Daily Skiff

"To be able to paint their nails and break them too; to embrace whatever it might be that makes them girls in a way that will sustain rather than constrain them," writes Peggy Orenstein, is the hope of any mother, including herself.

Orenstein's article "Girls will be Girls" ran in Sunday's New York Times online. She begins by saying that Hillary Clinton isn't the only woman trying to find the perfect blend of feminism and femininity. Even the mothers who don't support Clinton, Orenstein says, feel her conflict.

At the end of the day, every girl dreams of being a man's perfect woman. We want to please them, but we aren't sure where to draw the line. We have to be tough and like sports and cars, but we also have to be caring, sweet and feminine.

"To be able to paint their nails and break them too," describes our feelings as women perfectly.

Sometimes women wonder how tough they should be in front men. We don't want to intimidate them, but we also don't want them to think we are frail and insecure. We have to be independent, but not too independent, strong but not too strong.

"Perhaps the shift from purchasing power to purchase empowerment was inevitable: once marriage and motherhood ceased to be the bulwarks of female identity, what remained to distinguish us from men beyond our God-given ability to accessorize?" Orenstein writes.

We have to laugh, but we also see the extreme truth in what she says. Fifty years ago, women were around to marry and carry children for men. I can say times have changed with confidence.

Today women are empowered - we are independent and we aren't afraid to step on a man's shoes in the corporate world.

Although discrimination will never end completely, most companies have codes of ethics that don't allow women to be treated differently or to be any less apt to get a promotion.

At any rate, women are unique creatures made by God that men will never understand. Instead of following instructions that tell us how to dress, how to walk and what to say or not to say in order to impress a man, we should embrace our differences and femininity.

Do what feels good to you and if a man doesn't agree, I promise there is one out there that will accept you for your true self, not one that you made up from reading a magazine article on what men want.

Try this - instead of reading books and magazines to unveil secrets about our womanhood, let's join together and each write our own book, that way we can choose for to be type of woman we want.

Marissa Warms is a senior advertising/public relations major from Irving.

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