Since we just passed the Mother's Day weekend, I thought of sharing this. An awesome read...
from Hanne Blank's blog.
Excuse me while I throw this down, I’m old and cranky and tired of
hearing the idiocy repeated by people who ought to know better.
Real women do not have curves.
Real women do not look like just one thing.
Real women have curves, and not. They are tall, and not. They are
brown-skinned, and olive-skinned, and not. They have small breasts, and
big ones, and no breasts whatsoever.
Real women start their lives as baby girls. And as baby boys. And
as babies of indeterminate biological sex whose bodies terrify their
doctors and families into making all kinds of very sudden decisions.
Real women have big hands and small hands and long elegant fingers
and short stubby fingers and manicures and broken nails with dirt under
them.
Real women have armpit hair and leg hair and pubic hair and facial
hair and chest hair and sexy moustaches and full, luxuriant beards.
Real women have none of these things, spontaneously or as the result of
intentional change. Real women are bald as eggs, by chance and by
choice and by chemo. Real women have hair so long they can sit on it.
Real women wear wigs and weaves and extensions and kufi and do-rags and
hairnets and hijab and headscarves and hats and yarmulkes and textured
rubber swim caps with the plastic flowers on the sides.
Real women wear high heels and skirts. Or not.
Real women are feminine and smell good and they are masculine and
smell good and they are androgynous and smell good, except when they
don’t smell so good, but that can be changed if desired because real
women change stuff when they want to.
Real women have ovaries. Unless they don’t, and sometimes they don’t
because they were born that way and sometimes they don’t because they
had to have their ovaries removed. Real women have uteruses, unless
they don’t, see above. Real women have vaginas and clitorises and XX
sex chromosomes and high estrogen levels, they ovulate and menstruate
and can get pregnant and have babies. Except sometimes not, for a rather
spectacular array of reasons both spontaneous and induced.
Real women are fat. And thin. And both, and neither, and otherwise. Doesn’t make them any less real.
There is a phrase I wish I could engrave upon the hearts of every
single person, everywhere in the world, and it is this sentence which
comes from the genius lips of the grand and eloquent
Mr. Glenn Marla:
There is no wrong way to have a body.
I’m going to say it again because it’s important:
There is no wrong way to have a body.
And if your moral compass points in any way, shape, or form to
equality, you need to get this through your thick skull and stop with
the “real women are like such-and-so” crap.
You are not the authority on what “real” human beings are, and who qualifies as “real” and on what basis.
All human beings are real.
Yes, I know you’re tired of feeling disenfranchised. It is a
tiresome and loathsome thing to be and to feel. But the tit-for-tat
disenfranchisement of others is not going to solve that problem.
Solidarity has to start somewhere and it might as well be with you and
me.
