American Girl, American Woman

This “American Girl” ad by The Seneca Project is remarkable. It’s so, so powerful showcasing some moments in the long struggle for women’s rights in the U.S., and it’s also so joyful in highlighting champions of all sorts, from astronauts to civil rights activists to Olympic athletes and beyond.

It makes me think of my Grandma O’Brien, whose post leading a school during World War II (before she was married or had kids, when she was forced to stop teaching) was noted in a newspaper as allowed because there were no eligible men available.

It makes me think of my aunt, who couldn’t become a lawyer because that’s not what girls did.

It makes me think of my mom, who couldn’t become a police officer or FBI agent because of height restrictions.

It makes me think of the many friends and relatives who have had difficult pregnancies and if Roe v. Wade had been overturned then or if their situation had become a bit more dire, they could have died because of not being able to get the treatment they needed while a miscarriage was in progress.

It makes me think of the hundreds of people – overwhelmingly women but some men too – who reached out to me after I published my New York Times piece about being raped, to share that they too had been raped or sexually assaulted. Friends, colleagues, classmates, acquaintances and complete strangers. People who deserve to be able to control their own choices about their bodies after a violent assailant temporarily took that away. People who deserve better than to have a President who has been accused of sexual assault by dozens of women and convicted of rape in one instance (we all deserve better than that, being convicted of sexual assault should be a disqualifying offense to every human).

It makes me think of some extreme voices on the right who are saying that women should not have votes or their vote should be that of their husband’s. No, we are not going back to the days before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gave women the right to vote in 1920 after a decades-long fight.

This ad also brings to mind many barriers broken, moments to celebrate.

It brings to mind being at the Olympics in Paris this summer, so proud to be an American celebrating American excellence in sports amidst people from many countries including many Americans. And especially of witnessing live the U.S. Women’s Basketball team winning (with two players from my alma mater Notre Dame) en route to a gold medal, and the U.S. Women’s 4x100-meter relay team capture gold.

It brings to mind all the remarkable work female friends are doing (male friends too, but they were never barred from jobs due to their gender). I was a sportswriter for years. Other friends are founders, investors, engineers, authors, scientists, bankers, designers, producers, sports executives, diplomats and in so many other roles that were once off-limits for women.

Thankfully when I was a kid, my parents raised me to think I could do anything. Careers I spent the most time thinking about were marine biologist, journalist, author, diplomat, architect and President. Yes, as a kid, it seemed natural to me that a woman could be President, would be President. So natural, in fact, that my sister Bridget (2.5 years younger) and I both said we would be President when I was about 7 or 8, and I have clear memories of worrying how my parents would decide which of us to vote for if we ran against each other. Naturally, I also thought I would win as the older sister.

Yet that is one barrier that has yet to be broken: that of the United States of America electing its first female President.

This is the time. It’s time for the USA to elect a female President, time to elect Kamala Harris. Not because she is a woman, but because she is by far the best candidate.

Harris is highly qualified, with decades of experience as a prosecutor, as attorney general of California, as Senator and as Vice-President. She is tough enough to take on and win against opponents from Vladimir Putin to Donald Trump to Mitch McConnell, yet also brings the empathy to care about the marginalized and oppressed among us, to work to help those passing through the difficult period of dealing with cancer or job loss or eviction and ALL Americans, not just those who support her.

Crucially, she also never tried to overthrow the results of a valid election as Trump did on January 6, 2021.

There is only one choice to be made Nov. 5th: Vote Harris-Walz.

Let’s break one more barrier and need a new version of this song.