You do not have to be

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE

YOUR MOTHER UNLESS SHE IS

WHO YOU WANT TO BE. YOU DO NOT HAVE

TO BE YOUR MOTHER'S MOTHER, OR YOUR

MOTHER'S MOTHER'S MOTHER, OR EVEN

YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S MOTHER ON YOUR

FATHER'S SIDE. YOU MAY INHERIT THEIR

CHINS OR THEIR HIPS OR THEIR EYES, BUT

YOU ARE NOT DESTINED TO BECOME THE

WOMEN WHO CAME BEFORE YOU, YOU ARE

NOT DESTINED TO LIVE THEIR LIVES. SO IF

YOU INHERIT SOMETHING, INHERIT THEIR

STRENGTH. IF YOU INHERIT SOMETHING, IN-

HERIT THEIR RESILIENCE. BECAUSE THE ONLY

PERSON YOU ARE DESTINED TO BECOME IS

THE PERSON YOU DECIDE TO BE.

Remember P.E. class?

I just finished watching Art&Copy and they did a quick piece on the Nike women's campaign in the 1990s (remember all those chipmunk cheeked girls saying, 'if you let me play sports'?) and they flashed briefly some of the print ads from that campaign, of which I have the vaguest memories. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I found a website with the text from all those ads and I am totally in love with them. Worth sharing and more to come:


Remember prison ball and jumping jacks and

how your P.E. teacher made you try to climb that rope that

hung from the ceiling and you never could, never?

Or how you had to do chin-ups and see how

long you could hang and you could only hang something

like 2.5 seconds but that wasn't good enough,

oh no,

you had to hang something like 65 seconds

and you could never do that and thank God it was only

pass/no pass and you got a pass just for showing up and

trying. Which was good.


But when you got older.

And P.E. teachers got smarter. Because now

you got graded. You got graded and at least once you got

the dreaded C or the equally dreaded C+ and there went

your whole grade-point average and speaking of average

that's what you were now: plain-old-just-mediocre-better-luck-

next-time-see-ya-later-average and you thought

Now wait just a gosh darn minute who,

exactly, is average? And the answer came back ringing loud

and clear over the top of that chin-up bar: Nobody.

You're not average because average is a lie.

You're not average because average means stuck and

you're not stuck, you're moving and becoming and trying

and you're climbing over every bit of fear or opinion or "no

you can't do that" you've ever heard.

So you scoff at average. You laugh. You

guffaw. And you run and you play and you move and the

more you tell your body that it is a well-oiled machine the

more it starts to believe you.


And then one night you have the craziest dream.

You're in the middle of your old gym. Your P.E.

teacher is standing there. She is grinning. There is a rope

before you. So you climb it. And there is absolutely no

place to go but up.