What's that you're saying, manworld?
You don't want women in combat? You don't want high school seniors with perfect grades to march across the graduation stage because they're pregnant or bared their shoulders? You don't want thousands of tweens and teens dancing in an estrogen haze of girlpower at an Ariana Grande concert?
Manworld tried extra hard to tell women “no” this past week.
It began in western Maryland, where Maddi Runkles was informed by her tiny Christian school, Heritage Academy, that she would have to sit out graduation.
Why?
She got a 4.0, she was class president, and her dad was on the school board. But she couldn't walk across the stage because she didn't listen when she was told not to have premarital sex. She did. And she got pregnant.
But she wasn't going to hide or stay silent.
She quite visibly and loudly explained she would have the baby, that she would give her voice and her story to the anti-abortion movement, and she would walk across that stage.
Her principal wouldn't budge.
This is “not because she is pregnant but because she was immoral,” Heritage Academy administrator David R. Hobbs said in a letter to parents this week.
Somehow, I don't think that's WJWD.
Let's go to North Carolina, where 4.4-GPA honor student Summer Bond was suspended and may be banned from graduation because the shirt that slipped off her shoulders violated a dress code.
“It's just sad because I worked so hard for four years to walk across that stage,” Bond told Charlotte TV station WCNC. “We have drug dealers walking across that stage, we have sex offenders walking across that stage and then the 4.4 student who showed her shoulders can't.”
Her Army green, long-sleeved shirt had an elastic neckline, like a Renaissance fair shirt, that showed her collarbones and shoulders.
Nope. Summer's not going to take it. Her family hired a lawyer, but if they don't let her walk on that stage, that won't slow her down.
“I'm on a pre-med track,” she said. She got a full ride to college, and she's not stopping.
The bomb that killed 22 people at the Ariana Grande Dangerous Woman concert in Manchester, England, was a terrible event for thousands of girls and young women celebrating their femininity, their boldness and their power.
But when Grande resumes her tour, thousands more girls and young women will come to see her. And celebrate.
Just like Ashley “Bugg” Hamblin did in Cheatham County, Tennessee.
Ashley was homebound in a wheelchair for part of the school year and was told that she couldn't go to prom.
Scratch that. She fought it, and she went. She wore a cherry red dress and an insanely sparkly crown. Because she was elected prom queen.
We can also talk about all the Muslim girls who want to play sports but couldn't because their hijabs weren't part of the uniforms.
That's going to end soon. In Portland, Oregon last week, Deering High School became the country's first school to buy athletic hijabs for all sports. The no ends there.
There's more.
An all-female work crew from Grid Alternatives installed a solar roof for Washington, D.C. resident Bernice Rink.
And the Marine Corps, which for decades told women they couldn't serve on the front lines and has long been perceived as the least female-friendly branch of the military, ran an ad that featured a woman in combat, asking people with “fighting spirit” to join up.
Women with “fighting spirit?” Dude, that's all of us.
Petula Dvorak is a columnist for the Washington Post.
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