The Beginning

So I decided that I wanted to dedicate an entire blog to this idea I had awhile back that was a blog post on my other blog.

I don't know about you, but I seem to do my best thinking when I am doing something like driving on long trips, taking a hot bath, running (okay, walking with intermittent bursts of jogging with sweat rolling down my beet red face and drenching my back), or other similar endeavors. Or at least I feel like it is my best thinking, but really it could just be myself feeling like I am making some great thought process when it is really more along the lines of a Gilmore Girl conversation.

I started thinking about women who are, for whatever reason, starting a career, or trying to find a job, supporting their families, whatever the situation is. There was a story earlier this year here that keeps floating around in my brain. A single, homeless mother leaves her children in the car to go to a job interview, having nowhere else to take them. Later information says that she did in fact have a part time job and a residence "listed". I don't know enough of the details and am not going to go investigating, but I would say it was desperation, not child abuse that led her to leave her kids in the car. What if she had somewhere to take them? What if there was a place for women to get career counseling, job training, life skills, parenting skills, etc. that ALSO provided child care for her children while she was at her job interview? I know there is at least women's facility in the valley, but I had to do some searching for it, so I would say it is not well known.

By this point in my jog, yeah we are still on my "jog", I was actually.... jogging!! I needed to do some serious thinking, and that happens better when I am jogging, I concentrate on thinking and ideas and ignore the sweat and the deep, laborious breaths that are coming from my body. I am not sure how I got to this train of thought, but I think it had something to do with the car lights that I was seeing up ahead... Anyways, I started thinking about women that have been raped and sexually assaulted. According to statistics approximately 1 in 4 women are sexually assaulted at some point in their life. I believe this number is wrong, that it is too low. I won't go into the basis of this belief right now, but I believe the number is higher than that. So, I was thinking about these women and thinking about how/why/when/where/ women are raped and who rapes them. It seems like in our culture anything womanly/girly/feminine is either exploited or a bad thing. Our culture makes women not to be the victim of rape, but rather the rapist couldn't help himself. In court, the rapist isn't proving he/she is innocent, rather the victim is proving they actually had a crime committed against them. (I will probably rant and rave more about this one later on too.) It is all a bit upside down in my mind.

This then led me to think about the oh so common sayings we have of "You (blank) like a GIRL!" You throw like a girl, run like a girl, fight like a girl, etc. They are all considered insults. Why?? Have you ever seen a game of fastpitch softball? Yep, those women sure throw like girls! Anytime someone is said to do something "like a girl" it is insult. The following video found on youtube is a great one about turning this culture of "like a girl" into something new.

The other saying that is becoming more prevalent is "Real women (blank)." Real women have curves, real women lift weights, etc. And that, my imaginary friends, it the topic of my next post.