If You Want to Be Serious About the New Feminism...

We’ve all seen the social media memes about women raising each other up rather than putting each other down. This morning at the gym while watching The Today Show a very famous woman was being interviewed whose initials are J.L.;) .  Apparently she is producing and judging a new Dance show. As the closed captions streamed by I read “busiest woman in television” and later “when she’s not making the rest of us look bad…”  (the two female interviewers were laughing) What?! Is this now how a major network morning program passive-aggressively puts down a successful woman?

Ladies if you’re going to post the memes, then you need to talk the talk also. I don’t follow celebrities but do know that J.L. is very successful. So why are these women implying that her success would “make them look bad.” Perhaps it’s supposed to be a joke, but in these days when people are going through sensitivity training for numerous issues, shouldn’t we be a little more careful in how we “raise up...don't tear down” other women?

I recently personally experienced how saying something incredibly innocuous online quickly turned into an assault on my good name. In my case I agreed with a Facebook Group poster that the addition of a chain budget store was a disappointing approval made by our shoreline town which is mostly quaint shops with a large summer tourist influx. Suddenly I was a “rich” person who didn’t want to allow poor people a place to shop.  The post was eventually removed because one of the budget store lovers (perhaps a champion for the poor) let loose some choice words for anyone who opposed the store.  After that Saturday morning laugh, I knew it was time for a break from the internet. 

Another incident in distant internet history was of a woman posing in a bathing suit with her family of young boys. The youngest was an 8 month old infant. I found her line “What’s your excuse?” a reminder not to let the excuse of young children keep me from taking care of my health. Apparently this picture was “mean” according to the trolls because it made other woman feel bad that they couldn’t lose the baby weight that quickly. People are different. As someone whose body never looked like this woman’s, before or after pregnancy (or even at 20 years old, haha) I was flabbergasted that my sisterhood of women would be so judgmental. 

So let J.L. be happy in her success!  Let thin momma have a fun photo session with her kids!  And for the love of gosh-darn, let me express an opinion without assuming anything beyond the actual words I typed.

And for the record, I would rather promote that we ALL build each other up rather than tearing each other down. Men and women work together in American Society of 2017.

Another Note: I've never liked labels of any type and am even hesitant to use the term "feminism" since it connotes such a wide variety of characteristics to different people.  So I'm using this definition, and no other!

New feminism is a philosophy which emphasizes a belief in an integral complementarity of men and women, rather than the superiority of men over women or women over men

Remember Long Distance Charges? Calling Cards? And the Futuristic Idea of Telephones with Video?

People of my generation often comment about the amazing advancements we’ve seen. Communication progress has astounded our wildest dreams. When I was in middle school the year 2000 seemed so far away! And by then we would surely all be using the metric system.  In high school the idea of a telephone with a TV screen attached so you could see the person you were talking with seemed the ultimate futuristic gadget. We pictured it in the kitchen right next to the wall phone; of course it had a cord connecting the handset. The biggest concern was that one would need to be “ready” – meaning, well dressed with hair brushed to use this type of telephone.

Now I video chat often and post pictures of myself without a thought to the status of my hair (sometimes I care, but when enjoying NYC with my daughters or hoping to inspire others with my running pictures, it’s “messy hair, don’t care.”)

Skype is the first video chat service I recall and I’ve used it to talk to the girl we sponsored  in Ukraine. When my oldest spent a semester in Rome, Italy our T-Mobile service allowed for unlimited text & data, but a small charge for talk.  We started with Facetime, but found better reception using Google Hangouts.  It truly is amazing to think when I was in college, someone overseas for a semester had to WRITE LETTERS and then wait for weeks for a response.  Kids, we did have telephones and could make a call, but there was this thing called “long distance” charges that were cost prohibitive until the 1980s.  Calls just one state over incurred charges pretty high. Even in-state calls outside of your immediate surrounding towns cost money.  This is why companies began using 800 numbers – so you could call them for free.

My son resides in the largest dormitory in the world, Bancroft Hall on the U.S. Naval Academy.  Located on a secured military base (although Navy folk call them “yards”), the hall is built like fortress thus restricting data signals.  Initially he would go outside to telephone (located on the water, lots of wind noise), but then found he could use OoVoo from his laptop (wired) for the weekly calls home.  The calls often last a half hour or more as he gets comfortable on his end, and I and other family members hangout around my laptop.  Both parties may open another window and look things up to share or just multitask. Last year’s roommates would notice the parents and say hello or wave from the background, Twice this year I’ve been on a video chat call and his roommate has started undressing in the background. I have to start waving wildly at the camera and yell “someone’s changing!”  Everyone has a good laugh and boy, have we come a long way from that kitchen wall phone with the long cord.

(Since my heart healthy lifestyle is plodding along s….l….o…..w…..l……y, albeit successfully I need to find more to blog about. My head fills with ideas while I’m on my daily walk/run, but when I sit down to write, all ideas have vacated the chamber.)