AGA Roll Call: For Strong Women

At a time when every female singer is an actress and every actress is a vapid, vagina flashing, coke snorting, attention whore, people like me can only shake their heads. I really don’t want to talk about the recent spate of celebutante arrests. In fact, every time I see Hilton, Lohan or Richie on a media outlet I put my hands over my ears and shout out things that I care more about than how much these brats weigh and how drunk they were when their luxury SUVs got pulled over:

WORLD HUNGER AND POVERTY!
A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE!
GLOBAL WARMING!
AM I GOING TO RUN OUT OF TOILET PAPER BEFORE MY NEXT TRIP TO THE STORE?!!

Tired of being broke
Fauchée comme le blé
As they say in France
Or as my $100 textbook told me they say in France

I’m tired of eating pasta
And having nothing to do because nothing is the only thing that’s free
I’m tired of having the cashier girl roll her eyes at me when I buy groceries with $30 worth of change.
Tired of being told that I am lacking, lacking, lacking, by Beyoncé and Jay-Z

I am tired of being dependent and being rejected for my neediness.
I hate my neediness
I hate struggling and scraping and being told that I am not doing enough
Tired of being told I need things I never wanted

Last summer I saw my mother cry for the first time. She had just found out that her sister had been brutally murdered (in a way very relevant to our AGA discussions but a little too fresh and painful for me to write about yet). Her pain aside, I cannot describe the shock I felt in watching the person that is such a rock for me and my family, show such vulnerability.

In my family, no one even bothered to pretend, as is done in many African households, that my father was head of the home. Although he was either the sole or the primary breadwinner for most of my childhood, it was my mother who made the decisions. My sister and I would try to get things out of my father, who would occasionally spoil us, but his stock answer when it came to anything more important than a bar of chocolate was “I have to discuss it with your mother”. My father had to travel a lot and my mom had to be both parents for up to 6 months in a year.

A fifteen year old girl stands in front of her bathroom mirror. She is naked, except for a pair of panties covered in little pink kitties. Unlike most girls she isn't thinking about how fat she is or wishing her boobs were just one size bigger. Instead she flexes her arms and admirers how big they have gotten in the past few months. She feels her bicep. It feels like stone, it feels like it could break through stone. She turns around and is so happy to see how great her back looks, her shoulder muscles flexed, beautiful, strong. She once again turns around and looks at her abs. Rock solid, perfect washboard abs.

The greatest boon of the All Girl Army project is its instant support system. On these pages we are free to share our opinions and find those that teach us something about the world we live in. I admit I visit more often than I anticipated and I love the unexpected experiences that we share.

I think my niche will become the (an?) Army historian. I find the greatest wealth of inspiration and pride in the steps of the women's liberation movement. From Gloria Steinem to Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan to Geraldine Ferraro, the steps of the women in our past will show us the path we've yet to follow. The achievements and passion of women, the pride and self-sacrifice of a generation of activist women are the foundation on which we continue to build our modern version of feminism. And it's a beautiful undertaking because they did such good work.

A strong woman is a woman who is straining.
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing Boris Godunov.
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears
in her nose.

A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why
aren't you dead?

A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.