Voting Matters
Friday September 7, 2012 | Filed under:
Recently, a friend I’ve known since 7th grade in Indiana turned 50. Instead of just crying about it, April Mitchell-Nading seized the opportunity and compiled an online list of 50 things she wants to do or change this year, from zip lining to flossing.
I love this idea and want to pass it forward while sharing one of the posts from April’s blog, “The 50 List,” since it concerns an issue I also feel strongly about: exercising your right to vote.
Click here to read the blog and keep reading below for her post, “No. 49: Attend One Meeting or Rally for Women’s Issues:”
Yesterday, I attended Evansville’s 10th Annual women’s Equality Day luncheon, which is a celebration/recognition of the adoption of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. I think we need a reminder that obtaining the right to vote was a hard-fought battle for women and didn’t occur until August 26, 1920. And I hate it when I hear a female say she never votes because she doesn’t like any of the candidates or her vote doesn’t really matter. It does matter.
If nothing else, it matters that we have the right to do it, and we should never take this right for granted. I have voted in every presidential election since I turned 18, whether I liked the candidates or not. I remember how excited I was to hand in my absentee ballot to the clerk at Ball State University. I was voting for the president and my vote counted! I don’t have quite the same excitement years later as I did then, but I do still feel an air of importance knowing that I am a woman living in the United States of America and I have the right to vote!
The keynote speaker for the luncheon was author Peggy Orenstein, who wrote Cinderella Ate My Daughter. I haven’t read the book – yet – but I liked her idea that the Disney princesses and other marketing techniques aimed at girls are actually doing more harm than good. Do we really want our daughters/granddaughters/nieces, etc. thinking Prince Charming is going to come along and rescue them? Is it a positive for girls to be so focused on appearance, sexuality, and looking/behaving like a princess?
Orenstein points out that young girls are now focused on “being sexy” and are so intent on appearance it results in eating disorders. I would add that along with Disney princesses, it probably doesn’t help for these girls to see their own mothers/grandmothers, etc. opting for plastic surgery, Botox and other extreme measures to alter their own appearances in an effort to stay young and sexy. How can we expect young girls to be happy with the way they look when the female role models in their lives are showing them that the only way to be happy is by changing the way they look?