I lived in Virginia for a few years growing up. We lived in a beautiful modern home, and it had an open floorplan connecting the kitchen, breakfast area, and family room. The family room had beautiful wood floors and a cathedral ceiling (an upstairs balcony allowed people to look down from the upstairs below into the family room). A huge stone fireplace rested against one wall, with a pair of glass doors on either side of the fireplace that led to the deck. One of the nicest things about that house was that I could sit in the family room and talk to my mom while she cooked dinner in the kitchen around 6 o'clock, and she would always play cds on the stereo, usually the Beatles, but sometimes Bonnie Raitt or Steely Dan. That's when I fell in love with the Beatles. I remember sitting on the wood floor listening to the Beatles and thinking, "I wouldn't want to be anyone else in the world." And it was true--I thought about all the kids I could have been born, all the girls around the world in Chinese villages or arid, impoverished deserts that I could have been, and I was so grateful at being so lucky.

That's when an article like the one recently featured in the New York Times about Nike creating a sportier version of the hijab for Somalian refugees in Kenya surprisingly shakes me. Surprisingly, because it's really just a fluff, life-interest type story, but it's so shockingly different from my reality that I have to take notice. The article is about a group of young women--early twenties it seems--who like to keep themselves occupied by playing volleyball. The girls have to wear the hijab, which completely covers their bodies, even in 100 degree heat. But it's not the heat that bothers them so much as all the fabric getting in the way.

"Some people think that if girls play sports they are prostitutes," Ms. Ibrahim said. "Our parents were embarrassed. They had bad feelings about girls playing outside."

. . . .

Life is particularly challenging for girls, who rarely attend school, marry early and then spend their days struggling to feed their many children. Girls in the refugee camps go to school at a significantly higher rate than those whose families remain in war-ravaged Somalia, 58 percent here compared to 7 percent back home, but their lives are still dismal, at best. "Refugee life is very difficult," Ms. Ibrahim said during a break in a volleyball game. "We're away from our motherland. It's like being in prison."

On the volleyball court, however, girls say their troubles fade away for a while. They say they have no time to worry what clan the girl next to them or across the net might be. They also have no time to think about the man their parents might be arranging for them to marry or the work that awaits them when the match is over.

To quote that Jenny Lewis song that keeps going through my head, "There but for the grace of God go I."

Laura Bush: U.S. Ready for Woman President

Laura Bush, loved by conservatives for her intelligence, grace and elegance, and attacked by liberals for being too demure and genteel, believes that the United States is ready for a woman president:

During an exchange with reporters, Mrs. Bush was asked if the United States was prepared to have a woman in the Oval Office. "Sure, absolutely," she replied. "I'm voting for the Republican woman." Mrs. Bush previously has expressed support for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for president, but Rice has said repeatedly she's not going to run.

An interesting footnote is that Mrs. Bush gave this statement while touring the National Museum of Women in the Arts. "The exhibit features archaeological finds from Mexico and Peru that show that, long before Europeans arrived, women served as warriors, governors, artists, poets and priestesses," writes CNN.

Source:
CNN.com, "Laura Bush: U.S. Ready for a Woman President," March 14, 2006.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/14/us.womanpresident.ap/index.html

Wafa Sultan: Muslim Woman Speaking Out

I was forwarded this article from the New York Times about Dr. Wafa Sultan, a Syrian-born American whose bold condemnation of Islamic violence has garnered her death threats.

Dr. Sultan said the world was not witnessing a clash of religions or cultures, but a battle between modernity and barbarism, a battle that the forces of violent, reactionary Islam are destined to lose.

In response, clerics throughout the Muslim world have condemned her, and her telephone answering machine has filled with dark threats. But Islamic reformers have praised her for saying out loud, in Arabic and on the most widely seen television network in the Arab world, what few Muslims dare to say even in private. . . .

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Source:

Jim Broder, "For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats." New York Times. March 11, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/11/international/middleeast/11sultan.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=d8a7947221000a9f&ex=1142830800&emc=eta1

Back in Black

Well, I've been MIA for quite some time, regrettably. This is definitely crunch time in school and I'm feeling the pressure. I flew home last week for spring break and got spoiled by that feeling being with my family has of being insulated from the real world and I did absolutely no work. But good things have been happening--most notably, I was offered a summer position with a great employer that will give me really great experience (I may even get to try a few misdemeanor cases!) and maybe even a full-time job offer come September. According to my interviewer, 250 were interviewed over a period of 3-4 months for 20 positions, and, remarkably, I got one of them.

In other news, my letter to the editor appears in this month's Allure regarding the magazine's conflicting messages for women about body image--in one article, they discussed dangerous weight loss and then twenty pages later laud celebrities who lost dangerous amounts of weight last year (La Lohan, anyone?).

So sorry about the delay. I promise to have more good stuff up this week.

SAHM and Latchkey Kids

During what has become quite possibly the week from hell (or shall I say two weeks of hell?), I came across this post at Dooce discussing the pros and cons of being a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) or a working mom with the latchkey kids. I am hesitant to write too much about my own mother, who was herself a SAHM, because I don't think she'd appreciate me writing her business all over the net. But I am intrigued by the discussion (and wow--the over 1500 comments).

I loved having my mom there when I came home from school. Our house was always immaculate, the pantry was always stocked with goodies, my brothers and I could participate in any activities we wanted because she was always there to drive us, and sometimes we'd come home from school and there would be special treats waiting for us (an expensive snack on sale at the local Kroger or a new outfit she picked up while shopping). But more than all the more superficial advantages, it was just really comforting to come home from school and have her there to talk to.

As a law student, I keep oscillating back and forth with the kids question. By the time that I graduate, I will be in my late twenties, and then I will have to work a few years to establish myself and gain experience. Then I would like to try more than one job, I think--and I don't see having kids being possible career-wise or financially until I am in my early thirties. And that's with me working (ah, law school loans!). There's a part of me that would love to have children and give them what my parents gave me: the ability to have access to my mom 24/7, wheneverI needed. But then I cannot help but think: What was the point of all my hard work in college, at my previous job, and now in law school?

I remember one man I dated a few years ago telling me about women in his law firm. Apparently the men loved that the firm hired so many women, because by the time that they were ready to be considered for partnerships, so many women had left to have children that the field of competition was pretty slim. Most of the men became partners; most of the women became mommies. Hearing his snide recitation of this harsh reality made me decide on the spot that I didn't want to abandon my career for children as soon as all my hard work in school was about to pay off.

But this is me talking now. I know that as my parents age and my friends start their families, my biological clock and maternal urge are going to kick in. I just don't know what to do then.

My First Time

She had observed that it was from those who had never sailed stormy waters, came the quickest and harshest judgments on bad seamanship in heavy seas.

--Susan Glaspell

I was 14 the first time anything like that had ever happened to me. He was a cousin of Sean, my friend Nicole's boyfriend, and we were hanging out in her driveway on a summer night, just teenagers with nothing to do. He had been teasing and flirting with me all night, but then he grew more aggressive, more forward. Nicole and her boyfriend told me they were going to take a walk around the block--they wanted to have some privacy. I nodded that it was OK, we were right outside her house, and light from her open garage flooded the driveway.

As soon as they had left, he pounced on me, came up behind me and said, "I think you're scared." I didn't want to be vulnerable; yes, I was scared, but I didn't want him to know. "No, I'm not," I told him. "If you're not scared, you'd pull up your shirt." I told him no. "Then you must be scared," he replied. He inched closer to my back, wrapped his arms around me, and started groping me, running his hands all over my body as I squirmed, trying to push him off of me. He kept reaching, grabbing, groping; I kept trying to gain control, push off his hands, wiggle out from under his grip. He continued to taunt, "I think you're scared," as I struggled under his arms. Suddenly, thankfully, Nicole and Sean returned from their walk and he quickly dropped his hands off of me.

Afterward, I was scared and confused. At 14, I had a general understanding that these things happened, but I didn't expect it to happen to me, in my friend's drive way, by someone I knew. I knew what he did was wrong and gross, but I couldn't tell how wrong or gross it was. My idea of sexual assault was the stuff you see in movies: the lone woman walking down the street at night who is attacked by a stranger.

The boys soon left to go home and I told Nicole what he had done to me when she was on her walk. Being 14, she begged me not to tell anyone else; she was embarrassed because it was her boyfriend's relative, and being 14, I agreed because I wanted Nicole to be my friend and I didn't really understand what had happened.

This was not the most offensive thing a man has done to me, but it was the first.

Now, many years later, I am taking a class on violence against women. What I am learning is eye-opening and disappointing: Prosecutors of rape and sexual assault cases have a harder time persuading women on a jury that a woman was assaulted than they do men. Men are more willing to believe that the attacked woman was a victim. This seeming contradiction exists because women put themselves in the victim’s shoes and think that they would have done something differently. Women want to believe, just like I did in the driveway that night, that we are not as vulnerable as we really are. We want to believe that these things cannot just happen to us, that we can control these things by our behavior. We cannot.

Most people define rape in the classic movie scenario I believed in as a teenager. It wasn't until the late 80s/early 90s that "date rape" or "acquaintance rape" even became part of the vocabulary. The truth is, however, that the majority of rapes happen this way; most rapes/sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim already knows.

My class really hit home one day as I was reading through a few blogs and came across this entry by Amanda B., recounting her sexual assault years ago by someone she knew. Amanda's story really impressed me; I was amazed by her courage in retelling her story. But what sent goosebumps over my arms was finishing Amanda’s entry and reading comment after comment that began, "It happened to me too." One commenter summed it up well: "The scary thing is that this happened to you. The even scarier thing is that this has happened to most of your commenters… and me, too."

It broke my heart to see how many women this has happened to. Amanda’s blog is not about sexual assault; this entry was her first on the topic. The women who read her blog don't come to read about sexual assault or rape, they come to read about all aspects of Amanda’s life that touch on their different interests, maybe Amanda’s life in Mississippi, or her love of animals, or her relationship to her husband. And yet, these women who have differing reasons for reading Amanda’s blog have one thing in common: they are victims of sexual assault. What a thing to unite women.

It is my hope that women will begin to realize that having something bad happen to you doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s easier to think that assaults and rapes happen because the woman made a mistake; it’s even perhaps comforting in a sense to believe that we as women have some kind of control in these situations and are not completely vulnerable. But as long as women continue to be assaulted, women need to accept that the only ones who should feel guilt or shame are the ones who commit rapes and sexual assaults.

The power of the harasser, the abuser, the rapist depends above all on the silence of women.

--Ursula LeGuin

Angry

On Friday night, I was attending a dance class at my university's gym. Like everyone else, I filed into the room in my regular dress clothes (we didn't need to wear special gym clothes) and put my purse, bookbag, and coat in one of the cubby holes in the back of the class for the two-hour session. At the end of the class, everything was in my cubby hole as I had left it. Everything except for my purse.

Someone had stolen my purse. I am so angry I cannot begin to explain how upset I am. I am now without any access to cash (and today being President's Day means that I have to wait even longer to go to the bank, the DMV, etc.), a cell phone, my driver's license, my school ID, all of my credit/charge cards, my wallet, and the 90,000 personal items I stowed in my purse that were all of my go-to things: My go-to brush, my go-to concealer, my go-to pen, my go-to lip gloss, etc. In truth, there had to have been at least $60 worth of makeup in that bag, and probably more. My belief is that my purse was stolen--in stead of anyone else's--because it was a large, beautiful expensive black leather Coach purse. It cost almost $300.

All of this may seem so insignificant, but it really isn't. The cost of replacing everything in that purse--not even the purse itself--is quite a lot. I'll have to pay a fee to get my new license, pay to get a new school ID, pay for a new wallet, pay to replace all the cosmetics in the bag (that I use everyday and actually do need), pay to replace the prescriptions in my bag, pay to get a new cell phone, not to mention the cash that was lost and the subway tokens that I had stashed in it.

I've been calling Equifax to put a fraud alert on my credit file, calling each company to report a stolen card, calling my cell phone company to suspend my account and figure out what to do next since all of my resumes for summer employment have my cell phone as my contact, calling my friends to explain why they cannot get in touch with me.

Each day I think of some new area of my life that this affects, or something that was in my purse that I forgot and that I need to replace. Just now I realized that I had my insurance card in my purse and that I'll need to replace that as well.

I am so angry. Angry that someone would steal my purse just because she wanted it. Angry that someone would put me through all of this extra cost--not to mention all the extra time I'll have to spend replacing everything on lines at the DMV and school ID places and on the telephone. All for a purse.

It really boggles my mind that people are like this. That people are so selfish, so self-serving that they will take something from someone else--while they are in the same room as that person--just because they feel like it. I really tire of hearing the same old excuses in my liberal law school justifying criminal behavior. I don't want to hear any excuses. There are sometimes when things really are this black-and-white. Stealing is wrong. Being selfish is wrong. The person who stole my purse didn't need it. She wanted it. And that was all that she cared about.

I am so angry.

Stupid Girls

Admittedly, I am a fair-weather fan of the singer Pink. Nevertheless, her latest song and video, "Stupid Girls" caught my attention, and I have to say that I like it. The ending scenes of the video, where she mimics Paris Hilton's infamous sex tape, are hysterical. And Pink's imitation of Jessica Simpson's writhing car wash routine from Jessica's "These Boots Were Made for Walking" video is almost as awkward as the real thing--the only difference is that Pink intentionally looks awkward, while Jessica's awkwardness was simply a result of trying too hard to be sexy.

My one concern is that Pink seems to cast being an ambitious girl (vs. being a "stupid girl") in terms of the masculine (e.g., the choice being between a football--a traditionally male symbol--and dolls--a traditionally female symbol). I take issue with the idea that women need to surrender their feminity in order to be ambitious, intelligent, and successful.

You can check out the humorous vid here:
http://search.music.yahoo.com/search/?m=video&p=stupid+girls