I dedicate my song today to my nephew, Marcus Thorpe, who lives in Stoke-on-Trent, England with his wife, Ellie, and their 6-year-old son, Jaxon. Enjoy your special day, Marcus. Uncle Billy and Sheila xx
I also wish a happy birthday to two Facebook friends. Happy birthday to Mahboob Nawas who lives in Keighley, West Yorkshire, England, and Paul Dower who lives in Waterford, Ireland. Enjoy your special day and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is ‘Girl, you’ll Be a Woman Soon’. This song was written by American musician Neil Diamond, whose recording of it on ‘Bang Records’ reached Number 10 on the ’US Pop Singles’ chart in 1967. The song enjoyed a second life when it appeared on the 1994 Pulp Fiction soundtrack, performed by rock band ‘Urge Overkill’.
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Womanhood’ is frequently complained about by men and women, but of one thing, there surely is no disagreement, ‘being a woman is hard’. It has always been so. There is too much expected of her, and there is always too much to do. How can it possibly be otherwise in a man-made world?
Take any day of the week for instance, unless a woman takes it upon herself to let her presence be known, too infrequently, she will not even be noticed by male company, unless she is dressed to please man’s taste and whet man’s appetite, thereby making her feminine presence impossible to ignore as a sexual object.
When I was starting my career as a Probation Officer in my thirties, I had a colleague who not only helped rid myself of a lot of the prejudicial crap that I still unknowingly carried around in my bag of sexual discrimination. I came to respect her views enormously. She was the daughter of a black American and white Wolverhampton mother, and although she was born and reared in Wolverhampton, she had been steeped in the history of American slavery, I don’t think she realized how ‘black’ she came across. Her name was Cath, and she essentially taught me that young girls do not have to grow up to be damsels in distress, always waiting for a knight in shining armour to come along and save the day. She would also occasionally remind me that all beautiful princesses have long blonde hair.
Cath had mothered two children, one boy, and one girl. She had a good university degree and had married a black American university lecturer. Being the early 1970s, she was in many ways fearless to illustrate racist behaviour and call it out whenever/wherever she encountered it. Many office colleagues found her views too radical and generally avoided her. I recall her once telling me that she had no intention of ever experiencing having the racist behaviour displayed towards her children by any white citizen who believed themselves to be better. Neither was she going to dress her daughter down to cover her black beauty. Like all parent’s daughters, she would be allowed to grow up as their princess, but Cath would make sure that she went into the battle between the racist and the sexist armed with much more than lipstick and a combe. Her daughter could be a princess, and she saw it as her task to make her a warrior princess.
In later years when I became a mentor or tutor to female Probation Officers, I would always tell them at the start of our supervisory relationship that what I would teach and advise them was controlled by the belief that they entered the Probation Service, being treated differently to their male Probation-Officer colleagues and they would have to be tougher, smarter and use everything at their disposal to stay on equal terms. I know this sounds terrible today, but it was the way it was then. A woman Probation Officer doing court duties at the time, and arriving at court dressed improperly (not wearing a dress or a fashionable skirt would be sent back to the probation office and not return until she was properly attired.
Much of the sexist behaviour, like the racist images we might carry at the back of our minds, had been in the heads of the male, white, ruling classes for centuries and was not ever going to disappear overnight through the re-education of a few males playing lip service. My own greatest inhibition to changing my own sexist views involved the display of behaviour I had readily shown until I approached forty years of age. I had always enjoyed being in female company and in truth, I knelt at the altar of a woman’s beauty. I suppose that the main difference during my early years of greater awareness was to recognise the beauty of the woman in more than the physical attractiveness of her body form, her waist-line and the shape of her legs. As I grew older, I found that women who are less concerned about the aging process of their body than their mind far more compelling to be with.
I have always held a secret admiration for females who want to be a powerful woman, and a level-headed businesswoman when they want to influence the boardroom, and yet knows how to play the role of the little woman or the sexy wife when it is to her benefit. I have always felt that a woman’s most powerful traits are her intuition and her femininity, and if used to best advantage, the men in her life will always be playing ‘catch up’. Margaret Thatcher was the master and mistress of this role.
Yes, being a woman will always be hard, as there is so much for them to do, and so many expectations to be satisfied. They have stereotypes to break, along with the balls of men whenever required. They have jobs to excel at, families to care for, lives to lead, friends to hang out with, and overall, a world to run from behind the cushy armchairs of men. It is so easy for a woman to get lost in her own multiple tasks, making sure that everything gets done, they forget to look to the women who paved the way for such awesomeness; the Caths of the world who did not hang around for men to give them approval or power; they took it themselves! Cath knew that behind every successful woman stands a tribe of successful and independent women who have each other’s back. Let the men try to tear down the woman’s reputation should they wish to waste their energy, for the more they pull down, the more that women will build back up.
I will leave the last words to be said about womanhood to be by Amy Schumer, an American stand-up comedian, and actress of the New Millennium. Amy said,” If I say I’m beautiful…if I say I’m strong, you will not determine my story; I will.”
So, hang in there, women of the world. Take what is yours because if you hang around waiting for any man to grant it to you, you will wait in vain. Seize your destiny, and validate your own actions. Tell your own story. And if you are wise, you will look the challenge in the eye, smile wryly, and wink as you dispel a silent fart in the direction of a group of smelly men.
Love and peace
Bill xxx.
I also wish a happy birthday to two Facebook friends. Happy birthday to Mahboob Nawas who lives in Keighley, West Yorkshire, England, and Paul Dower who lives in Waterford, Ireland. Enjoy your special day and thank you for being my Facebook friend.
My song today is ‘Girl, you’ll Be a Woman Soon’. This song was written by American musician Neil Diamond, whose recording of it on ‘Bang Records’ reached Number 10 on the ’US Pop Singles’ chart in 1967. The song enjoyed a second life when it appeared on the 1994 Pulp Fiction soundtrack, performed by rock band ‘Urge Overkill’.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Womanhood’ is frequently complained about by men and women, but of one thing, there surely is no disagreement, ‘being a woman is hard’. It has always been so. There is too much expected of her, and there is always too much to do. How can it possibly be otherwise in a man-made world?
Take any day of the week for instance, unless a woman takes it upon herself to let her presence be known, too infrequently, she will not even be noticed by male company, unless she is dressed to please man’s taste and whet man’s appetite, thereby making her feminine presence impossible to ignore as a sexual object.
When I was starting my career as a Probation Officer in my thirties, I had a colleague who not only helped rid myself of a lot of the prejudicial crap that I still unknowingly carried around in my bag of sexual discrimination. I came to respect her views enormously. She was the daughter of a black American and white Wolverhampton mother, and although she was born and reared in Wolverhampton, she had been steeped in the history of American slavery, I don’t think she realized how ‘black’ she came across. Her name was Cath, and she essentially taught me that young girls do not have to grow up to be damsels in distress, always waiting for a knight in shining armour to come along and save the day. She would also occasionally remind me that all beautiful princesses have long blonde hair.
Cath had mothered two children, one boy, and one girl. She had a good university degree and had married a black American university lecturer. Being the early 1970s, she was in many ways fearless to illustrate racist behaviour and call it out whenever/wherever she encountered it. Many office colleagues found her views too radical and generally avoided her. I recall her once telling me that she had no intention of ever experiencing having the racist behaviour displayed towards her children by any white citizen who believed themselves to be better. Neither was she going to dress her daughter down to cover her black beauty. Like all parent’s daughters, she would be allowed to grow up as their princess, but Cath would make sure that she went into the battle between the racist and the sexist armed with much more than lipstick and a combe. Her daughter could be a princess, and she saw it as her task to make her a warrior princess.
In later years when I became a mentor or tutor to female Probation Officers, I would always tell them at the start of our supervisory relationship that what I would teach and advise them was controlled by the belief that they entered the Probation Service, being treated differently to their male Probation-Officer colleagues and they would have to be tougher, smarter and use everything at their disposal to stay on equal terms. I know this sounds terrible today, but it was the way it was then. A woman Probation Officer doing court duties at the time, and arriving at court dressed improperly (not wearing a dress or a fashionable skirt would be sent back to the probation office and not return until she was properly attired.
Much of the sexist behaviour, like the racist images we might carry at the back of our minds, had been in the heads of the male, white, ruling classes for centuries and was not ever going to disappear overnight through the re-education of a few males playing lip service. My own greatest inhibition to changing my own sexist views involved the display of behaviour I had readily shown until I approached forty years of age. I had always enjoyed being in female company and in truth, I knelt at the altar of a woman’s beauty. I suppose that the main difference during my early years of greater awareness was to recognise the beauty of the woman in more than the physical attractiveness of her body form, her waist-line and the shape of her legs. As I grew older, I found that women who are less concerned about the aging process of their body than their mind far more compelling to be with.
I have always held a secret admiration for females who want to be a powerful woman, and a level-headed businesswoman when they want to influence the boardroom, and yet knows how to play the role of the little woman or the sexy wife when it is to her benefit. I have always felt that a woman’s most powerful traits are her intuition and her femininity, and if used to best advantage, the men in her life will always be playing ‘catch up’. Margaret Thatcher was the master and mistress of this role.
Yes, being a woman will always be hard, as there is so much for them to do, and so many expectations to be satisfied. They have stereotypes to break, along with the balls of men whenever required. They have jobs to excel at, families to care for, lives to lead, friends to hang out with, and overall, a world to run from behind the cushy armchairs of men. It is so easy for a woman to get lost in her own multiple tasks, making sure that everything gets done, they forget to look to the women who paved the way for such awesomeness; the Caths of the world who did not hang around for men to give them approval or power; they took it themselves! Cath knew that behind every successful woman stands a tribe of successful and independent women who have each other’s back. Let the men try to tear down the woman’s reputation should they wish to waste their energy, for the more they pull down, the more that women will build back up.
I will leave the last words to be said about womanhood to be by Amy Schumer, an American stand-up comedian, and actress of the New Millennium. Amy said,” If I say I’m beautiful…if I say I’m strong, you will not determine my story; I will.”
So, hang in there, women of the world. Take what is yours because if you hang around waiting for any man to grant it to you, you will wait in vain. Seize your destiny, and validate your own actions. Tell your own story. And if you are wise, you will look the challenge in the eye, smile wryly, and wink as you dispel a silent fart in the direction of a group of smelly men.
Love and peace
Bill xxx.
