and a bit o’ mush at the same time. I came of age before Title IX. At the age of nine, Emily is a good soccer player having come a long way from her tot soccer years when more often than not she could be found picking flowers on the field as play went on around her. To watch her play now is a wonder. She and her teammates are strong and focused; they pass and kick, work collaboratively and frequently, they win. Emily is also a pink girl, she likes girl stuff Hello Kitty and all. But she also wears Chucks, works for hours on her art, in solitude, is a serious student and loves a good pool party. The point for me is that she is getting to be, and is valued for all of the complex girl she is.
At the same age, I could throw a softball further than any boy or girl in my school and that “talent” freakishly defined me. As a boy with the same talent I would’ve been lauded. Not so me, at the time. I could not have also been a pink girl if I’d wanted to.
I look at this post-game photograph of Emily and I see realization and possibility—FIERCE AND BEAUTIFUL possibility, which is being realized. It makes me cry because I know that the marches I’ve marched, the envelopes licked, buttons worn, checks written, petitions signed, votes cast and outrage expressed have not been for not.
Nirvana could be handed to us on a silver platter tomorrow, and we’d have to fight to keep it. Disappointments and set backs often seem to outweigh the advances and victories and the fight for social justice on all fronts is never-ending. But right now, I am reveling in what I see in this photograph.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I’m not sure that if Nirvana were handed to me on a silver platter I’d even know what I was looking at. But that beautiful child and the boys and girls growing up with her, maybe they’ll have a clearer vision of how to share this world. Clearly, we cannot continue with this kind of inequality between men and women. Men must stop grasping power and women must stop deferring power. The price has become too dear. Has anyone read Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”? YIKES!
July 10th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Melissa-thank you for your eloquent thoughts…I had chills as I read your “Fierce AND Beautiful” piece. I am so happy to view the photo of your niece and imagine her successes. I also realize that she too, will possibly experience frustration in her future as a woman, due to wanting more for the generation to follow. In the meantime, I applaud you for your commitment to a path of equality, I celebrate all your hard work and I encourage you to keep it up! Your article also helped me to feel gratitude for the determination of my mother’s generation of women…I am 52, my mom is 84. May we all continue to expand awareness, manifest harmony, enjoy the present as we bless and shape the future!
July 10th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Doesn’t this piece make you wonder who you would have been, how your life would have been different, had you been born 40 years later — in the 1990s instead of the 1950s?
We had no Title IX; we had jump-rope. We had no Maureen Dowd; we had Brenda Starr. Today, there are 16 female U.S. senators; we had only Margaret Chase Smith. Girls today can navigate their iPods and laptops; I couldn’t coax a cake from my EZ Bake Oven. When I hear today’s conservative female pundits downplaying the struggles and triumphs of the women’s movement of the 60s and 70s, I want to barf. They should go live in Iran if they think we American women haven’t come far or our lifestyle is “no big deal.” Little Emily deserves a fair and level playing field; her freedoms must be guarded as if they were the crown jewels. We can backslide at any time. It hasn’t even been one hundred years that we’ve had the right to vote, for heaven’s sake.
August 3rd, 2008 at 5:04 am
Tahnks for posting