Barnard Class of 2013 Reunion Dinner, May 2018, New York, NY

Find your Wonder Women and defeat your Ares

Keren Baruch
Sep 5, 2018 · 5 min read

I gave these remarks to my peers at Barnard reunion last May, and realized that the perspective of a woman five years out of college might be useful to the next generation of women and the world they will face. I’m hoping that by sharing these thoughts publicly, we can inspire at least one more Diana Prince to defeat her Ares.

Welcome back to Themyscira! For those who haven’t seen Wonder Woman, Themyscira is the paradise that houses the tribe of Diana Prince, a fierce group of women warriors who supportively, but without mercy, mock fight with each other as a way to prepare for an unknown moment in which they will have to defend their way of life to the outside world.

Sound familiar yet? Fellow Barnard alumna Allison Davis, writing for The Cut already did my job by describing Patti Jenkin’s representation of Themyscira as “Barnard meets a really intense CrossFit class.” I couldn’t agree more, and thank you, Barnard, for our mandatory physical education requirement. Zumba with DSpar was exactly what we needed to salsa dance through life :)

Now I know this wouldn’t be Barnard without some healthy criticism of Wonder Woman, its heteronormativity, unrealistic and homogenous beauty standards, cheesy focus on ‘love saves the day’, and more — and you don’t need me or anyone else to tell you that your opinions are valid.

However, for me, having been groomed at Barnard, and tested in Silicon Valley as a non-technically-trained young woman in an assumed-to-be-technical role of mostly men as a Senior Product Manager at two large tech companies, watching Diana’s cognitive dissonance after leaving Themyscira when she experienced the flawed patriarchal world for the first time was like putting on a new set of glasses to see our own real world.

You see, Diana understood the depth of her own power and had the conviction to reach her goal, while the world around her consistently underestimated her — assuming that she was at minimum unqualified, but most of all delusional about her goal of defeating the ‘so-called Ares’.

She was questioned about the very existence of her key struggle — as many of us are as we live and work within systems where it is more convenient to make you believe that what you are experiencing isn’t real. That despite being a top performer you aren’t quite ready for that promotion, that you should be grateful for the chance to give your labor, intellect, and art without questioning how much money you get in return, or that it isn’t a big deal for young girls to see yet another white man in the corner office — and in the Oval Office.

The climax of the film for me was not that Ares dies — but that unlike the real world, after all this doubt was cast at Wonder Woman, we find out in the end that Ares existed and she was right. And she was also right about her own power to stop him. And the world was wrong.

And, as much as this world of mythology can inspire us, we are not immortal like Wonder Woman, and we cannot single handedly believe in, and subsequently wield the power of lightning to defeat our Ares.

It is fundamentally human to doubt the depths of our own resilience and talent. I personally have struggled with waking up feeling like everyone around me has packed their backpack for a hike with all the gear they need — compass, cookstove, water, food — and I accidentally filled my backpack to the brim with marshmallows and am hoping my team of engineers doesn’t notice.

However, as we learned to do here on this very campus, I put my hair in a bun and did my job despite the fear. And I learned to my surprise that my engineers do notice and are watching. When I left Yahoo to join LinkedIn, one of the few women engineers on the team (who is also completely brilliant) said to me, and I will never forget, “We see how strong you are, and it reminds us that we are also strong.”

Our actions matter, not for ourselves but for each other. It matters that my friend and fellow classmate Shira Albagli, future congresswoman and fearless paid leave advocate, always finds time to stuff my face with homemade celebration pancakes. It matters that Melodie Zhu, with her endless wisdom, showed me how to put the ‘r’ in ‘resilience’ while doing whatever it took, and succeeding, in transitioning to a dream role at Google. That Shelby Layne, born entrepreneur, gives me the gift of bi-coastal camaraderie and laughter, as we go through the similar struggles of a 20-something with an always-on mind. It matters that this list goes on, and that every person I encounter in this room has already or will teach me something.

It matters because the way I’ve been able to get through these moments of self-doubt and seeming defeat is by harnessing the power that exists in my network of wonder women — a dense, fibrous tangle of mutually supportive and honest relationships where we can learn and grow, both with and for each other.

We are not immortal, and there will never be a single Ares that materializes out of the sky, where we can have the satisfaction of saying — see? It’s there.

Our Ares is a set of systems that we will have to constantly remind each other to see. A set of systems that we can only fight when we bind ourselves together in our vulnerability in order to remind each other of our common strength.

I want you all to look around at each other and remember this moment.

From wherever you’ve journeyed over the past five years, we are now home in our Themyscira — and in many ways I feel as if we have never left. Each of us holds a piece of this place within us — when we are reading over a friend’s application to grad school, taking a breath before that big negotiation, or filling out our ballots.

Take this weekend to revive yourself and sink into the comfort of these beautiful friendships — taking inspiration from what each of us have learned outside of the gates to make the power of what we can achieve together even stronger. Let’s go!

Keren Baruch
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