Choose to Challenge

Today is a special shout-out day for gender equality –  International Women’s Day 2021 #ChooseToChallenge.

Credit: buzzfeedladylike

In my lines of work, I  hopefully enable and I definitely admire women’s demonstrated fitness, persistence, and achievement.

I’m blessed that I get to endure athletic events without OMNIS VIRIS as a mantra. In Rowing, some of my crews’ highest achievements have been in mixed boats.

I hesitate to mention a MADMEN commercial from 1968 which some readers may remember – Virginia Slims’  You’ve Come a Long Way Baby – as it was tobacco-related. Yet it well reflected the times that were a-changin’ in those roaring 60s. Recall dramatic societal shifts, Woodstock, anti-war movements, and technological advances like birth control pills. “The ad campaign successfully captured the zeitgeist of the United States at that time with an image of a confident, tall, slender, pants suit-wearing woman on the go, mirroring the country’s mainstream awareness of the women’s rights movement…”

Half a century later – on this  #IWD21 I ponder what the spirit(s) of our time is/are… I hope that WE (in the universal sense)  can leverage today’s societal/cultural shifts and technological advances to help more and more of US live longer and live better.

This spirit of mine transcends pandemics. It is rooted in soft skills like empathy, motivation, self-actualization, and self-realization.

I commend this British gent’s sentiment and slogan’ed T-Shirt!

It also has taproots in immunity-boosting motives of diet and exercise.

I tip my cap to women. I envy their relative demographic survivability over “my” gender. I think enough of this distinction that the first exemplar I wrote in KABOOMER was “never quit trying ” Dolly Parton.  And, I admire each and every female baby boomer who reaches for that little bit extra to KABOOM.

When preparedness meets opportunity, campaigns (however long they can become) can end in victory. The century-long struggle by women for Equal Rights in the USA  finally overcame OMNIS VIRIS and truly made US better together. Most women I am privileged to know are “on the go”, confident, and aware. And they don’t smoke Virginia Slims today.

We should all choose to challenge.  Every one of us should capitalize on preparedness.

Be safe, ladies and gentlemen,

Dave Frost