Dear Girls, have you seen all the women around you fighting for your future?
When I was little Mattel came out with a barbie doll named Teresa. She was supposed to be Italian and apparently also sometimes, hispanic. Her waist was so small and her legs so skinny that it made me think that all girls named Teresa must look like her. Apparently Teresa was a great cook and one of her favorite activities was to bake cupcakes.
Have you heard of Abby Wambach? She’s a two time Olympian and World Cup Champion and Mattel just announced that they’re making a Abby Wambach barbie doll.
That’s called progress.
Have you seen all the women around you fighting for your future? Kerry Washington, Meryl Streep, Sheryl Sandberg, Reese Witherspoon. Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Viola Davis, Elizabeth Warren, Angela Merkel, the list goes on and on.
And there are many more women fighting for your future who you will never hear about in Vogue or read about in the headlines of your newspaper because society somehow forgets to celebrate them as much. Don’t worry, I will be sure to tell you about all of those women very soon, but not today.
Today I want to talk about the absolutely most important thing you need to know to grow up in this world and be successful.
There is nothing more important than this, no business advice or college degree that will teach you this very important lesson. No ‘top ten ways to get beach ready abs’ article in a fitness magazine will teach you this either.
The lesson is this: The most profoundly important thing that you will ever do in your lifetime is simply learn to truly love yourself.
I know, it sounds ridiculous.
But here is the really really big secret that no beauty magazine or Victoria Secret Fashion Show or Rihanna music video will tell you.
All those women I mentioned before? They all have one thing in common.
They all truly love themselves.
You can see it in their eyes. You can hear it in their voices. They’ve done the work. They’ve fought the battles. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been easy.
But they’re not afraid to fight for a better future for you because they know that just like them, you deserve it.
They’re not afraid to take on the scrutiny and the shaming that comes with standing up for what you believe in.
Now I know society is still telling you, just like it told me, that your value comes from the size of your waist and the pout in your lips, the color of your skin, the height of your heels, your ability to fit in with the crowd.
I understand that even with all that progress with Abby and Kerry and Hillary and Michelle Obama and Shonda Rhimes and Lena Dunham that society still tells you that beauty is more important than intellect. That behaving and shrinking down is more important than creativity and speaking up. That without money and fame and sex appeal that no man could ever possibly love you.
But that’s simply just not true.
How do I know? Because I believed all of those things once too. I suffered and starved and molded myself in all the different ways to try to fit this societal definition of a woman. I worked so hard in all of the wrong directions trying to become the perfect woman.
And it’s because the beauty magazines, and the television shows, and the movies, and the advertisements, and the schoolbooks, and the music, they never taught me that all I had to do was simply love myself the way that I am.
I wasted years of my life listening to all of the noise and trying so hard to be someone that I am not.
And here is the silver lining in all of that wasted time; I get to show you another way.
There is a revolution happening. We are fighting on your behalf. We’ve decided we have had enough. We’re taking over.
I don’t want you to be scared. Don’t be afraid to ignore society and think for yourself. Don’t you be afraid to stand up and speak loud when you have something to say. Don’t you dare ever ever ever shrink down to accommodate those around you.
Your number one job, the most important thing that you will ever do in this life is to learn to love yourself just the way you are.