October 11, 2013 marked the second commemoration of the International Day of the Girl Child, established on December 19, 2011 by the United Nations General Assembly with Resolution 66/170.
My feminism class attended Girls Speak Out at the United Nations on International Day of the Girl. (photo credit: Ileana Jiménez)
As I entered the United Nations headquarters in New York City for the Girls Speak Out event, I found myself glancing around the crowded UN meeting room in astonishment and, once again, I felt just like a tourist in the immensity of the city. My wonder overlooked the formality of the room that I’d only seen through the lens of media and film. I was overwhelmed with the sense of unity and closeness that the event inspired.
October 11, 2013, marked an important moment of awakening for meas a girl. The leaders and moderators before me were girls, for once, and not adults. As one Indian girl activist said from Nine is Mine, ”Children are not just citizens of tomorrow, but citizens of today,” affirming how important it is for children to advocate on behalf of children. A group of girl activists was there to testify their devotion to their causes and the spirit of union that brought them to push forward with enthusiasm and to change what surrounds them through their wonderful stories and experiences.
Through my own experience at Elisabeth Irwin High School, where just a few days before I had the occasion of sharing stories that are at the core of my identity during our feminism assembly for International Day of the Girl, I learned the effort that it takes to talk about stories and events that are so intertwined with one’s own sensibility and the relief and joy that sharing them brings afterwards. I grew up in an Italian culture that imposed silence and skepticism over differences in girls’ behaviors and, rather, privileged those who filled their thoughts with conversations written by convention and found amusement in forced acts of playful submission to the alpha boys. I know that breaking these barriers is a challenge; the opposition to diversity was overwhelming for me, at first, and I struggled to find myself beneath the images of others.
Here I am sharing an excerpt from my personal essay on cultural messages imposed to girls. (photo credit: Lexie Clinton)
My recent experience of seeing the production, SLUT The Play, a show that featured exclusively young girls was life-changing. Described by Gloria Steinem as “truthful, raw, and immediate.”
Steinem’s words convey precisely what the experience of SLUT was for me – purely disturbing. Thus, revealing. I find the term “show” to be almost restrictive, when considering the power and importance of the claims between the lines. SLUT dares to break the barriers through which my Italian culture has taught me to experience diversity and interpret others’ behaviors.
I can’t claim to understand in any way the position of girls that happen to find themselves under the outraged stares, as the characters were, of a strict judgement of their environments – I’ve had the privilege not to be a direct victim of rape, but I felt a strong connection to them, with a terror that I’ve found within me.
Victim of abuse, protagonist Joey Del Marco (Winnifred Bonjean-Alpart) finds the voice to speak up, though to her surprise she has to deal with the consequences of her voice, and not with the relief of the help of others. I recognized what I had already seen before and around me. I found something within me as well. This girl had dared to speak. It was her mute, symbolic action that impressed me the most. The supreme blame of her rape discouraged everyone to consider the nature behind an unexpectedly, non-stereotypical openness in a potentially bright young woman, and instead tried to oppress this beauty with the isolation that judgement can provoke.
I gave a standing ovation to this inspiring play. The girls stood before me, so young, yet so mature, wearing proudly their beliefs and their courage to take a stand for others, who hadn’t found the same energy. They did not fear judgment. They seemed invincible. Though their courage might have been perceived negatively where I grew up in Italy, here in New York they seemed at home before the fascinated eyes of the public. They seemed to be in blissful enthusiasm. Their ease with their beliefs was astonishing, as they did not show any signs of tiredness.
These girls inspired me to move past the first impressions that my skepticism had gotten used to; their young enthusiasm, and yet their adult, immense strength, and their devoted commitment inspired me. They showed me the importance of finding one’s voice for promoting change.
I experienced their activism through their presence. Their stories and their words enriched my experience. Seeing these girls stand before me was revealing and showed me how to find the strength to stand out and show my devotion to what matters most. They reminded me of the words of Melissa Heckman, when she describes the peculiarity and importance of relations between women: “My femme friendships are a mutual celebration of our brilliance, beauty, strength, power, heart and soul. Ultimately feminist, we heal through loving each other in a world that teaches us to mistrust each other.”
The girls who acted in the play SLUT celebrated of the beauty of different images of self. October 11, 2013, marked an important moment of awakening for me as a girl, as I saw the potential that I learned right before me: concrete, beautiful, and not merely ideal anymore.
