hey all, this is me, kelly, i wrote a speech for the speak off at laval which i'm really proud of, anyway, here it is
THE STRENGTH OF A WOMAN
I am a woman. I can do what I please. I am the embodiment of strength. I am part of a club we call womankind and the members are admired for their power. I can smoke cigars, drive cars, go to bars and when I come home I can watch football or Oprah and be no less feminine either way. I am a hunter, I bring home the meat.
Honorable judges, fellow speakers, ladies and gentlemen: I'm here today to speak to you about a topic I hold close to my heart. I'm here to tell you about "The Strength of a Woman."
I always knew that women were amiable creatures, capable of anything they set their minds to, but I never realized some females in the world lack this knowledge. It's amazing to look out into an ocean of strong girls who have no idea how wonderful they really are. Well today, I hope to change that, even if it's just a little.
I remember the first time I ever realized a woman could do anything a man could. I was 7, and at my grandmother's house. Out of the corner of my eye I spied a tiny ant making it's journey across her dining room table. I quickly pulled myself into a horizontal stance on top of my chair, shivering like a newborn pup. But before I could let out a yelp for my pop to come destroy the pest my grandmother brought her bare hand down upon that insidious monster like the wrath of God was invoking her very arm. And just as easily as she had destroyed the enemy she looked up at me and said,
"Do you want a cinnamon bun?"
I guess that's what gives ladies that extra "umph". They can do anything and often they do everything. They're beautiful and strong, elegant and ferocious. They have the ability to be independent yet empathetic, to give and give and rarely expect to get anything back in return. They are roses, but they have thorns. Charlotte Whitton once said, "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be though half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult." I think she was a smart lady. Upon reading the biography of Dr. Sigmund Freud I came across a problem that plagued the genius, he said,
"Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great question that has never been answered: What does a woman want?" Well, Doc, I hate to tell you, but, I got your answer right here and it didn't take me thirty years: What a woman wants is....everything. And no, I don't mean in the pretentious I-wanna-be-Ivana-Trump-and-have-everything-fall-into-my-way. I mean, we want to work for what we obtain, we want respect. We want to have a family as well a career.
I know there are a few people in this audience right now thinking,
"Man, what is she talking about? She's got it good. She has every right of a guy, does she really have to try and convince us about something already implied." And don't get me wrong, I'm not doing any man-bashing in a feeble attempt to raise the confidence of women. I'm a big fan of men, I mean, we wouldn't be here without them. But, you see, society hasn't always placed us on the same pedestal as our gentlemen friends. Think about how far we've come in this world, we went from an existence without rights or privileges to an equal stance with our male counterparts. To reshape a country, an existence, that doesn't even recognize you as a human being not only takes, strength and courage, but a hell of a lot of perseverance. Ladies hauled themselves up by their bootlaces and shook the country they knew to be their home. We asked the world to listen to us, and when it refused we raised our voices so we couldn't be ignored. We asked the world to include us and when it said "No" we molded it into something more acceptable to us...or should I say humane. Before Suffragists took action it was known that, "it (was) illegal for lunatics, drunkards or women to vote", hmm, isn't that nice. I would have been held in the same esteem as a "lunatic", as would have 50% of this room. Nor were they considered a "person". Women, educated women, strong women, that shared the same feelings, the same intellect, and the same lives as their husbands, were not people.
What makes us strong is our right of choice. I don't have to be the stay at home mom, but I can, and maybe I want to. I don't have to get married, but if I fall in love, then perhaps. I don't have to cook supper but ...actually, I think I'll stay out of that area, you wouldn't want to taste my cooking. But my point is, whatever I choose to do with my life, it is my choice and I will work diligently to be all that I can be. Women have options these days, we don't have to cry and pout to get what we want, we don't win by looking pretty, we don't have to play the good girl to reach our accomplishments and we don't have to do the dishes to earn respect. Intelligence ladies! That's where it's at! Everything we need to know comes from here (gesture to head) and here (gesture to heart). We play our rules, on a field that we make for ourselves, against the opponents we choose. But the hardest opponent, and the one we usually have to face is ourselves.
You'd all be amazed at the hardships females these days have to overcome. Another sign of our undying resilience. Actually, I take that back all of you wouldn't be amazed, in fact, many of you are probably fighting the same battles. In the fight to improve ourselves, to measure up to men we have developed a pessimistic and sometimes oppressing way of critiquing ourselves. Women constantly are diagnosed with the estrogen induced disease I like to call the not-enough syndrome. Girls have a tendency these days to see themselves as not pretty enough, not thin enough, not strong enough, not fast enough, not good enough, not smart enough... just not enough. They are constantly surrounded by images of what they believe they should be and, in an everlasting struggle to be more, end up feeling less and less. They lose sense of who they are and instead focus on what they aren't. I know, I've been there, and I'm willing to bet dollars to dimes many of you ladies have been there too. But you know what? We are still here.
We're still here. We are still going strong. In this day and age, it's a struggle just to be, everyday is a fight that we overcome. We deal with everything life throws at us; we deal with the past and present and are responsible for the future as women; we have to deal with push up bras and the most uncomfortable shoes known to man (or woman as the case may be); we have cynicism slung at us everyday; we are laughed at on a regular basis and WE ARE STILL HERE. You wouldn't believe how many times people have brushed me off by saying, "oh, she's just a girl". I am not JUST a girl, I AM a girl. I don't say it as a settlement, I wave it like a banner. I am proud of who I am, I am proud of who I represent, I am proud of how far my ladies have come in this world and next time I hear "oh, she's just a girl", I won't get upset, I won't bicker or cry, I'll smile cause I'll know the difference.
Just a girl? I look out into this audience and I can see some pretty admirable faces who are "just girls". I see a future doctor, a lawyer, a teacher. I can see a writer and an athlete. Think of who we are in this world: we're reverends and senators, artists, housekeepers, soldiers. We go anywhere from Buddhist nuns to astrophysicists. We are astronauts! And at the same time we're mothers and grandmothers; daughters and sisters. If that isn't strength I don't know what is.
I'm going to leave you now and hope that maybe something I have said has influenced you. Ladies, when you go home tonight don't look in the mirror and think, "pft, look at me", instead go home and proudly say, "Look at me!". And gentlemen, go home tonight and give your mothers, or wives, or girlfriends, or sisters a hug, because you think you have an idea of what it's like, but you couldn't even comprehend. Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did...but she did it backwards and in high heels. Thank you.
