"What? Is this a baby shower?"
--Karen Swallow Prior, in The Atlantic
A Sunday night in March in Chicago. Clothes dryer humming. Wind whistling through the cold, urban canyon. 60 Minutes segment on the plight of Pussy Riot just wrapped up. March Madness is dominating headlines. Even I'm distracted by the madness as my team earned a spot in the second round today. Keep it up ladies--sweet sixteen is only a game away. Christian folk are gearing up for Holy Week. Lucky duck spring breakers are breaking. Lots going on this month. Did I mention it was 15 degrees on the first day of spring and that the snow is still flying in parts of the Plains?
All this made me wonder: who's the Madame Curie who got the bright idea to have Women's History Month in March?
Now, don't misread me, dear reader. As a woman, wife, daughter, sister, aunt, niece, feminist, thinker, scientist, mentor, voter, tax payer and person with a vested interest in a society that just doesn't put words like "equal" in founding documents, but actually backs up such words with real action, I am fully supportive of Women's History Month. This rings especially true this year, as the theme for WHM 2013 aims to honor women innovators in the STEM fields. But I am waiting in anticipation to see what, if anything, will be the major takeaways from WHM 2013.
What have we learned thus far this month? Well, few lasting lessons from what I can tell. Just this month, we've grown confused over whether we should be a leaner-inner or a lone wolf. We learned that after staunch outcry over public rapes abroad, Americans quickly wave the neuralyzer and sling death threats at a young victim of rape on our home soil. States continue to pass measures to strip the right of women to make their own healthcare decisions right out of their dainty, little hands. And alas, Huffington Post continues to maintain a Style section that can be likened to a junior high nit-picking right along side the section devoted to "Women". (Sorry, HuffPo, but you make this too easy.)
If this is how we celebrate women's history, I'm not so sure I want to stick around to see who wins the raffle. I'll take my ball, bat and anti-wrinkle cream and go home. As Karen Swallow Prior reasoned in her excellent prose in The Atlantic, we should be playing our long game and not just throwing a 31-day extravaganza of high fives and fist bumps. Do we want to just sigh over the lessons from the past, or do we want to correct them for a better future? Do we want our actions to become a record of history--something to be analyzed, critiqued and to serve as a guide forward--or do we just want to romanticize only those events that can be retrieved from our memory? No joke--the Library of Congress has a page devoted to "Women Pioneers in American Memory". What does that even mean? Is it okay to forget some pioneers? Do you get a free pass if you are bad at names or faces?
But I digress. Again.
Rather than a annual pep rally, or as Dr. Swallow Prior put it, a "baby shower", maybe we should have a real agenda. We can still dress it up with celebrations. That's fine. Everyone loves a party, after all. But how about instead of the agenda just honoring women of the past, we actually set a goal for making one thing--just one thing--better for the future? We'll have one year to accomplish this goal. On March 1st we'll kick off WHM by evaluating if the goal has been met. If so, we can whoop it up and celebrate for a week or so. But after that, we must get to work and set the goal for the next year. We'll be required to put into place a strategy for lasting success. And it'll be up to us keep ourselves honest.
I don't know. It's just a crazy thought, but no crazier than the notion that women should be celebrated, protected, honored, and treated as equals all year long.
I'll start by setting the goal for this year. Just a one liner:
Free Pussy Riot.