Photo Courtesy: http://www.gillianhefer.blogspot.com

Strong women are notoriously known for being called one word, Bitch! If women are too opinionated, they are considered a Bitch. If a woman decides to go against the status quo, she is a Bitch. If a woman is passionate about her beliefs and refuses to stand down, she is a Bitch. If a woman refuses to be disrespected by a man and tells him so, she is a Bitch.

Well then, based on those standards, that would make me an A+ Certified Bitch! At least, that’s what I’ve been told. My husband has always told me that I am a “strong” woman. However, it was always evident that “strong” was code for “Bitch.” Lately, I feel as if he expects an apology from me for being the “strong” woman that I am. I feel as if he is still harboring some resentment over me for being such a “strong” woman.

I am not denying that over the course of our marriage I might have been “stronger” than other women, but I was fighting for my family. I was fighting for my husband to be a better person. I was fighting for him to make better choices. I was fighting because I believed in him. Every time we communicate lately, it ends badly. It ends in a fight. He told me last night, “Stop fighting!” He said there was something wrong with me, because it appeared that the only way I knew how to prove my love was to fight and that no other man is ever going to put up with someone like me…a fighter.

So, this got me thinking about two things. First, IS that the only way I know how to prove my love? “Little Fighter” was a Spanish pet name I was given by an ex-boyfriend I was with for two years before I met my husband. In the middle of an argument, to diffuse the situation, he would throw his arms around me and say, “Ay, mi pelionera! I don’t want to fight with you!” Pelionera means little fighter.  So, I understand that my husband must be EXHAUSTED with my pelioneraness, so I promised him I would no longer fight with him and I would start taking into consideration that, indeed, the fight is over.

The second thing I thought about was similar to curbing my appetite; do I have to find ways to curb my inner Bitch? I don’t want to have an unhealthy relationship. I too, am tired of fighting. The ex-boyfriend and my husband have very similar qualities; they both did not fully appreciate me. I felt justified in my motives for fighting. Do certain people bring out the worst in us? Until recently, I have NEVER experienced being in the company of someone who values the time we spend together, someone who values my thoughts, my opinions…me. I suppose I AM going to have to find ways to tame that inner Bitch. Since this is about self-healing, I need to make sure I am transparent in every way. I know this about myself, and according to G.I. Joe, “Knowing is half the battle.”

500 Calorie Nourishment:

Yesterday went really well. I am SOOOO NOT hungry! I haven’t been hungry for quite some time now.

I ate strawberries mid-morning, 4oz. of Tilapia and half of a seedless cucumber for lunch, an apple late in the afternoon, and chicken broth for dinner. That’s it! Hunger is NOT a problem! Yay!

On the heels of the release of “Glory,” the British publication NME (New Musical Express), claimed that Jay-Z wrote a poem declaring that he will no longer use the word “bitch” in his music. An excerpt from the poem reads: “Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/I didn’t think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it.” Even more, he promises that, “No man will degrade [you]…. I’m so focused on your future, the degradation has passed.” As you can probably tell from the rhythm of these lines, Jay-Z didn’t write this. He also told the Daily News as much yesterday.

But this story, albeit fabricated, relies on assumptions about Jay-Z’s ability to empathize with women around issues of gendered representations in hip hop now that he is a father. By extension, the assumption is that experiencing a significant life change — like becoming a parent — makes you more empathetic in certain ways. Why would fatherhood engender such a shift in this rapper’s lyrical awareness and expression? And can we imagine that Jay-Z would call a moratorium on the N-word if he had a son? (By the way, none of the questions are meant to suggest that Jay-Z is not a caring or philanthropic spirit.)

One recent University of Maryland study titled “Like Daughter, Like Father: How Women’s Wages Change When CEOs Have Daughters,” offers one response. In this study, researchers found that when male CEOs have a baby daughter, they tend to close their companies’ earning gap by 0.5 percentage points. If that daughter is the CEOs first child, the gap closes by 2.8 percentage points. According to these researchers, “a switch flips” in the daddy’s head, “making him more sensitive to gender issues” than he was before.

Perhaps instead of tax returns, we should ask leaders to disclose the sex and birth order of their children.

I understand that people are probably more apt to become concerned when issues hit home or close to home. But is that all we’re left with? All we expect of ourselves? Do we have to “know” a problem to care or take action to fix that problem? Do we, as one of my students recently commented, have to be a person of color to think about and care about race and racism? Or gay to care about the civil rights of LGBT persons? Muslim to care about religious and ethnic prejudice? Or hungry and homeless to empathize with those living in poverty? How do we cultivate and sustain care and empathy — the ability to listen, see, feel beyond ourselves and our own self-interest? And, by extension, how do we build on that empathy to cultivate a need, a compulsion, to act in the service of change?

Now, if we could just get Wall Street and Congress to have some babies.

Where pop culture meets the virtues . . .

Credit: Vogue

Taylor Swift: The Single Life in Bohemian Chic—Vogue

Mark Wahlberg on his Rocky Childhood and the Importance of Faith—via Hot Air

The End of Twinkies?—The Daily Beast

How Nietzsche Changed American Culture—NYT

The Exquisite Beauty of Kathleen Edwards’ Voyageur Album—Rolling Stone

Gov. Christie Talks Weight, Doughnuts With Oprah—Daily Caller

The Pop Traveler on the Virtues of Atlanta—Pop Candy

An Especially Thoughtful Ode to MLK Jr.—Power Line

Book Censorship Alive and Well in Arizona—NYDN

New Father Jay-Z Retires the Word Bitch—Vulture