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March is National Women’s History Month — suggesting, of course, that the other eleven months of the year belong to men?
This is so relevant to us and our profession — over 90% of skin therapists are women, and most of our clients are women. One of the reasons I love what we do is that our profession extends an opportunity to women to create personal wealth, without benefit of male power. This would please legendary feminist Gloria Steinem, since she’s on a real tear these days about the persistent discrepancies in pay between work as performed by men and women. News flash: men still get paid more for the same work. And, their dry-cleaning and hair cuts cost less. Just so wrong.
But here’s another twist. In one aspect of what has for centuries been considered “men’s work”: the military-women now are being brought in to do a job that men cannot. The job: peacekeeping in a war zone.
The UN is now conducting a recruitment campaign that’s called the “thin pink line”: a female peacekeeping initiative. Right now in Congo Town, Liberia, a place so torn and shattered not only by war but by a history of governmental corruption, a female unit has taken to the streets. There also are similar female units in action in Afghanistan, who patrol neighborhoods on foot, coming into intimate contact with the local residents who are largely female — the men are all fighting on the front lines, or dead.
The mission of these Kalashnikov-toting girl-power units is to curb violence. On a subtler level, they connect with other women and their children, since the peacekeepers by and large are also married women with children.
So women are warriors for peace. These female peacekeepers also support another of Steinem’s messages: that physical strength and fitness, versus mere beauty and slenderness, have never been more politically relevant for women. She explained recently in a Los Angeles Times interview that rich patriarchal societies pressure women to be thin; poor patriarchal cultures encourage women to become hugely fat. She says, “But all patriarchal cultures value weak women. So for women to become physically strong is very profound.”
So, you may not be ready to put on a military uniform and fire an assault-rifle. But, in the interest of unleashing your own inner “Iron Woman” (that’s what the Liberians call their President, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf), eat healthfully, make yourself strong, and be fierce. Your specific partisan stance is not the point here, sister. The mere fact of making yourself a strong woman sends an unmistakable message of power.