I Ride! Women Warriors at Work
“You should stay here,” said the blue man to his pregnant blue wife. Their eyes met for a moment. “I ride!” she scoffed. That settled it. They gathered their weapons and rode off to war.
No spoilers here for the new Avatar movie!
I want to tell you why it inspired me. It made me think about women I have worked with through pregnancy, motherhood, and more.
First, it reminded me of my wife. We’d zip around Manhattan on our Vespa, well into her second trimester.
We felt the looks. I can feel your looks right now! Some disapproving looks, some jealous looks, or so we liked to think. Somehow she survived these rides, and we survived the disapproval.
“I ride!” Jennifer said. Maybe she never actually said that. It does sounds like something she would say. If you knew her, you’d understand.
It also reminded me of the many women I’ve worked with on pitches and projects while they’ve been pregnant, nursing, parenting, or going through who knows what else.
She rides!
She rides through exhaustion, nausea, soreness, and worse. And all that just from dealing with me.
Seriously, so many women ride through all this stuff. They ride much harder than I do. And they ride just as hard as the pregnant warrior in this film. High five to all of you out there.
What’s so inspiring to me about the moment is this: kids in the theatre get to see a pregnant women rejecting a man’s suggestion about how and when she ought to act.
She chooses her own role. She makes her own choice. And her choice is simple: “I ride!”
No spoilers. But she does, in fact, ride.