Who's That Girl

As women we constantly live in awe of each other. We compliment each other’s hair, outfits and the mole that sits above that woman’s lip. While we live in awe, we simultaneously live in fear, afraid that one day the mole that God strategically placed just above the curve of her lip will cause for him to notice her and not me.

Older women build misconceptions against young women that their shapes seduce the men that remain. If he says to her, I love your ambition, she snaps, feeling at 22 she had ambitions and drive too. She only has fragments to carry on her sleeve because while he chases and swears he doesn’t like a woman who wears weave she sits stationery with her fro going unnoticed.

While young women strut the shape of youth devoid of the pounds and wrinkles that stress will leave they drag the scars and pigments changes of skin and slowed beats of hearts that disappointment leaves.

When he says to her, I think you are beautiful, she assumes it is because of thin waist perked up a chest and a round behind. Looking down at her gallon figure she wonders if she will ever have that feeling, if she never changes.

Feeling beautiful is a constant race to emulate an outfit, hairstyle and persona we saw on someone else. Young women constantly chase the feeling that a second glance by a man and envy from another woman leaves. Yet we live as if they day never comes when that beauty fades.

We search for love believing we have to please him so we can love us. But if we really loved ourselves it would broadcast the deeply encrypted message of inner beauty.

While I used to thrive off someone telling me they loved my smile, I have learned to dash to the mirror to embrace a light toned woman who stares deep into my eyes and in cadence with my needs says to me, you are beautiful.

You always need a foundation...

As I walked on a tour of London, we traced the steps of early suffragist Emily Pankhurst. Many of the buildings in which she had lived, fought and used the resources to make gains for women, are gone.

They have been remodeled, torn down, burned down and abandoned. This really stuck out to me.

No matter how badly a building can be burned, remolded or have whatever happened to them they are still the places where change happened.

Those places where Emily and her sisters walked and worked can always be built upon but the progress the original structures made will always be there. While the Pankhurst sisters were creating change in their environment in that time nothing else could be built there until they left.

When you create change, it will forever be created.

It reminds me of the Civil Rights movement.

No matter how many houses and places where Dr. King lived are abandoned they will always be the place that facilitated change for him, and me.

Revolution starts in some place. That place could be in someone's basement, mind, a coffee shop; all that matters is that it started and they can never be taken away.

As we walked through South London I wondered if those individuals knew where they were, the heart of the Women's Movement.

Their steps were only taken there because of what someone else did.

I want to make memorable steps.