You Tell 'Em, Sister!

I discovered today that Ms. Magazine is alive and well and still being published. I haven't read an issue since I was a teenager in the 70's. (First published in 1972). Women were just coming into positions of power in the business world then. Women were also expressing freely their sexuality. Until then, sex was suppose to be something only men ever thought about. Women were being urged to come out of the kitchen, burn their bras, and get their "consciousness raised" and "find their own voice". Women were fighting everywhere for the right to birth control information, for legal abortions, for the Equal Rights Amendment, for all kinds of things. Heck, women weren't even given the right to vote until 1920! I found all this fascinating then, and still do, although I was never what you would call a card carrying feminist. Still I taught my daughter totally different about women's rights than my mother taught me. My mom thought a woman didn't need an education, but should find a good husband to provide, and then work if she wanted to as a secretary. (However, she did urge me to learn to drive. She was outraged at the number of women in her family who were house-bound with a car in the driveway because they never learned how.)
I taught my daughter that she could do anything a man could do, except pee standing up, which actually could be managed..... When she was in middle school, I took her to the optometrist to get her eyes checked. He began to ask her about school, and then he said, "Let me offer you some advice. Most girls go after the jocks. Don't do that. You marry the nerd. He'll be the guy who owns the company the jock works for." To which she replied, "Or...I could just own the company myself!" You go girl! I was proud of her and he was left speechless.
There was an ad campaign for Virginia Slims that said, "You've come a long way, Baby!" which advertised cigarettes just for women. Didn't think the female version of cigarettes was such a good idea, but thought the ads were great.
Anyway, I started thinking about how far we've come as women. I think here in America we have taken great strides in taking our power back at women, standing on our own two feet, making our own way. But we still have a long way to go, girls.
So many things that are pure sexism still go by barely noticed to us. For example, the models on The Price is Right. If Hillary Clinton hosted the show, and talked about her "studs" and brought out hunky men half dressed to point at the refrigerators, people would be shocked. Yet Old Bob Barker still gets by with his comments about his "Barker's beauties". We still don't have a woman president. The business world is still male dominated. And spouse/partner abuse is still the leading cause of death for women in America.
But together we'll get there.