Author Spotlight
Phoebe Hendon
I got my period the summer going into seventh grade and I’ve been slightly bitter ever since.
Not bitter in the way some boys like to insinuate girls are whenever they get “moody;” bitter because growing up as a girl means having to put up with things like periods, sexism and people who tell you none of these things are that bad. Over the past decade, I’ve done a lot of growing up. With all the good and the bad — from traveling across oceans to dying my hair bright red — there’s no way I’d be where I am today without the influence women have had on my life.
The countless books I read all throughout elementary school with complex, independent female leads founded my values. The groundbreaking 2016 presidential election changed my life when I was in middle school and led me to an interest in politics. My trials and tribulations with mental health during high school and the subsequent support I’ve received from teachers and peers alike showed me that needing help doesn’t make you weak.
For a long time, I was convinced being a girl meant I’d drawn the short straw in life. But through women in pop culture, politics and my personal life, I’ve been proven wrong. To them, I owe everything.
We’ve been lucky enough to grow up in a generation where there’s a plethora of strong females to look up to, but their presence in Hollywood is still a relatively new development. Hermione Granger was my first ever hero, from the moment I first read about the curly-haired bookworm with a penchant for adventure. Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior started rebellions. Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel refused to let anyone hold them back. Any badass girl with badass achievements had me hooked.
Though with every heroine I found amid the pages of books I’d read over and over again, I couldn’t stay buried in fiction forever. Real women around the globe have started revolutions that have more impact on our world than any fictional escapade of mine. It’s the activists and rule-breakers who’ve been most influential on my growth as a young woman.
I started reading about women like Malala Yousafzai and Michelle Obama who were creating platforms for themselves to fight for issues they were passionate about. I saw in these women the same strength I saw in the fictional characters I grew up adoring. And almost instantly, I knew I wanted to be just like them — helping those who needed it the most in whatever way I could.
Women like director Ava Duvernay and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who call out injustices in the world make me feel like I’m not confined to a life sentence of inferiority. But even so, there’s been moments where I’ve felt like all the work I’ve put in to establish a sense of security in myself has been completely useless.
During the 2016 presidential election, I heard a man who wanted to lead the entire nation brag about his ability to grab women by the you-know-what and sexualize his own daughter. I watched as no one around me seemed to care and thought the utopia of womanhood I’d dreamt of as a kid would never align with the reality in front of me. Looking back on it all now, I see how much I let men like this scare me. But throughout that election, I used the response of other women who worked twice as hard to combat this misogyny as a reminder that no one can dictate my worth — it’s completely up to me.
On the morning of November 9th, 2016, I woke up and immediately typed “election” into Google. I soon found out what had happened. I knew — but I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never told anyone before, but I cried on my bedroom floor that morning. I was 13 and had no idea what the next four years would look like. At that moment, I was scared. But the feeling didn’t last forever.
Whatever chip — or rather, brick — formed on my shoulder that day hasn’t left. I’m now shamelessly the girl who can manage to get into political debates in any room, the girl who uses Instagram to talk about issues most people scroll right past. I’m perfectly aware of it, but I don’t care. I’ve figured out that if I spend all my time thinking about what other people think of me instead of doing what fulfills me, I’ll miss out on the little things in my life that I wouldn’t trade for the world.
Dancing like a maniac in my kitchen to the music I love. Painting my nails different colors in my bedroom with Lorde on repeat. Studying for tests at Panera with my best friends and saving pretty pictures to the Pinterest boards we have for each other. Watching “To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before” with my mom and falling to pieces about how much we love Peter Kavinsky.
But it’s the bigger moments I can’t wait to tell my own daughter about someday. Canvassing for Sharice Davids to be one of my representatives and watching her become one of the first Native American women in Congress, along with a record-breaking number of females elected during 2018’s midterms. Training for months to finish my first 50-mile bike race and the feeling of sheer invincibility I had when I finished it. The pure joy I felt as a lifelong soccer nerd when Megan Rapinoe led the US Women’s National Team to win the 2019 Women’s World Cup.
Far too many women know what’s it like to feel small at the hands of those who say we don’t deserve to take up space. But whenever I’ve felt like no amount of my effort will render any impact on the world, I look to the women who refuse to be made inferior and use their persistence to show me how to make my own strides. I don’t know what highs and lows are in store for the 2020s, but I do know one thing — no one gets to tell me who I’m supposed to be.
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