Day seven: I wish all women realized how beautiful and worthy they are

I have this dream…

I want to someday make a magazine.

I want to gather the many talented and inspiring women that are out there in the blogosphere and create. I want it to be a magazine that reaches out to women, young and old, but particularly to younger girls, and lets them know that they’re beautiful, powerful, capable, talented, and full of light.

While driving the other day, I had a local radio station playing and they were airing a radio program recorded back in the 70’s. It was both fascinating and disturbing to me that many of the concepts the women on this show discussed still exist today

They spoke about how women have been trained by society to be in this sick competition with one another. They spoke about how beauty has been warped into a battle of who is the most attractive, and those viewed as more attractive are to be loathed.

The speaker’s theory was that as women gained more and more of a voice in our society, those in power did not like the shifts that were occurring, so they created a new battle so that women would use their energy fighting one another in a battle to reach some non-existent ideal of beauty. (This brings me back to the days in graduate school Gender and Ethnicity class with Leticia. She spoke of how target groups are often pitted against one another while those with agency are able to keep living how they’re living).

If only we would quit fighting with one another, the amount that could be accomplished is astronomical!

This battle is occurring in other ways as of late. I really appreciated the post written by Moms in Maine on how mother’s have been battling and judging one anothers’ parenting styles rather than realizing what’s really lacking is support for parents to have the time and space to cultivate their families (and I’m talking all types of families here: single parents, adoptive families, biological families, etc.).

Families need time to bond and care for one another and this should be so much more important than working to the point of exhaustion and continually needing caffeine and sugar to keep us functioning.

Can you imagine what would happen if families were supported in establishing strong roots? If people were supported in finding and connecting with their passions? If people were able to feel fulfillment? The positive changes that could happen in our society are huge!

And perhaps that’s the reason that the support isn’t there. You have to keep a population just exhausted enough, just discouraged enough, just distracted with criticizing one another enough so that they don’t look around and realize that they have the power to create the world they want to live in. Positive change can happen.

Phew…I thought this blogging thing would be short posts about trying to cook edible food and how, now that I’m a mom, I find myself reciting Sandra Boynton books at random times during the day both out loud and in my head…guess my heart had other plans.

And that brings me full circle to the magazine idea. My daughter is a huge piece of my inspiration. I want her to live in a world where women are connected to the power, light, and wisdom that is within them. A world where nurturing and nourishing one another is the norm. A world where compassion and love are of the utmost importance.

A while back I watched a documentary about young girls and their views of themselves and how they were continually trudging away trying to be thin, and beautiful, and popular, and trendy, and perfect…and they all were miserable…

While watching this I felt a deep-in-my-bones sadness…A sadness for all those girls’ pain…A sadness for pain I and countless other women have battled with…and above all, a sadness with the knowledge that this is the world my daughter is growing up in…

NO!

This is not a sadness to fall into and get lost in!

It is an awakening of that inner force!

It does not have to be this way!

Let us teach our daughters what true beauty is. Let us teach our daughters the importance of embracing who they are. Let us teach our daughters that they are powerful and capable and full of light. Let us teach our daughters to love the earth and those around them. Let us teach our daughters to connect with one another and become an unstoppable force for positive change in the world.

But ladies, don’t forget, we must also do this for ourselves. No more self deprecating comments, no more “ughs” when looking in the mirror, no more self hatred. In order to teach our daughters, we have to have compassion for ourselves and realize we too are full of light and love and beauty. If we can accept this and join together…the world will forever change.