A couple of days ago, I found myself in my childhood town standing in front of a school hall full of teenage girls. Pony-tails, hitched skirts and twisted ties – it felt like just yesterday that I was in those same scuffed-up school shoes kicking my way through the daily dramas of being a teenager.
The girls laughed when I related my love story of falling for a boy in a nearby school, but eyes widened as I shared deeper, more poignant, teenage tales – all of which they could easily identify with.
Since their theme was superheroes (and being the beginning of August; Women’s Month) I knew there was no one better to bring to the party than Wonder Woman!
The girls gasped with excitement as I played a short clip from the movie where Wonder Woman courageously, and gorgeously, stuns the men around her and fearlessly takes on the enemy. She gets knocked down again and again and each time she remarkably manages to get up and fight on.
But, of course, we quickly moved away from the perfectly-supernatural and all-wonderful Wonder Woman to the genuine woman inside the costume; actress Gal Gadot who, when asked what she loved most about playing the role of Wonder Women replied: “Isn’t she what we all want to be? She’s fearless, proactive and believes in herself”.
For all the remarkable things Wonder Woman is able to do, I love that Gal Gadot, without hesitating, isolates those three characteristics; to be fearless, proactive and have self-belief.
It was easy for me, from that point, to interact with the girls about what this might mean for envisaging their own stories - most especially as young girls growing up in a world that will undoubtedly try and knock them down.
It felt surprisingly warm in that chilly school hall and I remember looking out onto that diverse sea of beautiful young girls and wishing that, just for a moment, I could bottle up all the self-belief and possibility I saw in their eyes. Perhaps that way I could safely preserve all that courage and keep them believing that they too can be the heroine of their own epic story?
I know that life will knock them down, it will make them fearful and at times they’ll even stop writing their own stories and hand the script over to an overbearing parent or a handsome young boy.
But the most wonderful thing about women is that we know how to clean a wound; and whilst scars might not leave us, they remind us that we do in fact have the strength and the courage to get up again… and again!
