Dear Girls,
You are powerful beyond words, because you threaten to unravel the control of corrupt men who abuse their authority.
In the United States last week there were people who wouldn’t let boys play a baseball championship final because a girlwas on the opposing team. She’d already had to sit out two games because of their demands. Why? Did she, a competitive athlete and a member of her team, chose to? Was she being good and respectful when she acceded to their demands? Why were they not asked to forfeit their games? What messages were sent to her and her teammates? This is not complicated. It sent the wrong messages. Confusing messages. Incoherent messages. You need to know that she should have been allowed to play and not have had to sit out two games. These people, and others like them, all over the world, led exclusively by religious men, are scared of you and will not let you be. You worry them constantly.
If you were not powerful, they would not take you so seriously and they take you very, very seriously. You should, too. You can set the world on fire.
It doesn’t feel this way, I know. If that were true, you think, I would not have to sit out baseball games out of respect for religious beliefs that require my subservience and call it a gift. I would not be turned away from serving God with my brothers. I would not be taught that I’m an evil temptress or the virtue keeper of boys. I would not have virginity wielded as a weapon against me and my worth determined by my womb. I would not be spat on and called a whore by men when I am eight because my arms are bare. I would not be poisoned for going to school. I would not be forced, at the age of 9, to carry twins borne of child torture. I would not have to kill myself to avoid marrying my rapist. If this were true, they would pursue my rapists instead of stoning me for their crimes. I, and thousands others, would not be killed for “honor.”
Girls, these things happen because there are men with power who fear you and want to control you. I know that I have equated relatively benign baseball games with deadly, honor killings but, whereas one is a type of daily, seemingly harmless micro-aggression and the other is a lethal macro-aggression they share the same roots. The basis of both, and escalating actions in between, is the same: To teach you, and all girls subject to these men and their authority, a lesson: “Know your place.” I also know that there are places where girls are marginalized and hurt that are not religious. But all over the world these hypocritical, pious men, in their shamefully obvious wrongness, represent the sharp-edged tip of an iceberg, the visible surface of a deep and vast harm. They employ the full range of their earthly and divine influence to make sure, as early as possible, that you and the boys around you understand what they want your relative roles to be. Where there are patriarchal religions girls, in dramatically varying and extreme degrees, disproportionately suffer. Understand these men for what they are: bullies. Do not internalize what they would have you believe.
Andy Warhol in Gristede’s supermarket near 47th street Factory, NYC 1965 via Bob Adelman
This must’ve been his inspiration. ha!
Soups on!
How Common Is Your Birthday?
(via @stiles)
People with lighter colors are more unique. There. We said it.
Gasp, am I really more unique because of a random day?
There are graceful ways to let people go. You support the people that need you even when they don’t ask you to. You quietly sit while they cry on your shoulder. Buying shots and smoking cigarettes while listening to memories that you’ve heard a million times before, because they, like you, are letting go. It’s a complicated strength building routine that you never knew that you were capable of until the time came. It’s a marathon that you didn’t prepare for but somehow still finished.
There are, of course, ungraceful ways to let go of someone as well. You let the anger and resentment that you feel from being left by that person spill out, like a gush of toxic waste, on other people. First you’re angry at the person that you had to let go. Then you selectively only remember the good moments and live the past. You hope that by hanging onto some foreign memory it’ll bring them back to exactly where you want them. You’re not grieving to let them go, you’re grieving to get them back. But it won’t work. So you try harder. You turn to talking about them in a nostalgic way, filled with concern and dash of longing, to make seem like you’ve let go, but deep down you know that you haven’t. But living as half a person and half a demon shows after a while and you become disgusted with yourself.
Finding grace in those uncoordinated moments then takes more muscle and more strength that you’ve had, regrettably enough, all along, but never used.
There are moments of weakness where it seems easier to hold on. Until you realize that truly letting go is the easiest and the hardest thing to do. And the only thing that you’re honestly getting hung up on is the dichotomy of growing up.
I want my grandmother to know that I let her go with grace. I never want my unrequited love to know that I stumbled. It’s a beautiful dance with forgotten choreography, this life I lead.
In three weeks I’ll be able to count on one hand how many months I’ll have left in the deep pit of the south. It’s a refreshing and freeing feeling, and after this month I know that I’ll be on the home stretch.
All of a sudden it won’t seem like I’ll have the much time left and I know that I’ll be ready for anything else that comes my way. These next months are going to be the slide into the enviable victory of the home plate.
For so long I fought to be here. I beat myself up for making an unpleasant choice, and tried so hard to thrive and live.
Then I began a cycle of drifting. I made my way through life unhappy and feeling alone. I’ll probably go back there, because I honestly don’t know where the perfect place for me is right now, or in five and a half months, but I do know that I’ll be able to survive it, and learn from it. Something that I didn’t know before.
My grandmother once told me that she knew that I’d end up doing something special. And she was right. I am, and I will. This time, it’s going to be for me, that’s what’s going to make it special to me, and probably no one else.
I’ve learned a lot from the south, but the lesson I’m in the midst of is one of the hardest.
Just because I hate it down here, doesn’t mean that everyone that lives here does.
Just because I want something more, and will habitually abuse myself for not quite making it, doesn’t mean that everyone has my complex.
Just as much as I need to stop being so difficult on myself, I need to on others as well. I’ll find their true beauty as soon as I start finding mine.
