A letter to my 9-year-old daughter on National Day of the Girl.

Dear Skylar:

Today is a special day. It’s your day. Kinda like having a birthday but better. Because you share it with girls everywhere. It’s called National Day of the Girl. Come to think if it, everyday should be that, right?

Let’s go back a bit. When you were born, I cried. I always wanted a girl, but never thought that day would come. But two boys later, you were a gift to us. Having you changed me in beautifully human ways you will never know. In ways I haven’t fully unpacked in my head. But it opened my eyes to how women were being treated. And I was going to do everything I could to change the world in your favor.

When you were born, I was born too.

Today is a good day to share a few things with you. Some you may not understand now, but one day it will make sense.

First of all, look around and enjoy this moment. In fact, enjoy every moment in your life. They are gifts. It’s so easy to look forward to events, new experiences, new things, but my advice to you is to enjoy the now. I wish I had heard that advice earlier. When your older brother was born, I looked forward to the moment he smiled, then crawled, walked, talked, ran.

Then he went away to college this year. For all those years I tried to speed up time, now I am trying to slow it down.

There are many wonderful things about being nine. Your friends, your freedom from responsibility, the world opening up, snacks. My advice to you: Don’t wish away the present. Engage with it fully, and be in the moment, wherever you are.

And of course, I know you want some gadgets, but technology is a burden of adulthood. Learn to communicate face to face before you do it by text or Snapchat or DM. You will be better off. Your future relationships will be stronger. You will be happier and more connected to the world around you.

Being a girl is hard. But many of us in the world are trying to make it better. The fight continues everyday. We try to push laws, public opinion, workplace standards so women can be treated equal to men. We want to make sure the government doesn’t legislate what can happen to a woman’s body. They certainly don’t do that for men, right? So dumb.

Unfortunately, double standards are still alive today. That means boys and girls are held to different standards, just because they are a boy or girl. Silly, I know. But it exists.

Today, there are unreal expectations for all girls. They see the plastic bodies of reality TV and Instagram, and think that’s normal. It’s not. That’s why I don’t want you going there and seeing that. I do want you to love your body, stay healthy and make sure you don’t aspire to things that shouldn't be aspirational. The world you see on social media is plastic. Females are shamed or adored just for their physical appearance. Our society is shallow in that respect. Don’t play that game, on either side.

Be brave and always on the lookout. Evil can come at you, not just in form a stranger in a dark alley. Evil hides in plain sight. It is on college campuses, in conferences rooms, behind a desk or leering at you from the copy machine. There is a clear line of sight between right and wrong, and it’s important you know it.

Speak up if you feel wronged. Or at least try to. Being brave is tough. Right now, there are women speaking up about bad things a powerful man did in Hollywood to them for many years. The truth is sometimes the hardest thing to tell. I do not judge the women who stayed silent. And anyone who does judge, victimizes them once again.

But I do applaud those who risk their future to save women around them. To drag these men into the public view, and expose their injustices to the world. That takes character, and a willingness to lose everything. Remember, when women speak up, it’s not just for themselves. It is for others around them. Brave women do that. But sometimes brave women can’t be brave all the time, especially when the power dynamic is so strongly against them. And that’s ok. When that happens, they are still deserving of sympathy and understanding after what they went through. They should not feel shame.

You are lucky. You have an amazing female role model in your life. You call her mom. She was math chair at two elite schools in LA. She has an advanced degree in math from UCLA, was a programmer (on cool, classified stuff), and has worked hard to point out injustices. She has faced many of these obstacles, being a female and a latina, as a computer programmer in a “man’s” profession. Once, when she was interviewing at a school, the person interviewing said he “found her attractive.” That’s creepy to say in an interview, and kinda against the law. Mom reported it to the principal, and instead of the school taking action against the teacher, they sent a threatening letter to her from their lawyers. Yep, they’re dumb.

Which leads me to the next point. Whenever there is an injustice, the weak will “protect the institution” first. That means, they overlook bad things because they think it will be worse for the school/business/studio/church by making it public. This is driven by fear and greed, and every day more places are exposed for covering up such acts. This thinking has ruined many lives.

There are some in the world who think women are inferior in the sciences. Guess what, they’re full of shit (I know you’ve heard that word before when we accidentally watched Dunston Checks in on Netflix).

One guy at Google wrote a whole thing about it. And he got fired because of it. Goes to show you no matter how smart you are, you can still be small-minded. And more and more of that is happening every day. This person didn’t have the sense to keep his opinions to himself. But unfortunately, some people know it’s wrong, but think it anyway. They are cunning enough to hide their thoughts from the world.

But they are wrong. Dead F’ing wrong.

Some say gender (girl/boy) roles are changing. To me, gender is not an indicator of skills and behavior. What you see in our house is the opposite of traditional gender roles. Dad does the art and decorating. Mom does the money management. Dad is in a creative field. Mom is in a math field. Mom fixes the sprinklers. Dad does decoupage. The list goes on. But know, there is nothing traditional about the world today, so don’t allow people to judge it by the past. Whether you decide to work or raise a family or both as your job, do it on your own terms. Don’t get sucked into a reality other people create.

Think bigger. Broader. Braver.

It really comes down to this: People are people. Love is love. And men and women can be anything they want.

I pray you will not be met with any of these biases or obstacles, either consciously or unconsciously. But even so, it may happen to you or someone you know. It’s important to help and not to judge people when they are forced to make a tough decision.

Finally, don’t let others tell you who you are. Figure it out early, and become it on your own. Ultimately, be a voice for change. A really, really loud one. As loud as you are when you chase your brothers around the house. Stand up for what is right. Write about it. March on streets in service of it. Do whatever you can to make the world a better place for women, and ultimately for all.

Love,

Dad