Some Inspiration.

Womens' magazines. The glossy pages are armed with insider tips and advice on how to look prettier, dress more fashionably and keep your man satisfied. They prey on our weaknesses, exploiting insecurities with colourful photo shoots but sometimes they succeed in providing affirmation of our greatness and some inspiration. The following article ran in the March 2010 issue of Glamour and is one I keep close at hand. And it applies to both sexes, although the audience it is being written for is clearly women.

“The Most Important 433 Words to Read This Month”

No matter how sophisticated and grown-up we become, everyone has her insecure days. In this excerpt from her new book, Eve Ensler celebrates the true power of a woman. Read it and send on to a girlfriend you love.

Dear Emotional Creature:

I believe in you. I believe in your authenticity, your uniqueness, your intensity, your wildness. I love the way you dye your hair purple, or hike up your short skirt, or blare your music while you lip-synch every single memorized lyric. I love your restlessness and your hunger. You possess the energy that, if unleashed, could transform, inspire and heal the world.

Everyone seems to have a certain way they want you to be--your mother, father, teaches, religious leaders, politicians, boyfriends, fashion gurus, celebrities, girlfriends. In reporting my new book, I learned a very disturbing statistic: 74% of young women say they are under pressure to please everyone.

I have done a lot of thinking about what it means to please; to be the wish or will of somebody other than yourself. To please the fashion setters, we starve ourselves. To please the men, we push ourselves when we aren't ready. To please our parents, we become insane overachievers. If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs? How do you even know what your own needs are? The act of pleasing makes everything murky. We lose track of ourselves. We stop uttering declaratory sentences. We stop directing our lives. We forget what we know. We make everything OK rather than real.

I have had the good fortune to travel around the world. Everywhere I meet teenage girls and women giggling, laughing as they walk country roads or hang out on city streets. Electric girls, I see how their lives get hijacked, how their opinions and desires get denied and undone. So many of the women I have met are still struggling late into their lives to know their way.

Instead of trying to please, this is a challenge to provoke, to dare, to satisfy your own imagination and appetite. To take responsibility for who you are, to engage. Listen to the voice inside you that might want something different. It's a call to your original self, to move at your own speed, to walk with your step, to wear your color.

When I was your age, I didn't know how to live as an emotional creature. I felt like an alien. I still do a lot of the time. I am older now. I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be OK with being different, with being this alive, this intense. I just don't want you to have to wait that long.

Love,
Eve Ensler

From Eve Ensler’s new book “I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World”