Go Patricia Arquette!

My first thought while watching tonight’s Oscars was that J.K. Simmons had the best speech: Call your mom. Call your dad.

Now, I say it’s Patricia Arquette. She wins for best speech, putting it out there for women and equal pay. “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all!” Go Patricia!

It just makes me sad that so many of today’s young women see feminism as a four-letter word. Why do women have to wear outrageously high heels to be seen as “powerful”? Heels deform our bodies and bring us pain. Why do so many young women think they have to flaunt their bodies to be valued? Why did claiming control of our sexuality mean women now have to have indiscriminate sex or violent sex?

When I was in college, one of my English professors, Winona Winkler Wendth, gave me  a copy of Gloria Steinem’s essay, “If Men Could Menstruate.” Thank you Professor Wendth! Ms. Steinem said, in part: “In short, the characteristics of the powerful, whatever they may be, are thought to be better than the characteristics of the powerless—and logic has nothing to do with it.”

Ms. Steinem ended her essay, with words that, unfortunately, still ring true: “… the power justifications could probably go on forever.

“If we let them.”

No more justifications. The time is long past. It’s not just time for wage equality, but time for women to know that just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you have to.