CONTINUED FROM YESTERDAY--
Macie's slanted smile came back to me when trying several days later to comb out that mass of curls. In the end, it appeared that more hair was in the wastebasket than on my aching head. In the hour it took to remove the seemingly endless tangles, I finally realized what woman's liberation was all about.
It was about freedom from beehive hairdos, padded bras, waste-tight poodle skirts, heavy makeup and uptight, girdled attitudes to a more carefree space which fostered straight, long hair, jeans and bandanna tops, hippie beads and a let-it-all-hang-out attitude accentuated in many cased by drugs, booze and sex. In that environment, contraceptive management became very important as did higher education.
Losing the teased hair and the rest of it was only the first phase of the woman's lib movement, I thought. As we raised our daughters, we brought them up to be anything they wanted to be with big brains, open hearts and a can-do attitude. Where the first woman's lib bunch believed that men were holding them back, our daughters knew that only they could hold themselves back. We raised no victims.
Some may not like Sarah Palin, but she is a product of this new era when women can be anything they want and are only limited by their own beliefs and attitudes. They can even have sixties-style hair with eighties-era glasses and a 21st century high-powered career and get away with it. Palin is joined by countless numbers of equally or even more talented women of every political persuasion in different but similar situations the world over. As a group, they are blazing the trail for their daughters and all daughters to come.
But that's not all, I thought. The true liberation of women will most certainly be part of the next dynamic phase and a cornerstone of the coming world change. In that enlightened time, our collective, global daughters will not be constrained in any way because of the intrepid mothers who went before them. It will be a time when "each diverse human gift will find a fitting place" to harken back to Margaret Mead's words because the male and female will know they are actually two sides of one reversible cloth.
And just think, some of these girls may look back on the symbol of Sarah Palin hair as one of the first signs that the next door toward even greater human liberation was opening. Who would have thought a simple up-do could take us to such heights?
Of Note: For those less than enamored with Sarah Palin, this essay on daughters is in no way a political statement. Rather she and her famous hair are used as a symbol for the equalization of the sexes happening right before our eyes. Slowly but surely women worldwide are finding their collective voice. It is the unbalanced nature of power that has brought us to where we are now. Both sexes have participated--there are truly no victims here. But we are now moving toward balance or more precisely, rhythm. Inertia, movement/chaos, rhythm. It is the inevitable cycle of Life. I took this reflective shot yesterday standing on the Namekagon River bridge adjacent to our property. Makes you want to just jump into the clouds, doesn't it?
Today's Weather Report: Really overcast this morning and in the low forties. A chilly low forties at that. Looks like rain any minute. The forecast is for a freeze tonight--the first of the season. The painting that needs doing may have to wait until next spring if this keeps up.
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