Woman Power: Tips & Tricks

When I stumbled upon this photo of my sassy younger self, there was really no denying it - the pic had woman power written all over it. *Dayum*.  Naturally, I asked my inner child what tips and tricks for achieving woman power could be drawn from the candid scene for the benefit of womankind. In no particular order, some tricks are as follows:

*Cool way of saying 'damn', as an exclamation of peculiar respect or admiration, not as condemnation to hell.

Exhibit A: 'Being myself'

1. B urself.  (Exhibit A) If you don't know who you are yet, don't panic. It will hit you one day like a fabulous shot on the beach.

2. If you don't feel like shaving your legs, don't. It won't make you any better or worse at building sandcastles or catching waves than you already are.

3. Wear blue and green, without a colour in between. Oh you heard me. Defy those societally imposed parameters of fashion and life. Be seen! Green because obviously you're a dedicated Irish lass and it brings out the colour of your eyes, but also for the growth and nature and nurture it stands for. Celebrate your growth, woman! Nurture yourself! Grow up, grow out, grow whichever way you want! This, my dear woman friend, is unadulterated mother nature at her absolute best. Is she not amazing? Be thankful - your body is still bursting at the seams with life. 

3 1/2. What's that? Green's not your colour? What a load of baloney! Every colour is yours! When Mr Newton was busy developing our understanding of colour, do you think he stopped to assign certain colours to certain people? Do you mean to say he took one look at green and said, 'GOD no. That is not a colour for Mary. Keep Mary well away from green, at all costs!'
No. He did not. To my knowledge anyway. Wear whatever colour you like, hypothetical Mary, and quit your nonsense.

4. Strike a pose. Marvel at your beauty. Try not get blown away. But don't insult yourself by thinking a mere camera lens will ever be remotely capable of capturing the full magnitude of your essence. Know that your three-dimensional self is more breathtaking, more powerful and more immeasurably remarkable than any two dimensional knockoff staring back with unwarranted critique or insidious contempt.

5. Bring a separate bag for wet gear when you hit the beach. Just some practical advice, I always forget. Oh and don't forget clean underwear.

6. Write a long winded blog post if you feel like it. You can read! You can write! Is that not fantastic? Your command of the written language is nothing if not a testament to our extraordinary matrilineal ancestors; your access to education an heirloom to their pioneering feats and tenacious crusade for equality. Regardless how trivial you esteem your words to be - find them, use them, share them! But let every word remind you of this privilege, because even today, it remains exactly that. Two-thirds of the world's illiterate adult population are are female. Poverty, sexual exploitation, gender-based violence and countless other cultural and institutional barriers continue to besiege a girls quest for education globally.

7. Eat ice-cream, and let it go. Let it go to your hips or your thighs or your ears or your foot, wherever society tells you it will invariably go and reside in forever and ever and ever (I believe the exact quantifiable length of time is, 'a lifetime'). Just let it go. You are going places regardless. If you feel guilty after, consider buying your own ice-cream next time instead of stealing from a child. That is the only acceptable reason as to why anyone should feel guilty after eating.

8. Swimming in the sea on your period, in the west of Ireland, won't attract sharks. A genuine prepubescent concern of mine, but no doubt shared by many. Anyways, you can relax, because I took it upon myself, the valiant heroin of the sea that is I, to 'test the waters' so to speak pun fully intended, and can verify that the Atlantic ocean is good to go, sisters! So try as you might sharks, but we fearless menstruating humans will not be held back, we are nobody's prey!

9. Wear sun cream. I'm serious.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.   Mary Smich, Chicago Tribune '97

Refer to point 3 about body appreciation. Spend your time bathing in the rays of women, the brilliant and bright, who surround you and invigorate you! Let their reverberating kindness warm your spirit, and terrific philosophies ignite your mind! They are the penetrative forces of light that pave the way for us all, who's contribution to the world, like yours, are not in fact contingent upon the quality of a (harmfully acquired) tan line. You might even say the tan....pales...in comparison. Hahahah. Excuse the pun but it was time to inject some high quality humour into the situation.

10. Own it, deirfiúracha! Own your legs, hairy or otherwise, own your uturus - it actually belongs to you. Own those hips and the ice cream they hold forever captive, or so we're told, but my noblewomen, whatever you do, don't feel like that ice cream owns you. Own that sand and that breeze and that period in the ocean. Own the blue and the green and every precious letter, every syllable in between. I can't say own again so moving on to the next point.

11. Support others as you wisheth be supported thyself. Supporters might not be able to hold you up in the literal sense of the word, as demonstrated in Exhibit B, but they will keep you thriving up and onward, in every way that really matters. Don't feel bad if they drop you. They mean well but God knows, they probably haven't a decent muscle between them.

Exhibit B: Exceptional sports women, terrible Queen's Chair conductors.

12. If it's your last training sesh with the gals before you head stateside, don't be mad with your sister - whose last session it is not - when she steals the limelight up front center, not a care in the world, while you hold on for dear life behind. I guess sometimes the people closest to us might be oblivious to our struggles.  Take a leaf from my beach photography book - reach out and hang in there. 

13. End blog posts strong. Reuse a point from earlier if you're stuck. Half the readers won't remember, the other half will have stopped reading anyway about 3-5 working business days ago.

14. Last but not least, the one you've all been waiting for, the grand finale of tricks............

B urself. 

And there you have it folks; 14 simple steps to achieving all the power you could ever dream of. I entrust you to use it for good and not evil.