How Not to Chill

I have quite possibly the worst air-travel playlist imagineable. I have entitled this playlist "Chill" because it's supposed to, you know, help me chill...so anyways, it's a great playlist for if you're relaxing in a hammock like I was earlier this week, but it's just not so great for a day spent in airplanes.

Let me explain: I arrived at the Muscle Shoals airport (a miniscule airport - I was catching a hopper flight to Nashville, where I'd then fly with Southwest to Cleveland) at 5:00am, with a carry-on and a personal item (milking each for all they were worth) and my oh-so reliable boyfriend who patiently walked me inside and sat with me while I waited for the TSA people to open up shop! You know it's early when the TSA people aren't even ready for you. We watched some informercials on TV, with a few sporadic minutes of news in between. Coincidentally, one of the nice TSA people was one of my sorority sisters' dad, and he noticed I was wearing my Phi Mu letters so I chatted with him for a couple of minutes. I would say what a small world at this point, but the Shoals has such a small-town atmosphere that I'm not surprised. Either way, it was very nice to see a friendly face so early in the morning.

I promise I'll get back on track here. Jeremy decided that it was time for him to go on to work so he left me with a kiss on the forehead and a strong hug. Proceed to security check, because Mr. Fults and the other nice TSA person were ready for me now, and begin to board the plane. So, this plane was unbelieveably small. I hadn't been on a plane that small in about a decade. In fact, there was only room for about 12 people on the plane, including the pilot and co-pilot. And, it was a front propellor plane which freaked me out just a little. The pilots were super nice and accomodating, but the plane was so small and I just got too nervous. And so, logically, I turned on my "chill" playlist to shuffle me through my long day of travelling.

The first song that came on was called "Sedated," by one of my new favorite artists, Hozier. At this point my nerves are speaking to me. They're saying "Yeah, I wouldn't really mind being sedated right now..."

The next song on the line up was "Crash Into Me" by Dave Matthews Band...and my nerves said to me, "lol @ u."

Coming up next was "Such Great Heights" by Iron and Wine. But let's be real, here. The chorus to that song says "they will see s waving from such great heights..." Uhm no, thanks. Not what I wanna hear while the propellor is rattling the entire plane. I said to my nerves, "Can u not?"

Finally, I came to "Sing" by Ed Sheeran, which really did calm my noisy nerves, not because it's a very relaxing song, but because it literally has no implications of being about flying high up in the sky and waving your arms wildly as the smallest commercial plane ever crashes into the ground.

After that, I looked out the window and all I could see were tiny, twinkling gold lights and grey clouds and it was beautiful. My little hopper flight made it to Nashville just fine. In fact, as I drafted this post on my iPhone in the "notes" app, the tiny trusty plane touched down and landed me safely at the Nashville International Airport where I will do this all over again in about 2 hours...maybe on this flight I'll pick a new playlist.

Like a...Boy? Controversial Thoughts on SuperBowl Ads or One in Particular

Raise your hand if you watched the 2015 Super Bowl. Now, Raise your hand if you just watched it for the commercials. Me, too! Okay, so raise your hand if you saw Always' "Like a Girl" ad. If not, you can check it out here (I posted the entire video, not just the 1 minute long commercial), and if you don't have time to watch, all you really need to know is that Always put together a brilliant ad/social experiment featuring older boys and girls and pre-pubescent girls. The facilitators asked the older people to do something "like a girl." The participants were shown mimicking "girls" fighting, which looked like this....

and mimicking "girls" running which looked like this.

Funny? Sort of. Until the facilitators asked the younger girls, all around ages 7-10, to show what they thought it meant to do something "like a girl." And can you believe it, these sweet, strong, young girls, who remind me of my little sister and cousins so much it made my heart swell, tried their hardest at whatever they were asked to do. They fought like little boxers. They ran like small Olympians. Why, why would we ever not fight like a female Muhammed Ali? Why would we ever not run like Lolo Jones? 

You play ball like a girl!!!

The worst part about all of this is that some men are actually mad that this ad was a success. They've created a Twitter account under the name "Meninist," and have tweeted with much snark and sarcasm about how they feel left out by the #LikeAGirl campaign. They even went as far as making #LikeABoy trending on the popular social media site. Thankfully, Buzzfeed was there to help us out by documenting the mysogynistic havok that these crybabies had wreaked. If you click the link, you'll find screenshots of tweets from men that were offended by the #LikeAGirl ad. Which, quite frankly, is ridiculous. As the Buzzfeed thread kindly points out, the phrase "like a boy" has not ever, once in the history of the world, been used as an insult towards a male.

P.S., meninist is not a word.......

Since the beginning of time (sort of) women were often walked over. Women have been shot down and silenced. Women have been deprived the right to vote. Women have been denied equal pay, and in the beginning of this era, women were even denied the right to work--a working woman was looked down on and seen as something of a last resort. Some women are even under the impression that all of this is just fine and dandy and sadly, some women believe that their purpose in life is to be put down and disregarded. The women that believe this might not necessarily word it that way; instead, they might say something along the lines of "Well, women were created from the rib of the man....we're supposed to be silent and mild, and we're supposed to help the greater sex with what they need, when they need it.." and they will probably feed you some Scripture (taken out of context, of course) to show you why it's okay for women to be pushed down and shoved around.

I have a wake-up call for these women...

Yes. God created women to be a help-meet for men. Because literally, Lord knows men would be lost without us. But God also created women to be powerful. He has used women incredibly throughout the course of history. And, haven't you ever read Proverbs 31? Just in case you haven't, it can conveniently be found here. To sum it up though, the "Proverbs 31 Woman" is strong, a hard worker, a provider, a philanthropist, humble, yet intelligent, kind and is considered by most to be the picture of a Godly woman. God intended for women to be strong, hard-working, intelligent and kind.

I'm not a burn-your-bra, man-hating, liberal feminist. I'm just not. The idea that women are better than men and the idea that men are better than women is just absurd. I could go into more depth about everyone on the Internet's idea of good feminism, bad feminism, meninism, sexists....the list goes on and on, but I don't want to get into it and frankly, I don't care that much (seriously, just don't even try to scrape the surface of feminism on the Internet because it is terrifying). Honestly? If you really wanna know what I think about all of this, here it is: I want to get a job and recieve the same pay as my coworkers; I want my sweet, sensitive, smart, spunky little sister to stay that way her whole entire life. I want my sassy, athletic, adorable little cousins to stay that way too. I don't want them to grow up thinking that doing something "like a girl" is a bad thing. I want them to grow up to be exactly who they want to be, because they should be allowed to do that. My wish for them, and every other girl in the world is that they grow up to be strong, smart, and kind.

At the end of the day, I think all of us could learn a thing or two from the little girls in the Always ad.