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| March 3, 2009 - A WIN-ing Solution... |
....on that Age Old Question of how to
Stretch the Lessons of Lycra to Empower a New Generation
Panty girdles. I knew nothing about panty girdles. I was a straight A student until home economics. Squirming in my chair in Mrs. Corbin’s 7th grade home economics course I wasn’t sure I wanted to know anything about them either... nor how to cut the crusts off my bread when I made sandwiches for company. And though I dreamed of a class like woodshop where design form follows function, instead I was learning about products whose designed function was to squeeze my form. I was miserable: I wanted to take carpentry and maybe auto-mechanics—but back then it was assumed all girls wanted to learn cooking and sewing and that all boys needed to take industrial arts.
“All well-groomed, young women wear Lycra on their thighs.” Her words fell as hollow on my ears searching for meaning then, as that sentence still echoes in the caverns of my mind today. Even if that was the supreme affirmation of womanhood, it still did not sound like a practice I would ever willingly try to master.
As I recall, even as early as 4th grade, I think, I did not want to conform. For sports, my girlfriends and I were given a jump rope and were allowed to mil about a concrete yard; the boys got basketballs on a court. When I brought in a rubber ball so we could play punch ball—a crude form of baseball prevalent on the streets of NY-- the teacher confiscated it and wanted to know who was promoting “such unladylike behavior.” There was a sense of solidarity when all the girls confessed to this crime; so we were punished together, but this little defiance made us smile. Maybe that moment, decades ago, was really how the WIN concept was born.
As some of you MorningStar supporters know, The Women’s Independence Network (WIN), inaugurated by MorningStar January 2007, was created to provide mentored opportunities in the cultural, performance and fine arts, in order to empower emerging female artists. Within three months we had our classes, shows, workshops and exhibitions for that incredible WINFest weekend during National Women’s Month and I said aloud to myself on March 29,2007 for the very first time that I thought I might have cancer.
I laughed off the fatigue, the bloating, the weight gain and loss, the irritable bowel and urinary symptoms (all classic signs of ovarian cancer) as stress from putting on that terrific festival and continued to abuse myself by immediately running Children’s Film Camp which started the next day. I didn’t tell anyone and though I am very good at going to the doctor for regular check ups, I figured I could wait until my next scheduled appointment that next fall.
Two years later, March 29th, 2009 MorningStar Arts is hosting our Teal Ribbon Project’s most ambitious event: the Finding Out & Facing Up Lunch-n-Learn for the Under 25 Set (12:15 to 1:15 PM) and the Cancer Answers Health Fair (1 to 4PM) both at the Jewish Educational Alliance here in Savannah and free and open to the public as MorningStar events have been for the last 20 years. The luncheon is free to the first fifty young people who sign up on this web sight or by calling in to the JEA (912-355-8111) and especially the under 18 year olds are welcomed to bring your parents or guardian to learn about how it is now possible to prevent—yes prevent—up to 95% of the risk of cervical cancer risk. The health fair will continue throughout the afternoon with opportunities for men and women to learn about ways to keep bodies healthy, to check for risk of certain types of cancer and to meet some of the health care providers and resource organizations for those of you who have already been stricken.
I am grateful that many of the emerging artists who worked on WINFest are helping me with commercials and promotions for this event. We still are working to empower ourselves—but this goal—to empower women (and men) to seek medical attention when they know something about their wonderful bodies is awry—is deadly serious.
Over the years, Lycra has won my respect, but I still don't want to hear about it anymore than I want to drag myself to seminars or programs about cancer—but information is power. Like Lycra, I have become more flexible with age. Learning how to assess risk and seeking early diagnosis would have been preferable to sitting in the chemotherapy room. I know this now.
Women in the 1970’s gave up the hope of an Equal Rights Amendment that would guarantee their equal treatment in the work place. But in the last thirty plus years with the help of Title IX, equal access to education and sports have created a generation of young women who feel that they can accomplish anything and be whomever they wish to be. Now we need to tamper that feeling of freedom with a little bit of caution: learn to listen to our bodies and keep ourselves healthy in the process of continually becoming: it’s a WIN-ing idea.
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Posted by morningstar on 2009-03-03 15:56:34 | Rating: | Views: 82
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