How do you stand up for yourself? Yesterday, while doing a podcast, I told a story of the year that I was a 22 year-old assistant. In those days, we were still called secretaries. A transitional time as it were. I wore blue eye shadow, painstakingly administered, contouring and highlighting, essential to a quality look. My eyes were, as ever, a deep brown with flecks of green. No, I’m lying. They were, as now, brown through and through. I loved the juxtaposition of blue coloring over my eyelids, my olive complexion, and those eyes. I thought–and I stand by the thinking–that it worked. I’m not sure how long I’d been working as a desk bitch when a woman approached me. She was an executive, possibly the age I am now. And she told me I needed to lighten up on the shadow. I am sugar-coating what she said; she was in fact, terribly dismissive of my approach to my look. I sat there, behind my typewriter, flummoxed. No quick reply. No defense. No ability to say, “Well, this is my approach.” I spent days writing and re-writing the script of how the scene could have, should have played out. To this day, I’m glad I did. That I took all that time to churn in my mind, different scenarios where I emerged triumphant instead of humiliated. I learned, really, from that one moment, how to speak up for myself. Part of it lays in this: you may not know how to react to something on the spot, but if you allow yourself the opportunity to envision different outcomes, you will be prepared the next time. For when there is someone lurking with a barb to toss at you. It’s on you to know how to fend that shit off.
Can’t someone hire a media trainer for Betsy Devos?
A reminder from me on how to support women.
Honored to be a guest on Kelly and Matt Dwyer’s podcast, Afterbirth. We discussed parenting and feminism! Shocking, I know. Have a listen.
If you are like me and believes that your dog is truly the only one that gets you, then this is for you.
50 Fierce Women.
Speaking of, Tamika Mallory: “When we first put the letter out, we thought the NRA would just call us to have a meeting, or tell us to kiss their ass. I had no idea they’d come out with an ad with my face in it. Once they did that? You don’t threaten us and think we’re gonna roll over.”
Rosie Dalton: “Something is being unleashed inside. Something powerful, insightful and a with a solid sense of liberation. I feel myself withdrawing from anything that even smacks remotely of ageism. This is my earthly party and to buy the happy horse-pucky of me being past my prime, well, that would be to my peril. And people, especially womenfolk, I won’t be having a serving of that, and I hope you will not be either!”
Norma Bourland: “My body has changed. My body is changing. It’s beautiful when I look at it with humor, make no comparisons to how I once looked or to anyone else, and remember that the lines, wrinkles, sags and blemishes are all signs of a life well-lived.”
Women in the world of tech.
And now have a laugh with Caroline Rhea.
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