International Day of The Girl

Today is International Day of the Girl. This day is very important. Perhaps far more important than we realize.

So many of us want peace. We seek it, pray for it, dream of it, fight for it. The thing is, there can never be peace without equality. There can never be equality without balance. Currently in our world, even in places that appear to be progressive, we are still far too far behind in achieving a balance of respect, opportunity and support for girls and women. This, in and of itself, is illogical when one even considers that fact that our women, our mothers, gave birth to us, and our girls, our daughters, may become mothers one day.

This is absolutely not to detract from the incredible importance of our men and boys, our fathers and our sons. The point is always, and ever has been, balance, of which this world is sorely lacking, in places of so-called progress, let alone in places of economic/environmental/social/religious strife.

A feminist has no wish to eradicate men from the planet. A feminist is a person who is demanding the balance we all deserve, for it can only benefit us all.

Men of the world who fear women and girls, stop using the luck of your birth that gives you, more often than not, and by default, greater physical and societal strength to abuse the very people who bring forth life, who nurture and sustain it, who give of their love and lives to better the lives of all their loved ones. Stop abusing this strength, this power, to mistreat, violate, bully and hurt those physically weaker than you, but equal in mind and spirit. We are all someone’s daughter or son, someone’s sister or brother, someone’s mother or father, someone’s wife or husband. You have nothing to fear, and everything to gain, for your own future and for the future of your loved ones. This imbalance is wrong and unnatural. This imbalance can only serve to ruin us all.

If you are on Facebook, you can very easily turn your Facebook profile picture into a show of support for this day. Of course, this frame will not eradicate misogyny, sexism, inequality, intolerance or violence, but it shows where you stand and what matters to you. Maybe it opens a much-needed dialogue wherever you are. Maybe it inspires someone to think a little differently, hopefully more open-mindedly. Maybe it makes a woman or girl you know feel like you understand her perspective and support her. Maybe it gets some people off a fence that they do not need to be on, because being on this side of it can only do good, for everyone.

Even if you are not into facebook-profile-picture-frames, okay. Understandable. I’m not a fan of the design of this one either. But there are more important things than design. And there are many ways of acknowledging the importance of this day, I hope you will consider any one of them. I know, as a woman, with many women and girls in my life that I love and care about, I will greatly appreciate the thought and the effort. Not just for me, as a woman, but for everyone I care about. So thank you, to all honouring the International Day of the Girl in some way. And thank you in advance to all who will do so.

It would be super cool to see how anyone is choosing to honour this day. It would be super cool to know that every single school out there is dedicating at least a little bit of time to talking about it, openly and honestly. To answer the questions all our children have, and specifically the questions surely our little boys will have, as to why there is not an International Day of the Boy.

I know what I will tell my boys. I will tell them that I wish there didn’t have to be an International Day of the Girl. That the reasons this day exists are all very sad or unfortunate and some reasons are actually very scary. That this day exists because there are moms and dads and other grown-ups out there who finally realized that a lot of the world’s problems, the very problems that so disturb, scare and worry my boys, too, are exactly a result of how badly girls and women are treated in so many places, all over the world.

I will remind them that their mommy was once a girl, too, and has experienced many of the milder forms of this mistreatment in her life, and knows and cares about far too many girls who experienced the same, and worse.

I will tell them that I hope one day we will not need to remind the whole world to be kind to girls and women, that I hope one day people will just remember to be kind to other people, no matter if they are boys or girls.

Just simply to be kind to one another.

To treat each other as they would like to be treated.

There is a viral video going around showing a father teaching his daughter how to value herself with a pep talk in the mirror every morning. He asks her to repeat something that really resonated with me, “No one is greater than me. I am no greater than anyone.” This is the kind of wisdom that our world needs. The kind of wisdom that if embraced by that critical mass of people, could eradicate the need for the very day we are honouring today. ❤

#InternationalDayOfTheGirl

For every girl around the world, and for everyone who has a girl in his life that he loves and wishes nothing but the best for.

If you would like more information about today, scroll to the bottom for an helpful infographic. Below are some informative links, too.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post please like it, share it and/or subscribe. If you would like to share your thoughts on this post, or this day, or the ways you honoured the International Day of the Girl, please use the comment section to do so. I’d love to hear from you.

https://plan-international.org/because-i-am-a-girl/international-day-of-the-girl