The other day, I was hanging out with some male friends from my gym and somehow we ended up on the subject of feminism. What surprised me wasn’t their reaction to the feminist movement, but mine. Why was I so afraid to speak up?!

I grew up on Sex and the City and come from a family filled with strong female role models. My mom held some of the highest ranked roles in corporate America  during her career: Director of Marketing, Advisor to the Mayor just to name a few. My sister holds a PhD, is a Professor at BYU and is literally the smartest person I know. After I graduated college I went on to become one of the youngest Branch Managers for CitiFinancial in their history and have since left the corporate nest to follow my dreams as an entrepreneurial #girlboss…so what the eff? Why is it that when the subject of feminism came up in a group of friends that I felt so uncomfortable? Maybe, thats because I didn’t really know what feminism even means.

Emma Watson, the UN’s Goodwill Ambassador for Gender Equality shed some interesting light on the subject during her speech at the launch of the UN’s He for She campaign in 2014 (check out her speech here, its AH-mazing). All too often the word feminism is confused with anti-men or man hating which is not the case at all. According to my homie Google, feminism means equal. When you put it that way, its 2017, so…that should seem like a no brainer, right? Didn’t we just go through this with racial equality? Why is it that we are still choosing to fight the same battles just on a different field?

Perhaps its because we don’t think that we as individuals can make a difference, but as Emma Watson so eloquently put it in her speech: “If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Growing up, I loved the Gatorade commercial with Mia Hamm and Michael Jordan that played off the song “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better”. I loved seeing a strong heroine because that is what I was surrounded by growing up so it seemed totally normal. But looking back at this commercial now, I see how instead of it unifying the sexes, messages like this put the sexes in direct competition with one another. Again, feminism is about equality not superiority.

At the end of the day, no two men or two women are alike. A rock climber has a completely different skill set and strength than a boxer,  but that doesn’t make either of them any less of an athlete. Right? If we stop focusing on our differences and redefine success as a celebration of the common ground we can walk on, I truly believe we can make significant progress.

Fear is a powerful motivator as I found out first hand the other day, even though I was amongst friends. But as the saying goes ‘everything we want is on the other side of fear.’  So I decided to get out of my comfort zone and write about this issue today because I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. Perhaps if we as women and men can free ourselves from the fear of being equal, we can start seeing each other as we truly are, which is human.

Because if not us, who? If not now, when?

xx,

Jess

P.S. My AH-mazing friend and fellow girlboss Taryn Sutherland is a phenomenal calligraphist and the founder of Twinkle and Toast. She just released these really cool “Year of the Woman” tote bags where a portion of the proceeds goes directly to the National Organization for Women which helps champion causes like equal rights. Get 15% off with the code “CHIC15” and help show your support for equality in style! 🙂

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All photography by Henry Young