This post is part of The Beauty of a Woman BlogFest VII! To read more entries, and potentially win a fun prize, visit the fest page (link this to http://www.augustmclaughlin.com/beauty-woman-blogfest-vii/) on August’s McLaughlin’s site between today and 11pm PST March 9th.
All of us women have been there, right? You're really pissed off, totally steaming mad at a guy—maybe it isn't always a guy, but in my life, it was always a guy—and he says with a smile "You're so cute when you're mad!"
Well, let me tell you something, "ladies," we may well be cute when we're mad, but that doesn't take anything away from our personal and collective power. And I think that a lot of the men out there that thought "how cute is that?" when we got ticked off one at a time, are beginning to look around at the world (and the media) and see a lot of extremely angry women, which might make them wonder why they ever thought it was cute!
Personally, I think justifiably angry women are beautiful, because I think real emotion and personal power are both beautiful, and sometimes angry is precisely what is happening. There are a lot of women out there who have put up and shut up for years, and right now they are all saying "time's up!" No longer will I accept being treated as a sexual object without feelings and emotions and a mind. No longer will I sit back at work and watch other people get ahead of me undeservedly. No longer will I tolerate being treated as a worker-robot, an interchangeable automaton without a brain.
Time is up for all of that!
I was recently at the second annual Women's March here in San Diego, and it was there, surrounded by women (and men) of all ages, races, shapes, and sizes that I realized how beautiful the emotion was that had brought us there. And, make no mistake, as happy as we were to be there together that day, we'd all been brought there by one basic emotion—we were mad as hell and we were not going to take it anymore!
I was there with my niece (proud to call herself a "Nasty Woman"), her mom, and about 30,000 other inspired, dedicated, hard-working women. Some of us were dressed in pink and many were holding signs that spelled out just how fed up we were—done with misogyny, racism, sexism, and every other kind of intolerance. (Sure, some of that anger was directed at a particular man who currently holds a powerful office, but we all know that he's not the real problem, he's just a very ugly symptom of the systemic problem).
We marched and we chanted. We were united, we were one, we were energized, and we were all beautifully determined to keep up the fight.
To that end we will keep marching, keep speaking out (#metoo #timesup), and work to instigate change by running for office, by volunteering to help put worthy people into government, and by taking to the polls by the millions come November.
And that is something I find incredibly beautiful.
hasta pronto!