Sunday is for horizons: Eve Ensler

We have already talked about Eve Ensler. Truth be told, her Embrace Your Inner Girl, was one of the sparks that started this project of ours. Her work on female genitalia as symbols of vulnerability is widely known (Vagina Monologues, anybody?). So is her power in movement building. We just experienced the One Billion Rising campaign all over small local groups and the internets.

As reading matter we suggest you get your hand on:

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World is exactly what the subtitle says it is. Let go of the slight uneasiness that her idea of a "girl cell" provokes in every equality-feminist. And live through the way it feels to be a teenage girl. Also, there is a movement around this work, too: the V-Girls.

The Vagina Monologues. The classic that comes from a time (1996, mind you) when gender based violence wasn't a generalized awareness thing. So go back and read it.

Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security Obsessed World is what she is talking about in the video above. Advocating for letting go of certainty of (normalized) oppression and embracing the emotional (and very harsh) realities of uncontrollable world full of both violence and compassion.

Ensler's writing is easy and emotional. These are (real life) stories, not academic treatises. Do not expect more or less of  them. But get to know them.

girls + changes, or Holly dyed her hair...

"The myth of female frailty tells us that when a young woman starts exploring her dark side, she’s begun down a very dangerous road that could have life-damaging consequences. Obviously, if she starts shooting heroin, that’s true. But Holly — like so many other teen girls whose fascination with darkness is made manifest — isn’t doing anything life-threatening. She’s started reading Kerouac and Inga Muscio instead of Vogue and Seventeen, she’s getting showered and dressed and out of the house in less than half the time it took her a year before. This is healthy as can be — and yet it’s genuinely terrifying to many of the folks around her. Fed by a culture that falls all over itself with (often faux) expressions of concern about teen girls, many of her friends — and some of the adults in her life — are scared that Holly’s gonna “do something stupid now” and “ruin her life.”"

An excerpt from Hugo Schwyzer's inspirin blogpost Holly dyed her hair: more on myths of female frailty, our fear of women's anger, and what happens when the truth comes out

And as further reading I can certainly suggest Eve Ensler's book I Am an Emotional Creature

(as we all have seen the I ♥ Being a Girl video)

Embrace Your Inner Girl

This Eve Ensler's TED talk "Embrace Your Inner Girl" has been our major inspiration, becuse we love, love, love being girls!