THE MISSION

"My hope is that people see this talk or hear these ideas and get INSPIRED.

Understand more clearly how we as women are constructed. It’s certainly not the whole picture, but with enough information to get what all of these different voices are in us. Where they come from, what they want, what they tell us and most importantly, what they value.

This is about values now — and what we as women have internalized.

Many of us can — and have — battled the external battles having to do with gender, values and expectations. The laws, norms, policies, and culture built up around us that tell us who we as women can be and should be.

However, for some reason, we have spent far less time looking inside. Culture can only exist externally as a reflection of what lives internally. Where has the misogyny, sexism, and limitations taken root within us?

If we look, we can see how little culture values women —

besides a very narrow list of acceptable purposes and roles — we must then ask, “how does this value system operate within me?”

Culture, it seems, does not value women. The ‘villain’ is beyond a person or group — it lives in culture. Historically, and even in many, many places today, we see that particular value system being played out over and over — how a society views women. Sex trafficking. Gendercide. Our rights. Our freedoms. How offenders of rape are treated and how victims are treated. What’s permissible and accepted as ‘normal’. We know them well, and there are too many to try to list.

And although we literally outnumber men, we somehow seem to never be able to get past an invisible wall somehow. Let’s just look at a simple and obvious one — women are still paid less here in the USA. But guess what? We still stand for it.

So, how do we change that?

How do we address the fact that large groups of people value women for things many of us want to change? We want to be valued for more. Valued for our contributions regardless of what our sex is. Not valued merely for how we look, how attractive we are, how nice and supportive and selfless we are. How much we play out a dated role written by others. On and on, blah blah blah. To some women, that is what they want. For many of us, it feels like we are hurling backward in time.

Maybe we’ve started in the wrong place.

Maybe we’ve just been pointing fingers outside of ourselves when we now need to go within. Ask tougher questions and push into new answers. Be able to hold two truths — we can be both a victim of a system AND be complicit within that very same system.

How free are we? How free do we want to be? What and who is holding us back?

It is no coincidence to me, none whatsoever, that comedy is where I see women breaking into new territory. There's a perfect storm to comedy and improv specifically that calls on women to take a stand in another other part of themselves, to leave their GOOD GIRL in the dust.

Because the thing is, Good Girls can’t be funny. And in understanding why lies a way out.”

— Holly Mandel