International Day of the Girl 2016

I remember being nine years old and wondering why I didn’t have a sibling yet. Television bored me and dolls were no fun to play with alone. For years, I had envisioned a stork flying over our house and finally landing with a baby. Once I learned that wasn’t how things worked, I focused my energies on trying to convince my parents.

Weeks before my tenth birthday, I got the best birthday gift anyone could hope for. A younger sister. Suhanee. I can still point to January 7th, 2005 as the greatest day of my life. I remember waiting at the hospital to go into my mother’s room, filling an entire sketchpad with drawings of baby girls. I remember walking into the room and forcing everyone to put on hand sanitizer. I remember completely ignoring my mom’s existence and fixating immediately on the sleeping seven-pounds-four-ounces that was to become my best friend. I will never forget that happiness of holding in my arms, for the first time, a girl child.

Today is International Day of the Girl, and I am reminded of Suhanee’s birth and the joy it has brought to my life. But I am also reminded of other not-as-joyful things. I am reminded of phone calls asking my mother “when are you going to try again?” I am reminded of the 16-year-old maid working in my grandparents’ home in India who looked me in the eye and said, “you’re the first teacher I’ve ever had.” I am reminded of leaked videos of presidential candidates that dismiss sexual assault as “locker room talk.” And I’m reminded of all the small things that happen on a daily basis, from trying to keep my breathing quiet, to shrinking myself on a seat of a bus, to only asking a question after it’s been perfectly formulated in my head.

Today is a day for celebration at how far women have come, but it’s also a day to ask “have we come far enough?” And the answer to that is still no. There are still honor killings, and feticides, and child marriages, and feelings of never being good enough. There is still oppression. There is still inequality. And you know what that means? That means, we as a world, are still not nearly as good as we can be.

I look at Suhanee and I see a young girl with undying curiosity, ambitious dreams, and big potential. I look at her and it breaks my heart that girls like her, all around the world, are dismissed as unworthy and unfit for accomplishing, inventing, discovering, and changing the world. But that is what Suhanee is. That is what girls are. They are changemakers, and lovers, and role models, and leaders. They are physicists, and writers, and athletes, and presidents. They are all this and they are girls, and they are so worth it.