Nope.  This is not a political statement.  I was perusing the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and I found the cutest/sexiest/tiniest red bikini.  The top was kind of this swirl of red ribbons and the bottom was held together by two gold hoops on each hip.  Now, I wasn’t naïve enough to think this teeny bit of metal and fabric would be comfortable for scuba diving or serious water sports but I thought “It’s so cute and I did [a…single…one] TRX class!  I could wear it for sunbathing and recreational swim, couldn’t I?  Of course I can!”  

I purchased the delightful red concoction and wore it off to the pool.  It was a pool I had not been to before and when I entered I saw the main large pool and, to the side, a slightly smaller pool that was surrounded by screaming 8-11 year old boys.  “Is that a kiddie pool?”  I asked the nice lady at the lifeguard station.  “No,” she replied.  “It’s the dive pool.  Just for diving.”  THE DIVE POOL!!???  I went nuts.  I love diving.  

Without a second thought I kicked my flip flops to the side, abandoned my towel and made a beeline for the dive pool and the screaming 8 year olds.  Shoving children aside, I totally cut to the front of line and ran out on the board and did a perfect (well, sort of; I thought it was anyway) dive into the water…and Bam!  In a single nanosecond my tiny ribbon bikini top became a necklace and the bottom made a break for the water’s surface, apparently totally opposed to being used for diving practice.  After a humiliating more-than-a-nanosecond of wrestling with the ribbon top and retrieving the other half of my suit, I exited the dive pool, thanking God that screaming raucous 8 year olds really could not care less what some crazy woman randomly diving with them is wearing (or not) and decided, with great sadness, that my swimwear would only permit sunbathing today.  

I tried to regain some cheer (and dignity) and rescued my towel from its heap on the cement and laid out on one of the sun chairs and began to bake…literally.  After about half an hour, I smelled something like metal burning.  “What IS that?”  I wondered, craning around to see.  As I turned my head, my hips shifted and searing pain shot through me.  WTF?  I looked down and those adorable gold rings holding together the swimsuit bottom had heated up in the sun and were literally searing the flesh off my hips.  I realized my swimwear was branding me and, with a scream, ran right back to the dive pool to jump in and get a dose of freezing water to stop the agony.  After the requisite swimwear retrieval, I decided to call it a day.  The swimsuit really did seem like such a great idea when I ordered it, darn it.

Yeah, I read ESPN Magazine sometimes...especially if there's a woman (or a girl) being covered in there so I read Albert Chan's great piece on Mo'ne Davis. I am thrilled by Mo'ne's story but it's a long time in coming and the fact we are so shocked and awed by the fact a GIRL can be so good means sports are still nowhere near being a gender neutral place. I loved what Stephanie Tuck (who was once the only girl on her Little League team) said: "Over time people won't be amazed that a girl is so good. They will simply be amazed that a particular pitcher or catcher or fielder is so good. Gender won't matter." -http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/20/living/mone-davis-baseball-sensation-impact-girls-parents/index.html

One of my favorite books on the subject is "Playing With The Boys. Why Separate Is Not Equal In Sports" by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano. If you haven't read it, do! Especially if you love sports. It covers Little League's history, from its inception as a male institution going back to 1925 and as the ONLY youth sports group to operate under a federal charter (granted in 1964) to 1950 when Kathryn Johnson was the first girl to break the all-boy rule by trying out and earning her spot pretending to be a boy. She told her coach she was really a girl after she made it in and he said if she was good enough to play, she was good enough to play. (Go Coach!). The League, however, was not so enlightened as a corporate whole and added a clarification to its rules that "girls are not eligible under any conditions" in 1951. 

Mo'ne is not the first fabulous girl ball player. In May 1963, an 8-year-old girl playing on an all boy team (as a pitcher, too) in NJ made Life Magazine for her pitching skills. And so on and so on. The difference between the talented boys and the talented girls was (and in many cases still is) that the boys are encouraged and pushed and the girls are discouraged and held back in sports. And so it was with Little League. One of the first state lawsuits happened in Michigan in 1973 on behalf on center fielder Carolyn King. Little League threatened to revoke her team's charter if they didn't kick her off for the sin of being female. There were many talented athletic girls throughout the 70's fighting for a place on teams that welcomed their brothers with open arms - Maria Pepe, Sharon Poole and on and on. In one court case, Little League witnesses argued girls were intrinsically too weak to play and would be injured by the boys, that playing ball would be "socially damaging" for girls, and that, physically, girls were inferior to boys and thus should not be allowed to play. State civil rights examiner Sylvia Pressler said, "The sooner little boys begin to realize that little girls are equal and that there will be many opportunities for a boy to be bested by a girl, the closer they will be to better mental health."

I am nowhere near a professional athlete but I love to box and run and train.  I hate it when trainers will say things like, "Oh, there a lot of men here.  I wish I'd brought heavier weights."  I will promptly take the heaviest weights and try to outdo every male in there just to make a statement (and, frankly, since I'm only competing against the average US male gym-goer, it's not too hard).  In Beverly Hills, I took a boxing class that was pretty much all men and me.  On Pressler's point about mental health, I found the vast majority of the guys were skilled, strong, athletic, and perfectly gender neutral and nice to me - meaning they treated me the same as everyone else.  They shared a bag with me, would spar with me, would fight me, and they respected me if I was good.  Same as for any guy.  The few guys that judged me - the ones that rolled their eyes if they were told to spar with me or asked if I could "handle" it if they punched "full strength" when we were on a bag together were, for the most part, insecure in their own skills, strength and endurance.  It made them feel good to think that somehow their gender innately made them superior to me because they intrinsically felt they were somehow sub-par.  I've found that extends to many aspects of life - in the business and social world.  People that are decent, smart and confident people will judge you as you are.  People who feel inferior or insecure will quickly rush to judgment to try to place themselves ahead of someone else based on some immutable characteristic.  

Sometimes, I am sad thinking we haven't come that far and it's 2014 and why are we moving so slowly, on the gender equality front?  Other times, I think we've accomplished a lot.  I guess it's probably a combination of both.  To all the guys (and girls) I trained with who nicknamed me "The Beast" and who fought me as hard as they could and who were just relaxed, fun, nice people, thanks!  And to Sylvia Pressler, yup!  Sylvia, I agree with you. Mo'ne, you're awesome. I hope that we as a society recognize that separate is not equal in sports and that gender discrimination has no place in any arena. So, maybe one day, I won't be ecstatic over the fact a girl pitcher on an all-boy team is on the cover of ESPN. I'll be admiring that a 13-year-old pitcher has a 70 mph fast ball and I won't give a second thought to the pitcher's gender as I admire the skills and athletic prowess the pitcher is exhibiting.

Everyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows about Ferguson.  About the shooting of a young, unarmed man.  There is little I can say on the topic of race in America generally or Ferguson specifically that hasn't already been said in some form or fashion.  However, what is deeply troubling to me right now is the sudden focus on the victim's friend and shooting witness, Dorian Johnson's criminal record, consisting of an arrest for theft 3 years ago and this sort of underlying murmur about whether the shooting could have somehow been "deserved."  WHO CARES IF DORIAN STOLE SOMETHING ONCE?  The focus, the media screams, is whether Dorian is a credible witness.  Three years ago Dorian stole something and he may have lied about it.  Three years ago Dorian was a teenager.  Is there seriously anyone anywhere in the world who didn't tell a lie once - we can start lying when we're just toddlers ("No, I didn't hit my sister,"  "No, I didn't break the vase,") and most of us have taken something at some point that didn't belong to us.  In no way am I excusing or condoning theft but I don't think stealing something suddenly makes you a pariah who can't truthfully testify about seeing your friend shot and killed before your eyes.  What is wrong with us that our focus is on decimating the character of the victim?  Dorian is a victim, too.  He watched his friend get gunned down.  That is something horrible.  The facts are not all out.  I am not ready to hang the cop who shot Michael Brown until all the evidence is in because I believe in a rule of law and a justice system in which we are innocent until proven guilty...Michael Brown deserved to have that principle applied to him, too.  So why is Michael Brown dead?  Why was he shot?  For what?  There is focus on this idea he may have committed a theft, too.  Who cares?  Why are we talking about that?  Does this somehow imply he deserved it?  Excuse his death?  In the United States, theft is not a capital crime and, even if it was, you get a trial first.  Innocent until proven guilty, remember?  If you committed a theft three years ago, should your friend be murdered as punishment?  Does that justify or help make sense of anything?

The point is that the focus shouldn't be on the types of young men Michael and Dorian were - nerds, geeks, troublemakers, athletes - it doesn't matter.  What matters is whether someone who promised to serve our community, who we gave the power of being a law enforcement officer to, who gets to carry a gun and is charged with maintaining peace and order, whether that person committed what was anything from a cold blooded murder at worst to a horrible mistake to self defense at best and why they did it.  Ferguson is responding shamefully to the inquiry.  When we turn on the news and see Ferguson police officers harassing journalists (of all colors) or hear one of the (white) police officers screaming to a predominately black crowd of protester, "Bring it you fucking animals!"  Well, that's a race problem, ladies and gentlemen.  No matter what the political leaders of Ferguson may say, no matter how much they want to deny a truth that's staring them straight in the face, there are deep imbedded race problems in this community.  Whether the shooting of Michael Brown was a result of that race problem, I don't know.  But I do know that the people in Ferguson should be responsible for their actions, should be accountable.  Should step up to the plate and recognize and acknowledge their problems and start taking proactive steps to fix them, not to just smear people's characters and play the blame game.  We charge police officers with one of the highest duties there is - to serve and to protect us.  If we cannot trust those we charge and trust to enforce the law to obey it, then there is no justice.  So, the obsession on Dorian's arrest three years ago is smoke and mirrors meant to allow cowards to ignore the real race problems and to allow them the luxury and laziness of refusing to roll up their sleeves and work on fixing those problems.

I once had a pro bono client who was an inmate in a Massachusetts prison.  Guards beat the living daylights out of him one day.  There was no justification or excuse.  People would ask me, "But what did he do to get into prison?"  As though that justifies being beaten.  Last time I checked, the 8th Amendment was still good. The police are essential for a well-functioning society and their importance underscores the very high standards they must be held to.  We trust them with our lives, our safety, our families, our communities.  We trust them to carry around deadly weapons and to put men and women in cages.  We can't trust just anyone with that kind of responsibility and power - we must trust people who are trained, who are decent and who hold themselves to a high standard.  The law enforcement profession is and should be noble and respected.  That's why it's so important to get rid of those within it who don't uphold those high standards of justice.  They'll bring all the good people down with them and betray the trust of their communities and, really, who wants that?

On the bright side, I had back to back auditions.  Yay!  On the not so bright side, everything that could go wrong did.  I got lost on my way to the first one, ended up going in circles for way too long and got there barely on time, rushed and frazzled.  The casting director kept saying, “Relax, relax” which of course made me even more stressed about trying to be relaxed.  Ahhh, the irony.  Then audition #2 was running super behind schedule and everyone was in a bad mood and it made me late to audition #3, where I walked into a wall because I was reading a sign on the wall to my side and not looking where I was going.  I stubbed my toe and actually tore a hole in my shoe.  Brilliant!  Later, I reached into my bag and found the top on my water bottle was loose and water had spilled all over my headshots.  So professional.  On my way to call #4, I realized the ring I’d put on my thumb in the morning – a very sentimental gift from my significant other – had vanished.  It must have fallen off somewhere in the mess of the day.  Although I retraced my steps later (not a fun or an easy task), I never found it.  Last audition of the day was theatrical and I’d gotten the sides in advance.  I was excited about performing them because I really liked the character and thought I’d created something really fun and bold with it.  I performed the piece and the casting people were like, “Huh.  Well, those were really strong and creative choices but it’s nothing like the writer envisioned.  Can you do something totally different?”   On the outside:  “Sure!  Sure, I can!”  Big smile.  Inside my head, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”