When: day after Election Day // Weather: sad // Real life: work and feeling things
I usually don’t have a lot of feelings. They tend to get in the way of my thinking carefully about the most reasonable way to react to something. When I do have feelings, I find it exhausting and I don’t like to talk about them much. As you can imagine, last Wednesday was a tiring and quiet day for this fembot (that’s feminist robot, BTW). Being unaccustomed to emotions, I knew I was upset but it took me awhile to figure out why. Finally, I realized it was the soul-crushing idea that a woman can work her whole life for something, have all the best qualifications, do almost everything right (and apologize profusely for the things she did wrong), and she can still lose to a man whose own supporters admit is borderline insane. He will be forgiven, and she won’t.
What really got the tears flowing for me was when I thought about how great Hillary could have been as a president, and now no one will ever get to know. I’m optimistic that I will live to see a woman make it to the White House, but will my mom and the other women who remember when girls weren’t allowed to wear pants (or pantsuits) to school? I just couldn’t believe we were so close and then the dream came crashing down. FEELINGS.
And then…then there was the concession speech. Oh man. It was like she read my mind and spoke directly to me: “Buck up, Sarah.” OK, that was paraphrasing. It was more like this: “To all the women, and especially the young women, who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion. I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but some day someone will and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.”
She really got me with that speech. She got me right in that spot where my heart should be. It didn’t solve everything, but it was exactly what I needed to hear on Wednesday. And this is what I wore: pink because girl power, black because I’m in mourning for what could have been, and flowers because the world will keep turning.
(P.S. I don’t know why people say expressing your feelings is healthy – all I did was drip snot in my Ruth Bader Ginsburg mug.)
similar Dress // similar Sweater // similar Shoes // Bag* // similar Ring // Earrings // Sunglasses
*Bag purchased with gift card provided courtesy of Shopbop.
