When I was young there were no women on Capitol Hill or in the Fortune 500 board rooms.  Today things have changed.  Today there are women in positions of leadership in government, business, health, law, science and education.  We are nowhere close to equality in numbers, yet we are present in most areas of power.  Just like the Virginia Slim commercials from when I was growing up said, “We have come a long way, baby!”

And just like those cigarette ads did not tell me–a 14-year-old girl–a lot of other things then, so does our complacency now that we have come a long way not convey the inexplicable long way we still need to go.  Today, I was looking at an online Forbes article about a Harvard-backed start up.  At the end of the article were a number of advertisements one of which was titled “Hottest Female Democratic Politicians.”  I am still in shock.  Did I really just see that?  I was going to put the link here to prove to you it was real, but I just can’t–because then more people will click on it and what we fear to be true will grow rather than diminish.

We must look for ways to instill in ourselves and in our youth a value of the feminine that makes this type of vandalism of the feminine soul a thing of the past.  It isn’t enough to be a women in politics. We must be able to be fully feminine and yet still strong; sexual rather than a-sexual yet demand not to be considered a sex object; decisive and forceful and not considered a bitch.   These are things that cannot be changed by laws and threats.  These are attitudes that must be replaced one by one by attitudes empowering women and men.  I plan to look at ways in myself that I help perpetuate this type of thing.  I would love to hear your thoughts?