How Not To Be A Lady

My beautiful Lolita sent me this link today: A Cup of Jo and I laughed and smiled and almost cried at some of these quotes!  Oh how beautiful we women are when we choose to be brave and authentic.  It is a breath of fresh air to be balls out and completely the woman you are meant to be!  My favorite quote from this article was this one:

Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women.

—Nora Ephron

I have a surge of joy in my heart and my chest when I read it and reread it.  A bubble of joy just immediately blows up inside of me and then bursts throughout all my insides and through my limbs!!!  Why??!!!   Because this is how I want to live my life...this is how I want all the women I love to live their lives!  To not be afraid of what others might think or say or smirk at...and just do that which makes you shine and rock on.  Why should we stand there and think that we are not good enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, special enough?  Who are these "meters" that we are comparing ourselves to, that we think we are below them?  Maybe celebrities, people who have money, younger women, more "accomplished" (again, what is the meter?), or any other person that we believe are in some way above us?  Oh how wrong must we be.  I look around at those I call my friends, my family, my coworkers, people on the street and I see women who are unique and special and wondrous and so then what I try to do is reflect that back on me and tell myself, that if I can see that in others...then why would I be so unique as to not have those same beautiful qualities?  The answer is that as different as I am to others, I am just the same and I, too, am special and wondrous.  I just love paradoxes!!  

A lady is proper, perfect, formal, polite, and I would say probably very uninteresting due to her lack of depth in her presentation.  This does not mean that the lady is uninteresting, it is to say the title and what it implies is.  So to not be a lady is to be deep, not afraid to be criticized, not afraid to stand out, interesting, speaks her mind, but I would also want to add that due to being deep, not being a lady means to empathize with imperfection, have compassion for others and be non judgmental.  This is what all those sparkly pieces of joy that burst inside of me look like.  Imperfect, shiny, interesting, tiny pieces of love flitter about my insides like confetti.  This is why I want to live my life like that. "I hope you choose not to be a lady."