Girl World
We all remember this homeland, where girls ran free
Hi friends. Welcome, newcomers. Now we are 555+ subscribers. Seems an auspicious number. So glad y’all have joined me in this adventure in storytelling and truth-telling. Here’s a story about identity, connection, and longing for Girl World.
“What’s your favorite chocolate-chip cookie?”
Here we go again. I’m at the grocery store. Immediately I sense that this older woman 1) needs to talk, 2) has chosen me on purpose, and 3) has something on her mind besides cookies. Her body – tilting to the left1 – blocks the aisle as if to impede my escape.
I am in no hurry. I treat grocery shopping like a walking meditation, wandering and wondering through each aisle. I pause to peruse endcaps,2 my mind open to possibilities.
“Pepperidge Farm,” I tell her. She appears to be in her late sixties: my age, but somehow older. “I like the white chocolate macadamia ones called Tahoe.”
“I was the Best Girl Athlete,” she replies. This is her first comment after the cookie question.
Why is she telling me about what I presume is a school experience — and identity — from long ago? Maybe my unhurriedness invites these conversations, my implicit availability.
Maybe it’s my posture. Or my athletic attire. I’m wearing black workout shorts with a teal tank top because it’s hot out, because I rode my bike to the store, and because this is my favorite outfit all summer long. My bra straps show but I’m wearing a purple sports bra to persuade people that this is not a fashion faux pas, the way white bra straps would be. This is just layering.
Oblivious to my underwear, the woman continues, “I don’t know how I ended up like this.” Her name is Nancy. We are ricocheting at the speed of light from cookies to Best Girl Athlete to her shock at ending up like this, by which she means beleaguered by distressing diseases, conditions, limitations. “What happened to me?” she asks, bewildered.
This is how they go, these tête-à-têtes with oldish women – angry, bewildered, grieving – who approach me in stores, airports, restaurants.
I give them the gift of seeing who they used to be. They reciprocate with the gift of seeing who I am now.
I am an Ambassador from Girl World.
Girl World is women’s actual or mythical homeland, where we girls ran, leapt, and tested our skills in parks and playgrounds. Where we stood on two strong legs, feet wide apart, beautifully balanced and ready for anything. Where we perched on starting blocks, willing to dive into the unknown. Where we flew, arms outstretched, soaring over still water for an infinity: a time and a place and a feeling we will never forget.
Nancy was deported from Girl World long ago. She misses it. She visits at night in reveries that, upon waking, leave her yearning to return. But it’s a remote island inaccessible to her by land, sea, or air.
I still embody that sacred space. After arriving at the store and locking my bike, I practically skipped through the door, still high on the bike ride, the way uninhibited young girls do. The way uninhibited old athletes do. Despite three knee surgeries and two shoulder surgeries and countless achy joints on any given day, I seem to wear this button: “I’m an athlete. Even at 68. Speak to me of love and loss and athleticism. I get it.”
Who better to care that Nancy was once named Best Girl Athlete? Who better to understand what an ineffable loss that is, to no longer feel strong, brave, free?
We all remember Girl World: Where girls ran free
Later, in the parking lot, I unlock my beloved Tall Trek Townie. I treasure this bike – the only one that has ever fit my giraffic legs. My bike’s name is Frances in honor of another unwilling emigrant from Girl World. In A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle (1895), first-wave feminist Frances Willard recalled that she “ran wild” until her sixteenth birthday, “when the hampering long skirts were brought, with their accompanying corset and high heels.” She responded to these physical restraints with “the first heartbreak of a young human colt taken from its pleasant pasture.”3 But she learned to ride the bicycle — at age 53.
I’ve already got my helmet on. My groceries are snuggled in the bright pink basket affixed to my handlebars.
Suddenly, Nancy appears by my side. With a magician’s flair, she produces from her grocery bag a package of Pepperidge Farm Tahoe white chocolate macadamia cookies. Ta-da! We laugh conspiratorially as she unfolds the top, carefully removes one cookie, and hands it to me.
It’s just the fuel I need for my blissful bike ride back home.
Other Stronger Women stories you might enjoy:
Recovery: A Love Story: Swimming Through Rough Waters with a Lifelong Friend
“I Would Have Been Trans’ed”: A Gender Nonconformist Wonders What If?
Another Substack you might enjoy: Oldster Magazine: “Exploring what it means to travel through time in a human body, at every phase of life.”
I’m not making fun of people with scoliosis. I’m identifying. My tilt may someday become more pronounced, too.
Endcap is grocery-store lingo for shelving at the end of an aisle. If you weren’t familiar with it, now it’s yours. Enjoy.
Frances Willard, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, 1895, provided in full online by Project Gutenberg.
I love reading your stories. You make me wish the past half century of female sports could continue forever. The incredible empowerment of women that has arisen in our lifetime is rooted in the teamwork, leadership and especially the confidence that was taught to girls thanks to Title IX's demand for sex-based equality. Since its passage in 1972, the empowerment that female athletes experienced spread out through society, as evidenced by some 85% of female CEOs having participated in athletics.
Title IX didn't just build female sports. It built the feminist movement that empowered girls and women to become what we are today.
But as I meticulously pointed out in a previous comment on your July 29th article, "Cheering for Female Olympic Athletes - and for Kamala Harris," the current Democratic Administration has already reversed Title IX.
Let that sink in. As of August 1st, 2024, all US schools and colleges will be required to allow each and every male who wants to participate in female sports and utilize the female showers and changing rooms, to do so.
It is now the law of the land. Male rights supersede female rights.
That means if an 18 year old senior in high school, an adult man, wants to creep on 9th grade girls in the shower, he is legally free to do so. And by he, I'm referring to him by his sex, not whatever he claims to be his chosen gender identity. A school that prevents male students from abusing females in this manner will lose federal academic funding. That's right, your local school could lose a teacher for protecting female students from perving men. Go Democrats!
We all know the end game - girls and women will stop using the showers in high school and college.
Girls and women will be knocked out of female sports by mediocre male athletes.
Young girls will realize there is no chance to beat the males who will be "included" by law in girls and women's sports. Being inclusive and abiding by federal law means those mediocre male athletes will destroy the accomplishments that female athletes have worked for years to achieve. Young girls will choose to spend their time on tiktok instead of dedicating hours every day for years of their life to achieve athletic success. When any male can take away their wins, their glory and their scholarships, girls will simply stop participating in sports. That's the end game. The powers that be are not happy about how strong women have become. This is our take-down.
The Harris/Biden Department of Ed has assured schools that they will not punish them until after the election. Well isn't that interesting? Why wait until after Harris is elected? Because that gives people like you, Mariah, the opportunity to pretend that Harris will save the day, once elected.
She won't.
Much as I despise Donald Trump for the ignorant, despicable, unethical man that he is, he's unfortunately the only candidate who says he will keep males out of female sports. Why isn't Harris saying that? You imply, Mariah, that Harris is so smart she knows not to admit she's really on the side of female athletes. Wow.
I think it's because the DNC selected a candidate who they are sure will NOT undo the Democrats reversal of Title IX. It's also patently clear that they didn't want her to run in the primary, probably because she would have lost. It would have been harder to convince Democrats that they should be excited with memes telling them that “Democrats are EXCITED about Kamala,” if she had been asked about men in women's sports in a Dem primary debate.
I won't vote for Trump. But I know the war profiteers will most assuredly get their next war for profit no matter which candidate wins. If Trump's in the seat when that happens, the Left will remember that they are anti-war. That's a good thing. If Kamala is our president, those of us who stand up against perpetual wars for profit will be called sexist. Because the president happens to be a woman. So I won't give my vote to either candidate. Unless Harris steps up and assures us that she will undo the Democrats' reversal of Title IX.
Which she won't.
Our Democratic candidate is complicit with the destruction of women's rights. I will not vote for someone who will continue the destruction of 50 years of female empowerment our generation has built. Years from now, I want to say my hands are clean. I didn't vote for the take-down of women's rights to safety, privacy, dignity and sex-segregated sports. Thanks to the women's movement we finally have a female candidate who's likely to win the presidency. Ironically, she's also the best candidate to trick women into thinking she supports our sex-based rights. When she doesn't.
And for you perpetually HOPEful folks out there, I'm sorry to tell you that she won't evolve to agree with you on this issue. Sadly, our Historic First Female President (TM) will continue this insane Left-Right fight over female sports with the convenient benefit of distracting us for another 10 years fighting for our rights instead of reversing environmental damage, stopping perpetual wars for profit and the dangerous theft of middle and working class wealth to the ultra-rich. It's hard to work on those three and other problems when we're dealing with the trauma of creepy men staring at our naked bodies in public showers.
So my question to you, Mariah, is what is it that makes you so easily fooled into thinking Kamala Harris, the candidate that a corporation picked for our party, the candidate who wasn't even on my primary ballot (or yours), will step up and do what's right for women and girls? Or that she'll work on our behalf against the very billionaires who profit from the Gender Industrial Complex who are funding her candidacy. For that matter, why did taxpayers have to pay for very expensive Democratic primary elections in every state if a corporation can then just choose someone else? Doesn't that bother anyone here? What's that you say? You didn't realize a the DNC was a corporation? Lol.
Is it such a relief that it's a woman against Trump that we're all supposed to stick our fingers in our ears and cover our eyes and pretend she's our next savior? Is this the same HOPE that we experienced in 2008 when we assumed that our candidate's ethnicity would keep him from, say, bombing brown children in foreign countries like Yemen? To the benefit of the Saudis who pumped billions of dollars of dark money via Citizens United into his election? Is this the same HOPE that our Democratic president would put the banksters who crashed our economy in prison? He didn't stick with that promise, of course. Instead he gave them multibillion dollar bailouts even larger than what George Bush had handed them. They were flush with cash as they then proceeded to steal properties all over our country, especially from first time homeowners, many of whom were black Americans. Our historic first black president presided over African Americans losing 50% of their net worth to the very people who crashed our economy. Luckily for those banksters, they had the foresight to bankroll Obama's election. Along with the Saudis and other oil interests. And the Left barely batted an eye. Once you vote for someone you HOPE will be your hero, it's very hard to believe they are working against your interests. Those who did complain about the theft from middle and working class Americans into the hands of the ultra wealthy were called ... You guessed it: racist.
So do we now have to spend four more years while strong women like you Mariah carry water for Kamala Harris as she continues the destruction of the legacy our generation built? Will you call me sexist when I complain that she is removing academic funding from schools that allow males to beat the crap out of females in girls sport? Will you pretend it's A-OK to degrade the quality of education because she's primarily hitting red state schools? You know, those schools where we had to rely on Republicans to pass laws keeping males out of female sports and showers. Because we couldn't trust our Democrats to do it. Unfortunately, our elected Democrats are completely captured by transgender ideology and those who profit from this abuse of females and mutilation of the bodies and minds of our youth. We know that because every sing House Democrat voted against the Save Women’s Sports Act of 2023, a simple bill that would have protected female sports by keeping males out of them. Every. Single. Democrat. Wow, I guess their strategey is to just HOPE we don't notice that our side is destroying female sports. And then pick a candidate without requiring her to run in the Democratic primary where she might actually have to debate the Democrat's REVERSAL of Title IX. Brilliant.
Get a clue. All woman who are fighting for girls' and women's sex-based rights should take a hard look at how the Democratic Party has fooled them. You should all put the following question to our current corporate-chosen candidate who was (by design) not in the Democratic primary race:
Kamala, will you rescind the Democratic Party's REVERSAL of Title IX?
But be forewarned. She won't answer. She won't admit it's been reversed. She'll blather on about how it's just a minor change, meant to be “inclusive” of those sweet little transgender girls who just want to play with their friends. “So stop being so mean you big transphobe!”
Kamala is on the side that prioritizes male rights above female. And she's not going to show her cards until after it's too late to stop her.
I just love this Mariah. Not only because I could absolutely see you in this scene, but because I love watching little and young girls for this very reason. I have talked to Rich about it, sitting outside waiting for a table at a restaurant for instance, watching a a girl-child prance, dance, turn cartwheels, and talk to herself, completely entertained with her own world. The unvarnished wildness of young girls is mesmerizing to me. 💜