What's in a name? A whole hell of a lot, apparently. I recently decided I was interested in beginning to blog, if only to have my thoughts down on paper, to have a space in which to examine the decisions and questions which occupy so much of my time and energy. I also wanted to talk. I'm not blogging for a soapbox, really, although I'm sure some of my content (probably a lot, actually), will be political. I'm not blogging because I need an online journal, or because I want to spend more time on the computer - I get that at work.I did decide to blog for a couple of reasons, after a good amount of justifying it to myself. It's not that I think my life is particularly interesting, per se, or that my writing style is notably individualistic or beguiling. The primary reason I wanted to start "Fight Like a Girl" is because I like to talk about life, and I am looking for some kindred spirits. I like to think about why we do what we do, how we interact with our goals, dreams, passions, and the obstacles to achieving them. I talk, shout, argue, debate, agree, disagree and think constantly about the choices we make in society, the way the small, day-to-day things we do can sometimes change our lives profoundly. I overanalyze. I might be a little academic. I'm extremely human. I make lots of mistakes.
It seems fitting to mention here that when I say I overanalyze, I don't (think I) do it to a ridiculous extent. I am busy, young, happy, outgoing, outdoorsy, etc. I try lots of things, I'm not particularly inhibited, and I am sufficiently past many of our society's collective neuroses and obsessions that I won't utilize my blogspot as an "I'm so fat..." place to complain.
I might, however, talk about my feelings on women and musculature, my interest in the natural fluctuation of my body during a year which has been filled with extremes of activity and inactivity, or realizations about the way other people perceive me. That I might do.
So...with that I start, I guess, and we'll see if anyone else wants to share my space, if you will, and talk a bit about life, love, feminism, work, passion, ecology, science, urban vs. rural, western New York, global climate change, latin america, social justice, good books, bad politics, and a host of other topics yet to be seen...
In the meantime, let me explain the name. The question, "what's in a name?" was of particular importance to me not so much this year, but last, when I was still in college. During the last year or two of my undergrad I participated in the creation of a new, student-run newspaper on my campus. We had a mainstream paper, of course, but it was slowly being co-opted by the Campus Republican student group, who saw the overall campus apathy towards the paper as an opportunity to step in, take the reins, and get their word out. Uh-huh.
A year after their fateful decision my "progressive" colleagues and I decided that it was time to retake the media, on the only scale that was available to us; Think Globally, Act Locally...right?
We started a paper. A 'zine, if you will. Somewhere between 12 and 18 pages of 8.5 x 14" photocopies stapled in the middle and folded in half, produced en masse in the basement photocopy office of our tiny liberal arts college, and hand-distributed at the dinner hour to folks entering the central dining venue on our campus.
People were thrilled with the idea - it went over fabulously. Before we knew it, before it was more than a casual proposal, "Maybe we should start our own paper?", we had writers, we had ideas for stories, we had support (both financial and otherwise) and we had a meeting date, time, strategy. Recruitment posters. Everything.
What we didn't have (of course), was a name. It was "the paper," "our paper," the "progressive students' paper"...our little feat of resistance. It was our baby, but it was unnamed.
And so, in a strategy session that took place on the musty, bargain-basement-carpet floor of my cooperative (euphemistically nicknamed The Farm Side, as a harkening back to better days in Western New York), approximately seven of us sat in an uneven circle, spread between folded out futon, mismatched chairs, the edge of my desk and of course, on that carpet, trying to hammer out a name. Ani played in the background, I took notes on the very same five-year-old laptop that now overheats in my lap, and we threw them out there. Names. By the tens, if not hundreds. We wanted resistance, something with pep, fight, provocative, interesting, intellectual but not aloof. Cannonball? Slingshot? Trebuchet? Provocateur? We were social justice activists trying to start a paper about...about what? Ourselves, really. Our community. Our view. The way we saw the world. Everything.
One of our number, the artist who had first proposed the paper, sat a little to the side pilfering paper from the print tray of my printer/scanner/photocopier number, sketching out possible logos and designs to accompany our many candidate names.
As the processed continued, we got a little goofy. Names were coming slower, there was no agreement and fierce dissent over the ones we did have. Hours had passed, but we had to resolve it "today". We were ready to go, the paper had to get started. This was the day it would be titled.
We eventually did pick a name. After agonizing for awhile we dropped the antagonistic edge, the social justice current, and went for something a little more fun. A tad fluffier, but perhaps more attention-getting. We designed a cool logo, made six-hundred copies, and watch hundreds of students circulate and talk about our "newspaper." It was a rush.
My own process in deriving a name for this blog was a bit similar. I don't want to get into all the nitty gritty of the hows and whys and more importantly, perhaps, the why nots...but I had a lot of ideas. Song lyrics, Ani Difranco my muse, were tempting. So was poetry. Cliche abounded. Creativity plummeted. There was the possibility that my little experiment with blogging was about to fail miserably, or that I would become a superlative feminist. My blogging role model, the first blog I ever read (which persuaded me that there was more to blogs than I had given them credit for) was Bad Feminist: http://badfeminist.blogspot.com/. (I think she rocks)
It wasn't that I wanted to be Bad Feminist, or that I was particularly interested in blogging - the thing about it was that it made me feel less alone in the world and in my view of it. Feminists are sassy, fun, smart, interesting, sexy and cool people. Women, men, and every gender identity in between. Spunky, brilliant, and chill. Finding my brand of feminism on the web was a little like finally tracking down the progressive kids at my preppy-yet-lib arts college - "WHEW....someone who gets me."
So, sure, I could be the Good Feminist. The Happy Feminist. Feisty Feminist (the last had some appeal, I do admit)...but I didn't want to build off of someone else's ideas, and I didn't want to accidentally-on-purpose borrow anyone's intellectual property, either.
Thus, I Fight Like A Girl. And, it's true...I do.
I want to write about feminism, first and foremost, but I want to talk about love and sports and science and passion and politics and social justice and the world...and on all of these topics, my perspective, my experiences have been colored by my experiences as a woman. I find that each new political challenge, each soccer game I play in, everyday in my now pretty mellow and day-to-day existence is seen, felt, touched, smelled and tasted from a feminist vantage point - and I like it.
I have a lot of fight in me, a lot of energy, a lot of passion. I am willing to fight for what I believe in, for what I care about, and on behalf of my beliefs. I fight, and I happily do it my own way - like a girl.
And so...we begin.
