Representation Matters

I want to scream. And screaming into a mostly empty, cavernous house won’t necessarily make me feel better. So I’m going to scream here.

A little bit of disjointed background:

1. I received an email from Unsplash – a fantastic website where I get a lot of great photos I use for this blog and other places.
2. I’m very proud of my daughters.
3. I’ve been playing a lot of tennis.
4. I’ve been trying to write more.

In regards to point 1 above, the subject of the email from Unsplash was International Women’s Day. (Which is today!) And the text of the email was:

International Women’s Day is almost here!

We know that images have long played a powerful role in the way stereotypes of women are shaped, and also how they are dismantled.

If we want to achieve a world with gender equality, representation matters, and we believe that sharing images that feature strong, smart, independent, and diverse women is a step in the right direction.

Together as a community, we have the ability to collectively shape the images the rest of the world sees in the media.

Fantastic! Count me in.

The folks from Unsplash ended their email by encouraging me (and the million or so other recipients of the email) to upload photos along these lines to their site.

That’s where point 2 from above comes in. I of course feel my three grown daughters are some of the strongest women I know – for many, many reasons. So I thought of a recent photo that I felt depicted their strength, and I uploaded it.

Now on to point 3. I have become obsessed with tennis. If my soon-to-be 57-year -old (Wait. What?) body could support it, I would play all day, every day. 

However, I feel a little guilty about that. Shouldn’t I be doing something with my life? That’s an age old question for me, and I never seem to get anywhere with an answer. So, I’ve put my foot down recently, and I’ve insisted to myself that I’m going to write more. To get started, I’m writing whatever pops into my head, and I don’t care what it is or who it’s for as long as I write at least 500 words per day. (Not a whole lot and what’s the point, but I’m trying not to think about that.)

So, what popped into my head as a writing subject these past few days was tennis.

Now I want to circle back to point 1. The email from Unsplash. While I was on their website, I thought I would look for tennis photos that might go with whatever story or essay or blog post I come up with on that topic. I typed in “tennis” and below are some of the images that were included in the first 100 or so of 2000 images they came up with:

Are you fucking kidding me? (The F word was number 442 for the day.)

Think about it: 9 “tennis” photos. From the first 100. Out of 2000.

Yes, there is some diversity there. And that last woman looks like she might be strong.

But that is not the way I play tennis. It’s not the way anyone on my tennis team plays tennis. It’s not the way any self-respecting tennis player would play tennis. And it doesn’t strike me as being a step in the right direction in terms of sharing images that feature strong, smart, independent, and diverse women.

Now, this isn’t the fault of Unsplash. They provide a wonderful and easy-to-use platform for general members of society to share images. No, it’s not their fault. It’s the fault of society.

Hence, my desire to scream.

Getting back to my three daughters and the photo I uploaded:

Now that’s the way I want to play tennis.