This March, I’m spotlighting my SHEROES in honor of Women’s History Month! Let’s celebrate the wonderful people we know in real life, and make them the true celebrities!
I asked Rosie Molinary – an incredible woman in my community and author of Beautiful You: A Radical Guide To Self-Acceptance: How has being a woman changed from the time you were a child to now?
Here’s what she said:
I came of age in the 1980s and 1990s. What felt most urgent for girls at that time was the need to be good. Title IX hadn’t yet taken effect where I lived so I was the manager/ trainer for the men’s soccer team rather than being on the soccer team.
There were assumptions about who I could be and what I could access – not just because I was a woman, but because I was a Latina.
Technology has given us the ability to be even more intersectional, and women are gaining greater access (albeit slowly) on their own merits (as opposed to because we followed petty rules set to limit us).
But in many ways, technology has proved to be a valuable tool that comes at a price. Perhaps as a species, we are wired to fear lack. We can be so scared that there is not enough in the world for all of us – so when someone else is ‘getting ahead’, sometimes we’re scared they took a piece of the pie that was being saved for us.
When we come up with answers like, “That woman took it from me,” or more specifically, “that Latina/Lesbian/Black/immigrant woman took it from me,” that sentiment, born from fear, creates a bigger chasm.
When I was young, the doubters in my life had to say it to my face. It took a special sort of gumption to do that. Today, doubters can say anything to anyone in any number of ways. It creates a collective wound, in some ways, but if there is anything I learned growing up and being told that my abilities were not worthy – it is that scars show and build character.
With every great macro-progress comes micro-reaction as the world adjusts. The important thing is to douse ourselves in self-care, to support one another through it, and to keep going – because struggle is the journey that creates headway.