I'm not your Superwoman

Dear Meghan,

Who is the strongest woman you know? I’m sure your mother is one. Probably even the Queen. Personally, I’ve known and read about many strong women-historically, fictitiously, familial and spiritually. And there are many comic book heroines who are strong. One of the strongest is Superwoman. In Alicia Keyes song, Superwoman released in 2008, the heroine is portrayed as an everyday average woman:

Everywhere I’m turning

Nothing seems compete

I stand up and I’m searching

For the better part of me

I hang my head from sorrow

State of humanity

I wear it on my shoulders

Gotta find the strength in me

Cause I am a Superwoman

Yes I am

Yes she is

Even when I’m a mess

I still put on a vest

With an S on my chest

Oh yes

I’m a Superwoman

Now can an ordinary woman be a Superwoman? I believe so, but I also think that a strong woman is also extraordinary. That’s why I personally chose you Meghan Markle as the heroine of this piece. When you think about strong women, a woman who embodies specific qualities come to mind. The qualities include the ability to reason, strength of character, empowerment, advocacy, humanitarianism, and truthfulness. Your strength began at an early age. At the age of eleven, you confronted sexist advertising campaigns when your social studies class had to watch commercials and recognize underlying messages. After viewing a dish detergent ad that implied that women should do the cleaning in a household, you said in the 1993 clip, “I don’t think it’s right for kids to grow up thinking these things -that just Mom does everything. It’s always Mom does this and Mom does that.” As a result, the highly prestigious company responded by changing a crucial line in the ad. Rather than reporting that “women are fighting greasy pots and pans,” it changed the voiceover to declare that “people” were taking up the battle instead. You took on Proctor & Gamble. What an early victory for a person who is just beginning to embody the qualities of a strong women. Megan Markle, you are a fighter. I watched the TV show Suits religiously. Not just for the lawyerly handsome hunks. I admired the strength in the character of Rachel Zane. Later I discovered that you addressed the portrayal of your character on the show when you fought the show’s creator on scenes where you were the only character who was wearing next to nothing. You stated, “In the show, for example, in this season every script seemed to begin with ‘Rachel enters wearing a towel,’” you said. “And I said, “Nope-not doing it anymore. In a world where women are presented as commodities who represent just sexual attractions, you are a fierce feminist. A strong woman leads a life of empowerment with humanitarian acts. In 2015, you became the UN Women’s Advocate for Women’s Political Participation and Leadership spending time in Rwanda. Your passion for social justice and gender equality continued the next year when she became a Global Ambassador for World Vision. You visited India which inspired her to speak out in a Times 0p-ed about the stigmatization of female menstruation and how it hinders girl’s education. Equally important in your ever changing and challenging life and right after your marriage to Prince Harry, you spoke more about empowerment. You said, “I hear a lot of people speaking about girls’ empowerment -you will hear people saying they are helping women find their voices,” you said. “I fundamentally disagree with that because women don’t need to find their voices, they need to be empowered to use it and people need to be urged to listen. Right now, with so many campaigns like #MeToo and Time’s Up there’s no better time to continue to shine a light on women felling empowered and people supporting them.” You are an immensely vocal advocate for women’s rights. All the qualities mentioned above reveal just how extraordinary and strong you are as a woman. However, there’s another song also called, Superwoman sung by Karyn White in 1988 that reveals that the average women should not be expected to ‘leap tall building at a single bound’, she is an ordinary woman who doesn’t wear her cape twenty-four seven. She’s the women who is tired of being called strong. Sick and tired. She is vulnerable but is even stronger for her vulnerability.

I’m not your superwoman

I’m not the king of girl that you can let down

And think that everything’s okay

Boy, I am only human

This girl needs more than occasional hugs

As a token of love from you to me, ooh, baby

In the March 2021 interview conducted by Oprah Winfrey, you spoke your truth, vulnerability and therefore your strength when you told the world that you had been in an extremely dark place and wanted to commit suicide. In that release of your emotions, I watched as you shouted out loud and clear that you were not anybody’s ‘Superwoman.’ In making that declaration of how vulnerable you were, you proved that you are one of the strongest women I know. As a woman, I have personally dealt with troubling feelings of inadequacy as many others have and for someone so young, financially stable, successful, and happily married, it gives me a great reason to believe in myself and that even with my frailties, I too am a strong woman. I’m not your Superwoman, but I can be mine.