Happy International Women’s Day

The question we asked Cuban women that is clearest in my mind was off from the beginning. My previous partner and I had traveled to the blockaded island to ask women there about being women. Our thinking was that much of the misogynistic messaging of our own cultures was transmitted via mass media, most of which Cuba didn’t have. How does a girl grow up if she’s not subjected to those glossy magazines in the grocery store, the casting choices of Hollywood, and all the subtle or overt abuse heaped on women elsewhere?

Our questionnaire had about 20 questions about outlooks and experiences, but the last one, added so we’d have something data-based to look at, was: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how attractive do you consider yourself?”

Almost everyone we asked was confused at first, since the concept of reducing a person to a numerical rating was alien to them. And I felt like an absolute pendejo. Except the Cuban women saved us with their responses. As I remember it, all but one woman gave some version of the same reply.

“10 of course. I mean, look at me!”

We talked to as wide an array as possible of body types, ages, ethnicities, backgrounds, everything we could, and I remember a lot of laughter as they said it. The one woman I remember who didn’t say 10 was the most conventionally attractive woman we talked to by US standards. She said 8.

Cuba has plenty of problems, clearly our methodology did too, and I’m simplifying the issue rather egregiously because I’m not writing a book here, but for the last 10 years when I see young girls exposed to bizarre, Procrustean standards of beauty, I want to ship them off to Havana for safety.

There, they might stroll on the malecon and if they liked the music, shake a booty of any size whatsoever in the joy of being alive. And today, I’m going to try to cultivate that joy. Writing this, I keep having to cut long passages of misogynistic advertising and Hollywood malfeasance, because joy can be hard to grasp when you want things to be better, but I want to emulate those grinning Cubanas. I want to offer a bow of gratitude to them, and to the gifts of the Travel Gods, then shimmy my body, whatever its present dimensions or my dancing ineptitude, and beam out a sense of hope.

If I say Happy Women’s Day, it wishes you a happy day today. That too. But more specifically, I want to make it a day of Happy Women. So happy Happy Women’s Day to you. Now dance!