Strong Women(z)

A little over a year ago I was spent some quality time with 10 incredible teenagers at a good-old fashioned family picnic on an unusually coo, Fall day at UCLA. As we caught eachother up on the details of our lives over the past couple of months, we indulged in the finest of Smart and Final bulk-food fare. Among one of the highlights of the meal was the Smart and Final brand sports drink, furnished for our refreshment by the man who made all of the picnic purchases. Smart and Final is selling their overly-sugared version of Gatorade under brilliant marketing; It's called: Tough Guyz, and it features a cartoon white guy with an outrageously muscular build on the bottle. The brief history of this picnic is that it was a reunion of the courageous young people who let me and one of my best friends lead them deep into the Southern California wilderness the summer before, and who had all survived to be a little closer, a little stronger, and a little more conscious about the perils of gender inequity. Really now, what's the value of soaking up the majesty of nature and challenging your emotional and physical limits, if you can't learn a little about social justice on the way?

So as I drank in 200% of my recommended daily sugar value, I suggested to the group that we create a sports drink called Strong Womenz and sell it in all sorts of stores nationwide. Of course, we all enjoyed a good laugh as we tossed around potential advertising slogans and discussed the hilarious irony and cultural significance of our controversial new product. That was one of the most beautiful days of my adulthood (for many reasons) and as it ended that evening, my friend and I coined the phrase, "man I could really go for some strong womenz" for all of those times when our identity was in question (particularly in regards to our experience as women) and we needed a little emotional reinforcement.

In the months since the proverbial unveiling of my new sports drink, I've thirsted for the refreshment of feminine strength and resilience as I've come face to face with what it means to be me in a woman's body. Along the way, I've started to wonder about the unique experience of women, from all ages and backgrounds, who demonstrate the type of characteristics and behaviors that contradict their socially determined destiny. In the midst of a historic presidential campaign, run courageously by a woman who has risen above the gender normative criticism that has plagued her entire political career(not to mention countless other women in power), I wonder how and why the world is still having difficulty coping with women who don't fit the narrow female stereotype outlined in 1950s sitcoms, and how those of us who belong to this category are supposed to situate ourselves in a culture that is not yet prepared to embrace the beauty of strong women(z).

In late November, I met a group of 11 sixth grade girls who had come up on their school retreat to the outdoor education school where I was working. Resigned to leaving my job in a matter of weeks, and more or less burned out on the monotony of my professional routine, I had low expectations going into my week as surrogate mother for eleven and twelve year olds. And while I have been known to provoke a discussion or two with the young people in my life about issues I wish an adult had asked my opinion about when I was growing up, I had no idea what I was getting into with these brilliant young women. We had lengthy conversations about rare and racist representations of minorities in the media. We talked about unrealistic standards of female beauty and the differences in the social and academic expectations of boys and girls at their age and beyond. What emerged most consistently, and most saliently, was a common struggle these young women (who ranged in race, wealth and experience) were facing in their gendered lives: How to be accepted in their homes, their classrooms and among their peers as independent, opinionated, thoughtful females. One of the young women shared her angst and frustration with constantly being reprimanded at school for behaviors that "boys just get away with." I had never heard such a young mind so clearly articulate a personal injustice as when she expressed that, "my teachers don't want me to be loud or opinionated because I'm a girl." There she was, 11 years old, keenly aware of the rules that govern the lives of women in a culture outlined by binary gender definitions. I realized that the conflict associated with being a counter-normative woman was much broader than the adult, affluent, educated, white universe I inhabited.

I'm not even sure what series of observations and analyses led this brave and spirited young woman to her conclusion, but as she revealed anecdote after anecdote of supporting evidence, I realized that she is one of the lucky ones. She, who has the unusual ability to critique authority and to challenge convention with confidence and self-assurance, she who has the privilege to know herself and explore herself, she is unusual in both circumstance and expression. So what of young women, or any women for that matter, who don't have the space or social/emotional/intellectual resources to interpret and understand their plight as females and instead internalize their experiences as a personal shortcoming? My assumption is that those women who don't question or reject the expectations their teachers, employers, parents, friends, etc. have laid out for them (the way my brilliant sixth grader does) resign to them at some point, accept them and adapt to them. And there's no judgement in that from me. It's the way of the world. We do what we think is "right" and we behave the way we "should" behave in the situations we routinely encounter. And in turn, the expectations remain the same, and our reaction to them is predictable and consistent, and the entire cycle is self-sustaining. The truth is, most people (men and women) think of these expectations (and their behavioral counterparts) as naturally occurring phenomena as dependable as gravity and the orbit of the earth.

My point is that those of us (my heroic sixth grader, most of my close female friends, Hillary Clinton, and all of the millions other women on this patriarchal planet) who don't closely resemble the status quo are reliving the same head-on collision with the set of values that dictates gender roles every minute of our lives. What's even worse, the world seems more or less either unaware of, or not concerned with its social implications. I've had boyfriends, bosses and best friends who think I'm crazy, annoying and/or threatening for being opinionated, independent and existing outside of the female framework. Since I was young, I've heard the terms bitch and ball-cutter(referring to the metaphorical removal of a man's testicles, which of course are naturally tied to power and authority) ascribed to women who are assertive decision-makers and heads of their households. I wake up everyday in the wealthiest, most technologically advanced nation in the world, and still can't be taken for anything more than a cultural mutant because of who I am: at work, home, school, in public, etc.

What I'm most concerned about has nothing to do with my own day to day experience or the fact that my mom swears that I'll "never find a man to marry me." My concern is how women can grow to love themselves, appreciate themselves and exercise who they are in a culture that tells them they are abnormal, abrasive, misbehaved or otherwise contrary to what they "should" (there's that word again) be. My concern is that women will never find equality, security, or the presidency as long as they are held back by a restrictive definition of who they should be; one that inhibits the expression of their strength, and limits the way their identity can be displayed. Sure it's ok to be a "strong mother" or even a "strong athlete" or "strong reader" (and even in those we've come a long way), but where is the space for women who are in-your-face confrontational, the type of person who gets noticed, the girl in the classroom who demands to be heard? How do we give women the permission to be who we are when teachers, mothers, role models are guilty of buying into the formula that shapes who females are allowed to be without social objection. Even I'm guilty of it: I ask little boys at my summer camp to show me their muscles as I unconsciously turn to their female counterpart with a compliment about her "pretty shoes." But then I catch myself. I remember that there was a time when I too had pretty shoes, a quiet voice (and a clean mouth), and things were easy for me. Years before my boss rolled his eyes at me and men found me intimidating, my teachers adored me and boys thought I was cute.

I don't mean to suggest that women who portray a particular type of strength are the only women capable of creating change, leading the world or otherwise making an impact on this life as we know it. In fact, I intend to challenge the very idea that being loud, assertive, independent, powerful or any other way should exist on the margins of female identity. I hope to promote a space where all variations of self-expression fall on the spectrum of socially acceptable; the point being to broaden the definition of feminine strength, not narrow it. We will all be better off in a culture of women who are their fullest selves.

And if all of this sounds like nothing more than a pre-menstrual/post fight with my boyfriend rant to you(I assure you I am neither pre-menstrual or in a relationship), I invite you to conduct an experiment of your own. Spend a week recording the following: 1: your personal reactions to different behaviors exhibited by women you encounter in your everyday life, women you know well, women you live with, women you happen to run into in public space, etc. and 2: The portrayal of different women in the media; actual women, fictitious women, the women who represent the new cultural hybrid of real/imaginary (see MTV's "The Hills"). At the end of the week, take an investigative look at the way power and strength function in both the production, and your own understanding, of female identity. Who knows, maybe at the end of it, you'll need to be replenished by your own bottle of Strong Womenz.