Another repost, from two years ago, still applies  today.

How do you stand up for yourself? Happened for me the year that I was a 22 year-old assistant. In those days, we were still called secretaries. A transitional time, pre-Third Wave. I wore blue eye shadow, painstakingly administered, contouring and highlighting, essential to a quality look, the cover of Cosmopolitan my guide, those smoky lids staring at me month after month. 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 against my olive complexion, shouting at the world, “Come at me. But be nice about it.” 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 one of the female executives, possibly the age I am now, approached me. She was tall, alabaster complexion, her bottle-blonde hair composed, straight, a bob. She rarely spoke to me unless she needed to see my boss, a female as well, my boss though, was a sprite, a badass, hair flowing like she was always at the helm of her motorcycle; a force, she was. I was sitting at my desk, looking at my typewriter, contemplating, as I did when I was not tasked with “things to do” and the executive interrupted my moment of zen to give me a little tip, you know, girl-to-girl, wink. “You should lighten up on the eye shadow,” this murk from the depth said. Maybe I am sugar-coating her demeanor; she was in fact, terribly dismissive of  my look. I sat there, behind my typewriter, flummoxed. No quick reply. No defense. No ability to say, “Well, this is my how I do it.” 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 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, that I don’t have to take guff, from anyone, that what I need to do is always, always speak up for myself. But also, to let myself off the hook for those times, like that pivotal moment, when I had no reply at the ready, when I was caught so off guard in the work place by a slight about my personal appearance. (I know now that no matter how professional your pond of employment portends to be, people are still human, and will cross a line of professional demeanor into mean girl/locker room bullshit.) 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.

Kamala Harris: “The majority of what I did that could be considered reform, or just untraditional for a prosecutor or untraditional for a D.A.’s office, could not have been done if I hadn’t had the power to be able to do it without asking anybody permission.”

Serena Williams: “The day I stop fighting for equality and for people that look like you and me will be the day I’m in my grave.”

Scarlett Johansson:“I think society would be more connected if we just allowed others to have their own feelings and not expect everyone to feel the way we do.”

Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and Tan France. What more can you ask for?

This shit with ICE is deplorable.

So is this shit with Jeffrey Epstein. Which continues to go to show: girls have no value in the eyes in men, their agency is hijacked by these men, their lives destroyed without conscience, from R. Kelly to this shithead.

When did you meet your best friend? Well for us Baby Boomers, we met them at 30 and for us Gen-X’ers, we met them at 24.

Oh, UTI’s. You’re the worst.

And now have a laugh with Cameron Esposito.