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I’ve made a conscience effort to truly contemplate and study the story of women this month since it is nationally recognized as Women’s History Month. I expanded my studies beyond just the recent feminist history, which in my opinion is a definite highlight of our history to this point, to include our history since the start of written record.

However, this was not as easy as it would seem since the vast majority of surviving records are his-story and are very short on the details of her-story. In an attempt to keep women “in their place,” those who have followed the Judeo-Christian religions destroyed most records of the significance of women in early history. This is clearly seen in the Bible when numerous times the Jews are told to “completely destroy the nations” who worshiped these other gods, of which many were actually goddesses.

It’s significant, I think, that at one point in history females shared the title of divinity with males - and at times reigned as the sole divinity. This part of our history shows woman in all her glory, not as the fallen creature of the Bible who must forever submit to a subservient position to the man because she supposedly ate a forbidden fruit and coerced him to do the same.

It’s time the truth was known. Not the presupposed “truth” garnered from what we have always been told is reality. That reality is severely lacking in the other half of the story. We see reality as we have always been taught to see it. If someone teaches me from young that a certain color is blue, and subsequently others then reinforce that teaching in my family, community, church, government, school, etc. - then I will believe the color is actually blue.

But what if they are all wrong? What if blue is really yellow but no one wants to challenge the errant teaching because the one who said it was blue in the first place claimed to be speaking on behalf of God? In the end though, just because everyone believes this color to blue does not make it indeed blue. In fact, it is still yellow.

That is exactly what has happened in feminine history. Only this teaching has gone so long without being challenged, for fear of being ostracized or even at times killed, that it is now accepted as truth. In the process the real truth has been lost.

What is the real truth? What is reality? The truth is that “in the beginning” woman was indeed equal to man. She was just as intelligent. She was just as capable of dealing with life’s hardships. She was man’s partner, not his property or his slave. It wasn’t until she was denied basic human rights that she was demoted from equality and it wasn’t until she was denied an equal education that her intelligence was called into question.

What is the truth? The truth is that we have been taught that yellow is actually blue. We have been force fed a lie to the point we have hung our heads in original-sin guilt and accepted our plight as second rate citizens - as long as men have granted us at least that much. However, if that is all the fight we have left in us, our future will look much like our past.

We are at a significant point in history. For the last century, women in America have paved the road for us to work outside the house, vote, and even have equal legal rights with a man in the court system. Don’t take this for granted ladies, these are rights we did not have just a few short decades ago. And just as quickly as these rights emerged after thousands of years of degradation, they can slip back into oblivion with just a few court decisions.

Men have always been the ones to govern, but now we have that privilege too. Yes, at this point it is still a privilege we have been granted and can loose if we don’t take advantage of it by being active in governance and the voting process.

Our history is veiled and our present is fragile at best. Let’s make our future and our daughter’s future strong. Let’s equip them with a history worth telling and a mentality of true equality by finally standing against that old lie and teaching them the real truth.

About the Author:

Stella Ramsaroop is a western world traveler, a life-long student,
a wanna-be stargazer, and an Aquarius in all its forms (if you know what that
means). Her articles emphasize the importance of the continued development and
protection of gender equality in all aspects of a woman’s life.

Visit Stella’s Website at http://www.newsparade.com to read her current articles and to contribute your thoughts on women’s issues.

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In this age of enlightenment, how come we still call them women’s dress shoes?

Sure, most of the time we wear our women’s dress shoes with a dress, but more often than not we also wear them with our tailored trousers, business suits and jeans. But we don’t call them “tailored trousers shoes” do we?

And how come we’re still wearing those four-inch stiletto heels, when we know how hard it is to stay out of the cracks in the pavement, even in our flats?

Don’t you think we might have learned a lesson by now? The. . . damn. . . things. . . hurt. And they also damage our spine, calf muscles, cause bunions and other equally gross malformations of our feet.

But if Sex and the City taught us anything about the ways of the world in the 21st century, it was that Carrie looked smashing in her Manolo’s as she ran, yes, ran, down Park Avenue to meet whichever gorgeous hunk she was schtupping at the time. The moral of the story being “Yes girls, your designer dress shoes will always get you your man!”

So here are my not-so-serious tips on how to have a wardrobe full of fabulous women’s dress shoes:

*Make the shoe salesperson your “new best friend”. He or she is going to be part of a very, very special relationship - you and your new dress shoes.

*Forget comfort when you’ve got class! Look at those things! Don’t you just have to have them? Regardless of the fact that they feel like you’ve got metal clamps on your toes? Anyway, you can always sit down somewhere after an hour or so, well, can’t you?

*Remember cost does not equal comfort when shopping for designer dress shoes. If they cost two months’ salary, they’re worth every bit of the pain.

*When trying on your dress shoes, check how you look from every angle - sitting, standing, lying face down or up — yes, you’ll need to know how you look when you’re flat on your back after falling off your 4 inch spikes.

Far be it from me to postulate on learning nothing from our forefathers (oops, I mean mothers!), but as long as Mr Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo, and assorted other grand masters of shoe design keep making designer women’s dress shoes (there’s that phrase again) that are simply to-die-for, well, bunions be damned, I’ll die for them!

Olivia Morrow is a freelance journalist and author and is the Editor of Savvy Women Magazine, and online lifestyle magazine for women who want to KNOW…Visit Olivia’s website at http://www.savvy-women-magazine.com.

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