What the heck?

Most times I write about something with a semi-serious silliness to it. Or at least that’s my goal. (see The Trick is Driving Fast Enough.)

And that’s all well and good. But sometimes we just have to rein in the silly side of things and try to make sense of this reality we find ourselves in.

I got to thinking the other day about how movies and books are changing. I’m sure you’ve noticed it too . . .  the recent popularity of shows with strong female leads and men who hover around them. Take Castle and Body of Proof for example; gorgeous, independent and capable women succeeding in a once male dominated industry. Or how about The Help or a while back, The Secret Life of Bees – maybe no hovering men but the girls sure took care of themselves didn’t they? And then there are the books, like the wildly successful Hunger Games with Katniss kicking butt all over the page. A newer book I think we’re going to hear more of is Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone. There are many, many more. In film and literature, women seem to be getting a long overdue leg up.

Juxtapose this to what the media is calling “The Republican’s War on Women” and you have to wonder what the heck is going on!? Are we rapidly approaching another Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women?* Hopefully not. Hopefully it’s just a handful of antiquated thinkers unfortunately in high places and trying to bully their personal agendas back into our culture. (*If you’re not familiar with Susan Faludi’s book, you might want to check it out. You’ll never look at marketing, the media or the government the same way again.) 

The Dali Lama said that if the world’s to be saved, it will be western women who do it. I think of Oprah Winfrey opening schools for girls in South Africa. I think of The Women’s Funding Network, an organization dedicated to investing in women and girls worldwide. There are countless others I could name. Women stepping up to help other women, a world acknowledging the fact that, "when you educate a girl, you educate a nation."

Certainly we western women enjoy a greater equality than women in other countries - countries where some women feel that self-immolation is the only way out of the rules of their culture. Countries where rape has become a strategic war maneuver. We in the west are in a position to "be the change we want to see in the world," as Gandhi put it. And we can do it too. But not by taking steps backward. To "change" means to transform, to become something different - not something tried and abandoned. I once worked for a boss who didn't like the system changes I'd coordinated because they were "different." I never understood his logic then and I still don't.


I do know that sometimes its fear that makes people avoid change. They'd rather stay stuck in their old ways than to change - regardless of whether those ways work or not. And maybe that's it with that handful at the top. They're afraid of what might happen if they share that position with women. They feel safer keeping women at home, cooking, cleaning, raising the kids. They feel safer if they're the ones in control of well . . . everything.

But that's how it's been for thousands of years and looks where it's gotten the world. It's time for some new programming. It's time for Castle and Body of Proof. It's time for Minny and Aibileen. It's time for Katniss and Karou. 

It's time.