Skate Like a Girl: A Lesson in Feminism from a 9 Year Old

Last week I declared that I was going to devote the entire month of July to feminism.

As a girl who grew up with an older brother and 2 boy cousins, I’ve never struggled with maintaining a strong-girl persona.

I was a Tom Boy that graduated to So-Called womanhood with confidence and ease because I was raised believing I could keep up with them. Run with the big dogs or stay on the porch is what my mom said anytime I was feeling frustrated and inept. Even as a little girl struggling to identify what it meant to keep a mans pace as a young, impressionable female–I let this tough-guy gutsyness dominate my character; accepting it was the only way.

While I’m certain that the big dogs saying is tattooed across my DNA, it doesn’t mean it copied over to my children as our family grew.

Yet, I have been flexing my strong-mom muscles for years believing I didn’t need to utter the word feminism. I thought I could just model it and that would be enough.

But it wasn’t. I realized that teaching feminism is critical to building strong girls. That it’s not complicated, with tricky, head scratching words to waltz around. But that it can be explained in one word really: equality. The best way to insert it into my family values was to just start talking about it–and not just with my girls but with my boys. And since, we’ve become more aware of areas in which we can expand the meaning of feminism to our kids.

Take Pascal for example:

 

Moving forward, I’m intentionally reengineering the meaning of feminism for us. I sure would appreciate any advice or additional perspective you have to give. Thanks as always, the engagement here means a lot.

 

Paving the way,

So-Called Mom