Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Shit Sandwich

Let me preface this blog with the fact that I know I am swearing and there is swearing involved...hope no one takes offense.
While hiking on Sunday, I had an interesting conversation with Pearl. She had recently seen a movie called Gracie. (this movie was left behind by my Christian friend) The movie is about a girl whose brother dies. She tries to replace him on the soccer team. She has to work and train very hard and eventually wins the game etc. She struggles a lot to get to this point. At one part of the movie she is having a conversation with her mother and her mother basically tells her that "women have to, at some point, take a bite of a big shit sandwich" that it is part of our inequality etc. Gracie was discouraged by her mother's attitude and vowed to prove her wrong.
Pearl asked me if my mom had made me take a bite of a "shit sandwich". I know she doesn't know what shit is and doubt she grasped the metphorical aspect of this comment. But it did lead to a great conversation about how "no, I was raised pretty equally to my brothers and always encouraged to compete". I told her under no circumstances would she ever be made to take a bite from me...hopefully not from other influences in her life. I told her I was raising my daughters to be humans....in a global world and to understand that we can all be equal and should be compensated as such. May have gone over my 5 year olds head...but she was trudging through the mud nodding...listening...
When I reflected on this later...I realized I have to vote for Hillary. I have to vote for her for no other reason than to have a woman in power, for that to exist in my girls lifetime. Of course I LOVE Barack...loving African men....but I never want my girls to take a bite of the shit sandwich.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

amen

Anonymous said...

Why is it that I believe that even if the most shit sandwich-doling patriach in history were in the oval office that your girls would never eat anything but the peanut butter and Fluff sandwiches they serve themselves and everyone around them? Metaphorically speaking. With a drizzle of honey.