Women need women. Men are all well and good, but right now I am talking about women in general.
Women continue to master the balancing act of life; balancing school, work, romantic relationships, children, community service, etc. In those regards Fresno State women are no different.
As the world continues to get busier, we must as not forget that even as individuals, women need each other. We need each other more than romance, technology or not feeling worthy of friendship.
We need to take care of ourselves. The number one thing a woman can do to take care of herself is to foster female relationships. Women who have strong female support systems are fierce stress combatants.
Psychologist Dr. Randy Kamen helps us understand that a woman with a lack of female support is as detrimental to her health as smoking or obesity. (Remember this the next time you stand up a friend for the Student Recreation Center. Invite your friend to go along instead!) And, we all know that smoking increases our risk of every imaginable disease.
Women have a special power, called intuition. We need our intuitive comrades around to help us see life situations for what they are, as we struggle to swim through, above and out of them.
Women need each other to attend the Vagina Monologues together. Women need each other to be able to say things like, “Aunt Flo just came to visit and I don’t have anything. Do you?”
We need to have “girl laughs” together.
We are all different and imperfect. That is why we can embrace each other and recognize that we really are the same!
We are like gifts to each other. We give each other the gift of talking and listening. We give each other the gift of increased mental health.
Women banded together for a century, in suffrage, to secure our current right to vote.
Women like Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in the fight against racial segregation and equality.
Survivor, Malala Yousafzai stood up against a gunman who shot her three times in the head because she spoke out about the rights of equal education.
Amelia Earhart helped pave the way for female pilots and increased gender equality. We cannot forget physicist Marie Curie who battled sexism throughout her life and won two Nobel Peace prizes.
With the upcoming election, it is hard to ignore that we may have our first female president.
I am sure all of these women benefitted from some kind of female supportive system.
I do not know where I would be without being accepting of female friends surrounding me in tough times. I do not know how I would get through life without female friends telling me things like “You is kind, you is smart, you is important,” from the movie The Help.