Any Writerly Ladies Out There?

Here's a call for submissions that might be of interest to some of you. It's for an upcoming anthology of first period stories, called Congratulations! You're A Woman Now!

"A woman’s first period is a universal rite of passage. While it can be horrifying when it happens, it often becomes heartwarming or humorous when we look back at it years later....each of us has some sort of story to tell about our first period.We want to hear from those who look back on the experience with tears of laughter or just plain tears....

Sharing these stories may remove some of the stigma around “the curse.” If you have a good story about your first period or any other menstrual debacle, you are invited to submit it."

The deadline is coming up quickly, September 1. For more information, visit the website here: You're A Woman Now

My Life As A Girl, Part Two

(If you missed Part One of "My Life As A Girl", check it out here.)

How the world changes in just a few short years.

Five years ago, if friends saw me wearing a skirt, they knew it must be Halloween. Jeans and T-shirts were the usual stuff-- slacks if I had to look presentable-- but dresses? I don't think so. They looked fine on other people, but on me? Uhn-uh.

It was really Halloween that finally clued me in. Every year, I dressed up as the same thing: a girl. Not just any girl, either-- a gypsy girl, with a flowing skirt, big jangly jewelry, and entirely too much eye makeup. Stevie Nicks had nothing on me, not in October. I had two drawers full of "girl clothes" that I only pulled out once a year, and for just a few days, I felt feminine, in a wild, spirited, free-floating way. I was a girl! and I enjoyed it.

I'm not sure if someone actually mentioned the irony of the situation, or if it finally dawned on me of its own accord: my alter-ego was female. Until I hit thirty, I'd lived my life with no more concession to gender than was absolutely necessary to get married, have a kid, and find my way into the appropriate restroom in the mall.

Now I found myself drawn to things like fashion magazines, coffee clatches, and shopping. It was...uncomfortable. I felt out of place. Nearly five years into this process, I'll admit that I still feel slightly out of place.

In groups of women, I sometimes have this gnawing feeling that at any moment, they'll realize I'm faking it. I imagine they'll all jump up and point accusing fingers at me, "What does she think she's doing here? The lipstick and heels don't fool me...look, those are welding scars on her arms! Eewww!" I'll have to run for it, bawling my head off, heels and all, thus confirming every damn fool thing I ever believed about women.

Luckily, this hasn't happened. I seem to be able to navigate the mysterious world of women's groups, gossip, and fashion without much fuss. Oh, I'm still more at home with a power tool or a keyboard under my fingers, but I seem to be learning a surprising lesson: the things I once held against women were really things I held against myself.

So what if I like shoes? It's no crime to like to shoe-shop, is it? So what if I change my hair color every few minutes? It doesn't make me less of a writer, less of an artist, less of a person-- plus, it gives me a perverse sort of pleasure to say "No, not tonight...I'm doing my hair."

So what if I cried during Wall-E? So what if I secretly watch The Man From Snowy River and identify with the pretty heroine who has to be rescued because she does something impetuous and stupid? And so what if I cry during that too?

The process of individuation is a funny thing. We all confront it, no matter our biological gender. We discover along the way that the things we fight hardest against are really just parts of ourselves, buried deep and despised, waiting to be dragged out, brushed off, and seen in a new light. These alter-egos beg to be integrated in our lives in their own unique way.

Once we begin accepting them, we suddenly notice that they're not stereotypes anymore. They're not cardboard strawmen of "weak dependant women" nor cardboard cutouts of anything else...and neither are we.

We're individuals, with all the complexity and contradiction that the word implies.

I can weld, I can take off across country on foot, I can hang from trees and cuss. I can flirt, look stunning in a dress and heels, and cry at sad movies. I can do all of these things, and every year feel less and less self-conscious about it. It's good to be alive, and it's good to be a woman, that much I know.

Pink, though, I may never understand.

***


("My Life As A Girl" is Laura F. Walton's contribution to HerStories, V-Day Waco's collection of personal anecdotes about life, love, and womanhood in Central Texas. To contribute your own story, visit the HerStories page of our website here.)

Waco Women Walk for the Cure

Waco Trib staffer Cindy Tomlinson really walks the talk.

She'll walk nearly 500 miles of it before November.

November 7 --9 is the date for the upcoming Dallas/Fort Worth Breast Cancer 3-Day, benefiting the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Cindy Tomlinson is one of the co-captains of Team Waco; along with Starr Fogle, Cindy has already helped Team Waco raise over $14,000 this year.

The November 3-Day is a sixty-mile walk-a-thon, spread over three days. The DFW 3-Day is one of fourteen national November walks, each designed to raise funds for breast cancer research. Individuals and teams seek sponsorship throughout the year, and Team Waco's goal of $30, 000 seems well within reach.

This is not your everyday walk in the park. Team Waco, along with hundreds of other women around Texas, began their 24-week training schedule this month. At the end of the training, each member will have walked 500 miles or more.

" The physical commitment is almost overwhelming, but nothing compared to the treatments that the breast cancer patients endure. This is our way of saying that we are there to help fight breast cancer with you!" says Tomlinson.

The race is an experience in endurance and bonding. Tomlinson describes her experience in last year's race:

"The first day, we were so high on adrenalin we just bounced thru it. The first evening in the shower trucks was awkward and tested our modesty-- again, nothing compared to breast cancer treatments-- so we decided that we were thankful for our good health and slowly crept back to our tent...

The 2nd day, the blisters emerged and we found out what we’re really made of. We
tried to treat the blisters but failed miserably and decided to check out the medical tent. The medics worked miracles (I admit I may still have a crush on the medic that worked on me) and we continued the walk. Our pace was a little slower but we walked every mile! We were happy to see the shower trucks the second night. That warm shower may be the best shower I’ve ever taken in my life! Another night in the tent!

The 3rd day was the big challenge. We didn’t have adrenalin helping us anymore. We were tired, sore, had blisters, but determination was on our side! Our pace was even slower but we continued to walk. Some of us decided as the day wore on that we had reached our physical limits and rode in the sweep vans. Amazingly there were no feelings of failure. We did our part. We raised the money. We pushed ourselves physically. We were victorious! And we were there to cheer on all of the other walkers! All 6 of the Team Waco members are walking again this year!"

Tomlinson says that she had already been involved with the Susan G. Komen Race for years, when a couple of her co-workers with diagnosed with skin cancer. She says, " I wanted to help them but didn’t know how. Starr Fogle and I decided that we could do more by participating in the 3-Day."

Tomlinson ways that there are already twelve members on the 2008 Team Waco, plus another Waco team of five. There's still plenty of time to get involved, as either a participant or a sponsor.

* * *

Visit Team Waco's page on the 3-Day.Org website here

Or check out the Waco Trib blog Walk This Way, which chronicles the efforts of Cindy Tomlinsion, Starr Fogle, and the rest of Team Waco.

Team Waco also has a Windows LiveSpace with current updates here.

Guest Post: A Look At Feminism Today

Feminism

guest post by Shelly Marek


Understand that we are in constant change and coming to terms with our fate. It seems strange how we think we are in control of everything and we have all the time in the world. Everything is so bittersweet. Change creates extreme hopelessness to the point of breaking the soul, but then comes a new strength out of weakness. We all have a purpose to achieve, but when we stand alone, we rarely complete it.

My focus is how do I make a better world for my daughter and son. My biggest concern is how to set the example so women will not to be at war with other women. We are our own worst enemies!

It is a gift if we can stand in unity even if we disagree. As women, we need to bring trust, hope, loyalty and respect back into our relationships with each other. I remember a song that said "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." What kind of world are we creating? A world where women backstab each other over men, money, material success and vanity?

As women, we need to reexamine why this is acceptable behavior. When did we as women sell out? I believe this is the new feminist issue. We should be rejoicing that Hillary was able to stand the oppressiveness of the democratic party-- shame on the women who then turned on her. I am still going to vote because it's the right thing to do; I am just so disappointed but I have to get over it.




(Special thanks to Shelly Marek of Hill County, Texas, for her guest post on women's issues! Shelly's letter will be archived with HerStories, soon to contain a wide sampling of local women's stories, viewpoints, and expressions.

Leave a comment for Shelly below, or send us your viewpoints; we'd love to hear them.)

My Life As A Girl

Okay, so I'm a girl.

I'm a woman, actually-- they take away your girl status the year you start using Miss Clairol-- but it all boils down to the same thing. People who have certain (ahem) characteristics are girls, and other people who have certain other (ahem) characteristics are boys. They put up little pictographs on restroom doors to remind us, lest we nod off and forget.

I didn't always know I was a girl. I was one of those pre-adolescents with perpetually skinned knees and a horse; I had a shelf full of books about wild adventures, dangerous quests, and seriously overeducated animals.

I'd have been a tomboy, if I'd known the term; the best you could say was that I was vaguely humanoid when I was washed. But then puberty hit, and with it came a few considerable shocks. Some were less impressive than others (barely B-cups, I'm afraid) but some were completely flabbergasting.

For instance, I could no longer hang from trees in my underwear with my best friends, who were, I discovered, boys. I could no longer convince anyone that I was going to be Indiana Jones when I grew up-- Lara Croft had yet to make her appearance, and the role model pool suddenly got a lot smaller.

There was Madame Curie, but I poisoned myself with my first chemistry set and my parents took it away. There was Jane Goodall, but Texas has a shortage of great apes and my little brother soon got tired of sitting in trees. There was Madonna, but her image didn't include any vine-swinging, nor anything else that looked like much fun, at least not to a twelve year-old.

As far as I could tell, boys got the good jobs like travelling the world in search of lost treasure, and girls got the crap jobs like typing and wearing pink. It was enough to give anyone a bit of a complex, even at twelve.

The psychiatric community has a somewhat controversial term for people who aren't sure whether they're boys or girls; they're called gender dysphoric. Once puberty was well underway, I was sure alright-- I knew I was a girl, but that didn't stop me from being slightly ticked off about the whole thing. I wasn't gender-dysphoric, I was gender-disgruntled.

It made me mad to discover that girls were supposed to cheer on the sidelines while the boys played football. It made me mad to discover that girls were the secretaries while boys were the CEOs. I had nothing against boys-- the male persuasion still made up eighty percent of my social circle-- but I wanted the kind of freedom that was evidently exclusive to those with a Y chromosome. To me, female equalled cage.

My gender annoyance became sort of a raison de d'etre. I spent most of my twenties proving that I could do as I pleased, girl or not. I had adventures. I swung from a few vines here and there, some shakier than others. I travelled the world-- or at least the southern United States-- spontaneously and with no regard for the so-called weaknesses of my sex. I had big fun, and plenty of the metaphorical adult equivalent of scraped knees.

But then the Miss Clairol years began.

There's something about the big 3-0 that causes a girl to take a good hard look at her life. The mirror begins to show the passage of time, and suddenly the raisones d' etre of one's twenties seem a little dated. The Big Questions begin to ask themselves, whether we like it or not.

Since I'm obviously going to be a girl for the duration (thanks to Neutral Medium Brown, $7.99 at Walgreen's) how do I make the most of it? Did women like Madonna really know what they were doing all along? What is this mysterious power that seems to resonate from the color pink? If I finally admit that I'm a girl, what does that do to my sense of independence?

And most importantly: what will happen if I die in my sleep and they find those copies of Cosmo and Glamour hidden under my bed?

(Click here for the second half of "My Life As A Girl", Laura F. Walton's contribution to HerStories, V-Day Waco's collection of personal anecdotes about life, love, and womanhood in Central Texas. To contribute your own story, visit the HerStories page of our website here.)

"Spaceball" photo from Flickr.com. View photographer's profile here.

Our Own Travelling Vagina Warrior

Whitney Smith, director of last year's Vagina Monologues and active supporter of V-Day Waco, has left us.

When I say "left us" I really mean it: she's on her way to Tanzania.

Everyone who knows Whitney Smith knows her as an ardent activist and a staunch supporter of causes she believes in. Whitney doesn't just talk the talk; she walks the walk too, even if it means travelling all the way to Africa to serve in the Peace Corps. She'll serve a 27-month tour in Tanzania, working as a Health Volunteer in a small village.

Part of her duties will include educating the local population about HIV/AIDS prevention. Tanzania has one of the highest per capita rates of HIV infection in Africa-- close to 9% according to a 2005 UNAIDS study-- and over half of those infected are young women.

Whitney has volunteered more than two years of her life to help stop the spread of this and other deadly diseases in this country in southeastern Africa, as far from what we think of as "civilization" as you can imagine.

No phone, no lights, no motorcars...

...well, perhaps it won't be quite that bad... at least she'll have internet access. Whitney plans to blog about her experiences in Africa (here, at Don't Just Wish For Peace, Work For It) and we've invited her to keep us all updated here on this blog as well.

Why is she doing this? She's just graduated from Baylor with an MFA in Theatre. She has friends and family all around, and is actively involved in local organizations such as V-Day Waco. In this excerpt from her blog, Whitney explains:

It isn't enough to wish for something...you have to work at it. This means
taking a leap into the dark, taking a journey into the unkown...even if it takes
you to a foreign country. Of course this lesson must manifest itself differently
for each person. The Peace Corps is just my way to take an active part in my
world, my beliefs and my goals. So, each day as I passed this sign [of the Dalai Llama on Valley Mills] on my way to rehearsal, I kept being reminded of the importance of being an active player in your own life. I still see the sign everyday and I remember why I am doing this. I feel each person in this world deserves happiness, comfort and encouragement. We should all work for it in our own way. [See the full post here.]

A term was coined when the national V-Day movement first began; the term is "Vagina Warrior" and it refers to people who actively work for the empowerment of women everywhere.

Whitney Smith is one of Waco's own real-life Vagina Warriors. She's been an inspiration to all of us, and we're proud to call her our friend. We'll miss her, but will keep close tabs on her mission of peace and goodwill.

You go Whitney!

(Whitney is pictured on the left above, next to Kelsey Ervi, in a photo taken at the 2008 Vagina Monologues production)

Hello There!

Well hi there, and welcome to V-Day Waco's newest feature!

We're still test-driving this thing, so pardon our dust as we tweak and renovate. Meantime, visit our website at http://www.vdaywaco.org/ to check out our latest happenings....