girls

TEDWomen was an idea-hurricane, an inspiration-avalanche, a brainwave tsunami, a tornado of provocation and stimulation, a force of nature – if nature wore high heels – a force to be reckoned with, a thing to make your heart pound and thrum and swell and your head throb from the magnificent pressure of all those ideas, all those amazing, inspiring ideas.

It was impossible to be there and be unmoved, unchanged. I took notes.

It will take me days to process it all, to distill even a fraction of it into coherent thoughts and workable ideas. But I will. If only to ease the pressure on my brain, and slow the pounding of my heart, I will.

After I sleep for forty hours, that is.

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All Which Isn’t Singing Is Mere Talking

December 8, 2010

“Every girl in the world deserves the chance to pursue her hopes and dreams.” – Hilary Clinton, TEDWomen, Washington D.C., December 8, 2010 Every girl does deserve that chance. My girl deserves that chance. This girl deserves that chance. All of these girls – and these boys; yes, boys too (our liberation requires their liberation, and [...]

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Through A Glass, Brightly

November 29, 2010

My mother always told me that I was beautiful. “You are a beautiful, beautiful girl, sweetie,” she would say, and I would reply – with much eye-rolling and heavy sighing – “you’re my mother. You have to say that.” I knew that I wasn’t beautiful, not in the way that princesses in fairy tales or [...]

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Little Wing

November 14, 2010

Dear Emilia, Today, you are five. This is both totally extraordinary, and utterly ordinary. Which of these it is varies from minute to minute: in one moment, I look at you and think, when did you become such a big girl? Where did that little baby go? Where has the time gone? HOW IS IT [...]

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This Is What A Feminist Looks Like

August 20, 2010

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop? — Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication On The Rights Of Women (Chapter 3) (Photographosophy, Pissy Feminist Edition.)

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Love Is A Many-Splendored And Sometimes Sort Of Exhausting And Anxiety-Provoking Thing

June 7, 2010

A few weeks after I gave birth to Jasper, I wrote this: I do it every night now. When it’s dark, when the rest of the house is asleep, or almost, I untangle my tiny newborn bundle from my arms and lay him down in his nest and ease my birth-battered body from our bed. I make [...]

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