young women
BEING A YOUNG girl can be confusing. Perhaps you’ll be adored but not respected. Admired, but only if you suppress your inner longings and become the perfect vessel for your parents’ expectations. Silenced girls can grow to be silent women, stripped of agency, never taught that true power comes from deep within.
“The first time I read the New Testament as a little girl, I broke out in hives,” writes feminist theologian Meggan Watterson in her latest book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself. “With little girl clarity, I was finely attuned to detect inequity.” Into adulthood Watterson couldn’t shake the feeling that her received understanding of God was incomplete. Her understanding of God as a “love that liberates” simply didn’t align with the patriarchal and oppressive power structures she witnessed in the church. Then she discovered the story of Saint Thecla, a young woman who, after hearing the Apostle Paul preach, converted to Christianity and joined him in ministry.
The Girl Who Baptized Herself is a blend of memoir, historical analysis of early Christianity, and fictionalized inner narratives for Thecla. The story begins in Thecla’s bedroom, when she hears Paul’s preaching through her window. Thecla, born into wealth and status in Iconium (in modern-day Turkey), has lived a privileged life. When we meet her, she is soon to marry a powerful nobleman. But as she listens to Paul share the gospel, she sits motionless for three days and three nights. There is an inner shift; Thecla realizes that no matter how beautiful her life may be, a gilded cage is still a cage.
One might not expect a blog post from a minister and young father in Houston, Texas to spark widespread outcry over Victoria’s Secret’s spring break-themed ad campaign. But Rev. Evan Dolive's passionate defense of his young daughter’s sense of self-worth went viral on social network sites, landed him on CNN, and wound up being used in high school classrooms in the U.S. and Canada, all in a matter of days. The point: the Victoria’s Secret “Bright Young Things” campaign — depicting young women on Spring Break toto sell underwear with explicitly suggestive messages, with the accompanying verbalized sentiment that young teens dream of being like college girls (i.e., buying from the PINK line)— was objectifying, offensive, and obnoxious.
Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed more than one month ago, so why, you may ask, am I just now penning a blog about her historic appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court? The answer is easy -- I was scared. I was scared of offending members of the SMA community because of Justice Sotomayor's position on various hot-button issues.