Future Judgement

08.17.2010

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how unfair our world is, which is, I know, not breaking news. But the thing that goes over in my mind like a broken record is how unfairly women get treated and judged. There are men who look at women as objects. There are men who look at women as weaklings. There are men who have no respect for their talents and strengths.

This led me to think about the future. My future. If we had a child, what would I say to her about encountering men who dismiss her just because she’s female? Or, if the child’s a boy, what would I tell him about accepting women as individuals just like we accept him?

With these questions in mind, I sat down and wrote two letters.

Dear Daughter,

In this world, you will experience a lot of magic, mystery, and play as well as pain, suffering, and judgment. I won’t always be there when you experience these and I won’t always have the answers. But I hope for one thing: that by the time you’re my age, you will easily shrug off any feelings of inadequacy that a man may try to make you feel. You might feel weak at times and you might have moments when their words will seem to be truer than what’s in your heart. But remember what Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” These men, and anyone else who tries to keep you down, will do everything in their power to make sure you’re kept down. Use the wings of your imagination and don’t be afraid because believing in yourself is the greatest weapon a person can ever behold.

To My Son,

I wish for you to know your strengths and capabilities so that you can achieve whatever your imagination conjures up and whatever your heart desires.

I also hope that you understand compassion, love, and acceptance. I hope that when you look at a woman you see a person and accept her inner beauty, her unconditional love, and…her flaws. I hope that when a man belittles a woman you will stand up for her even if it means you’re the only one who’s standing. I hope you see that this strategy of judgment that so many men use in order to feel empowered actually makes them weak. I hope you know that you are better than that.

These convictions will be appreciated and even sought after. Believing in the right thing makes your heart feel full and this is the second greatest weapon a person can ever behold. The first is believing in yourself.

The Dangers of Education, Part II

06.04.2010

One of the solutions that the journalist in the Mother Jones article that I referred to yesterday wrote about is “education.” Ironic, of course, because I opened my entry yesterday about how depressing it can be when one is educated and able to think critically.

There have been a number of studies that have shown that when a group of people is educated, the benefits of living rise exponentially. This is self-explanatory, I think, but what surprised me greatly was the fact that most illiterate people in the world are women. Actually, that fact alone doesn’t surprise me. Men, who make up most of governments, have always tried to suppress women and a lack of education is a very good way to suppress anybody. But I digress.

I’m sure we’ve all heard of microloans where a person in a poorly developed country, mostly a woman, receives a small scale loan of some sort to help her provide for her family. It can range from a monetary loan to being provided with a goat or some other animal to help her make some money.

A Bangladeshi man by the name of “Muhammad Yunus founded Grammen (“villages”) Bank in 1983. His revolutionary model was to loan to the unloanable poor – notably women – who lacked collateral, enabling them to develop their own businesses and free themselves from poverty. This radical innovation won Yunus the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.” Next is the clincher: “Empirical studies now support his intuition of 27 years ago: Women make better loan recipients than men if your aim is to increase family well-being. Compared to men’s loans, women’s loans double family income and increase child survival twenty-fold…[In other words,] The best 21^st-century contraceptive is a Yunusian device, a microloan.”[1]

When a woman is educated enough at least to take a loan and support herself, she sees the world a little differently and may have fewer children so that they can have a better life than she growing up. More money provides an opportunity for a better quality of life.

Many Americans have a better quality of life, but I think what’s happened is we’ve become greedy. We want 4 cars for a two-adult household, we want to be able to take whatever we want and use it because, by golly, we’re entitled to it. Right? But our selfishness and greed is destroying our future. But, I guess, because we don’t immediately feel the affects of our actions daily and right away, we choose to ignore it. And as long as we keep popping out babies, the notion is that we won’t be around in 100 years to feel the affects of our decisions of today, so why should we care? Our great-grandchildren won’t know who we are personally so there’s no deep investment that far down the line. What matters is that our emotional needs of having babies are satisfied now.

I leave with the following to think about:[2]

[1] pp. 41-42.

[2] p.31.

Can Movies Truly Mimic Real Life?

06.01.2010

One of my all-time favorite movies ever is Adrienne Shelly’s Waitress. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough. The writing is fantastic and so is the acting. It stars Kerri Russell (from Felicity), Cindy Hines, Shelly herself, Jeremy Sisto (most notably from Six Feet Under) and Andy Griffith is featured in the movie as well.

Rob took me to see this movie when it came out in the theatres (2007) and later told me the story behind the movie that made me fall in love with it all the more. The movie is about a woman who is in a dead marriage who finds out she’s pregnant. Despite not wanting the child, she keeps it and the movie is about her journey during the pregnancy. Every scene about the baby I can identify with; the fears, concerns, wishes, etc.

The story behind the movie is that Adrienne Shelly, who wrote, directed and acted in the movie, never got to see its release because she was murdered in her apartment office in New York. The murder was initially staged to look like a suicide but soon the cops pieced together what happened. An (illegal) immigrant, working on some construction in the building, broke into her office and tried to steal some money from her when she caught him. He panicked, killed her, staged a suicide and fled; he was eventually caught.

The most heartfelt and bittersweet part of the movie is that it was written as a love letter to Shelly’s own daughter who was only 3 years old (I think) when Shelly was killed and who is actually featured right at the end of the movie as Russell’s daughter.

I desperately latch on to (good) movies that are written and directed by women because there are so few women in Hollywood who are able to carve out a niche for themselves in that male-dominated world. And not just carve out a niche but successfully have a husband and child/ren too.

What’s difficult for me though, is at what point does a movie like Waitress separate itself from real-life? The issues and concerns that Shelly brings up in the movie are so identifiable for me.

I find that it would be ironic that I would choose to feel the joy that Russell’s character feels at the end of the movie because of a movie. And I say this mainly because it is I who continuously lambastes Hollywood for selling unobtainable images and dreams to hundreds of thousands of women. I’m not saying that any decision of mine has tipped in any one direction, but it would be an interesting way for a woman whom I never met to communicate to me about something I’m so scared and unsure.

Which again begs the question, Where does a movie stop and real life begin?

P.S. Shelly is one of Russell's co-workers; she is the one with the glasses, in case you don't know who she is.

Least Likely Surprise

05.28.2010

Now that I no longer have my Friday morning class, I can return to my regular Friday meetings and hopefully start getting back on track with my weight.

I’ve been attending the same Friday morning meeting since 2003 so I knew it would be challenging to attend a new meeting and I can’t explain how much I had grown dependent on that Friday routine. Even though I chose to go to another meeting with the same leader, the dynamic of the group was different which affected everything for me. I suppose I went in with a fairly negative attitude ahead of time because I knew it was just temporary so every set back I had made it easier to blame on this new meeting.

Well, when I left last August, the Friday meeting was filled with people of different ages but most people hovered somewhere in their 30s and 40s. Now, 9 months later, I found myself surrounded with women who were in their 60s and above. I couldn’t help but look at these women and be amazed.

See, aren’t you supposed to have it all figured out by then? Aren’t you supposed to know what you want out of life and why? Don’t you know why you are the way that you are by that point in your life?

I’ve heard people with children say, “I wish I had it all figured out.” This constantly surprises me because I’ve always thought, “Wow, I don’t have kids because I don’t have it figured out and I’m waiting for that to happen so that I’ll be ready.”

But seeing these women humble enough to accept that they need help, unwilling to give up on their lives and on who they are and, on the contrary, willing to invest in themselves and find out who they are now gave me so much inspiration.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, how old you are, whether you have kids or not, or how you choose to live your life. The point is to choose: to live your life. The point is to choose: to be the best that you can be. The point is to choose whatever is in your heart because if we’re lucky, we’re all going to reach the age of 60 or 70 and, along the way, keep trying to figure it all out. Each stage brings a new set of challenges and once one issue is solved another challenge is eager to find its way to your doorstep. No one has all the answers and most of us work with only the knowledge we have at that moment in time.

And the point of that: is to never stop learning.