International Women's Day
We lost an hour on International Women’s Day 2020 because daylight savings time took precedence because even on our one and only day on a leap year where they already get 365 days to be men, they needed one hour from ours
Let me tell you what it is like to be a modern mother in America, twenty twenty, fam.
Let me tell you what it is like to set an alarm clock for five am because they will start stealing our hours before they wake. To set an alarm clock and then wake twenty minutes before it, twenty twenty, fam. Awake twenty minutes before to run a list of emotional energy you’ll extend and expend trying to keep afloat a home or a child’s life or the bed of a man or the hope of a generation or the bottom line of a business. Let me tell you what it’s like to grind coffee beans in still and dark silence. Shave your legs with the lights off and the water a trickle. What it’s like to find moments for yourself while hoping to not be a nuisance, to not make a sound, to not be too much in too small of a space in too little time in twenty twenty, fam.
Shall we ring up Oprah and talk about what it’s like to run to the top of the pyramid of womanhood and still need to lose weight to make a dime. What it’s like to pedal vulnerability because Elizabeth Warren’s competence reminds us we must be messy in our success. We must drop occasional balls or spinning plates. We must carry heavier trays with wider smiles and higher heels but not too well — like a steak on a grill we are better medium and rare — not too lean but heavens forbid we carry fat around midsections that exist to make and carry more men to spin more hoops to dance suggestively but not like Jennifer Lopez or Shakira. Those whores.
Oh you’re not a mother? Well then, fine. Take this twenty three hours we set aside in twenty twenty because you do not get a mother’s day because God forbid you birth an idea or mother a vision or invest blood and sweat and conception into concept or act or fight or equality. Your worth is slightly worth less because you never made a man from your womanhood — didn’t press flesh out of flesh and your breasts, how dare they! Exist for yourself or a lover?
Or worse! What if you don’t have breasts. Or worse! What if you have fake breasts? Or worse! What if you have a penis and dare to exist in the space of a woman because we cannot understand why you would settle for less, dip down to their low level, give up your privilege.
But! Fam! Men don’t have privilege — stop bitching (your complaints are gendered, the very act is so slovenly and womanly, insignificant and crazy, you know?) about how the world is out to get you because you have a vagina. Men don’t systematically oppress their female counterparts, not in America, not in twenty twenty. There is no grounding or finding that men make 20 cents more on your dollar — you’re crying foul when you should be pulling on equality boots by equality bootstraps. Men didn’t get here by complaining but by building so, fam, put your baby on your back and motherfucking build.
And while we’re talking about International Women’s Day let’s remember to mention International Men’s Day. November 19th. A full twenty-four hours in twenty twenty. Lest you forget we ask you write it on your calendar, set a reminder, set your alarm, wake twenty minutes before it, grind the coffee, make the cup, deliver it to your man’s bed while wearing nothing but lace, freshly shaved legs, pole dancing but never publicly, and rush the kids to school, ever juggling the plates of parenting and particulars, expensing and expending energy and emotion. But never too much because in twenty twenty you get twenty three hours for celebration and quite frankly, the time’s almost up.
