An Open Letter to My Daughters on International Women's Day
Dear Bella and Laura,
Early yesterday morning, a bronze statue of a defiant young girl was placed in New York, staring down the Charging Bull of Wall Street. The statue, entitled “Fearless Girl,” is part of a new initiative to increase gender diversity in the workforce. This statue was installed just one day ahead of International Women’s Day.
This little girl reminds me of you, of your strength, your determination, and your power. As you traverse the world today with incredibly perceptive eyes, you will find those predictable coming-of-age dichotomies that will attempt to box you into their defining parameters, prescribing you your value and worth based upon what you offer for the stimulation of others.
Beginning now to view the world from the outside, you will try to somehow reconcile yourselves within the confines of that world, and you will begin to define yourself with that same broken terminology: am I fat? Am I skinny? Am I smart? Am I attractive? Am I pretty?
The truth, however, is that the world offers us very little in viable options by which we can truly define our actual value. While you seek to find the place where you fit in, where you “belong,” you begin to define yourself in categorical ways. But what you don't know yet, and what so many women never fully realize, is that the world holds a whole lot of untruths. It will have you believing that your value, especially as a girl, lies in how you look, or in how attractive you are, in who you are only in relation to others.
Our president who insists that women be numerically rated on beauty, the songs that suggest promiscuity is desired, the advertisements that cultivate a perpetual state of insecurity, all only have one collective truth: they are all wrong. They are barbarically wrong. And with every drumbeat of misperception, you must push to remember that these are not truths. You must remain resilient, and not allow yourselves to believe, not even for a second, that these whispers hold even the potential for merit. There are a lot of falsities available for your consumption and you must rise above them to clasp your enormous value as humans, as women.
Because, my daughters, if you believe that you are creative only because of what you contribute to others, or that you are smart only when your grades reflect it, or that you are beautiful only for the sake of the eyes that fall upon you, then when you fall — and you will fall — and when you fail — and at times you will fail — you will have no self truths to land upon.
So, my children, let me tell you of your value. Your value is not in the outcome you produce, nor is it in the stereotypes produced by society's promises; your value is in the bewildering miracle of your very existence. It isn't what you write or how you draw, but the fact that there is this amazing heart and beautiful soul inside of you that is so gracefully allowed to express itself through your hands and your mouths, that your compassion exudes through your pores and creates your emanating brilliance.
With this brilliance, however, comes a responsibilty, a summons upon you as women, to stand up and grab the torch of resilience from those powerful women who came before you. For every woman who faced persecution, danger, and fear so that you have a voice today, you must march forth. For every woman who has succumb at the world’s behest, you must stand tall. For every woman who paved the road that you now walk, you must forge on. For, while the world tries to stop you and hold you to your confines, a new wind is blowing. A new statue stands in defiance of the Bull of limitation, and that statue is you, both of you, my brilliant, valuable, perfect young women.
The Fearless Girl by State Street Global Advisors