My Kind of Women

The following is written by a guest blogger. The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not reflect the opinions of Bob Lacey, Sheri Lynch or the Bob & Sheri show.

They were bold and confident and boisterous.

When they won, they partied. And, not like they were at a Junior Women’s League luncheon. These women got down to business. They popped champagne and swilled Budweiser. They danced in a mixture of gold paper and neon silly string. They helicoptered around and shook their asses. They hugged and kissed each other’s heads. They were free. Unapologetically so.

I, like millions of others, retreated from the scorching summer heat and settled on to my couch to cheer the US Women’s National Team on for the past few weeks. They have brought me to my feet and reduced me to sobs on more than one occasion, but it caught me off guard when I was wiping tears away as I watched them twerk on a floor sticky with alcohol and sweat.

However, I soon realized that my emotional response was because by being so effusive and unguarded, they were once again bringing women out of the shadows. It is how my friends and I would have celebrated.

See, we’ve been keeping it a secret, well, we’ve kinda been forced to due to the fragility of the patriarchy our country was built on, but a lot of women like to party. There are times when we just want to jubilantly let loose. Sometimes these celebrations are because we became champions of the world while carrying an entire divided nation on our backs and sometimes it is just because we are reveling in the bond of female friendships with a thumping beat playing in the background.

It’s who women, at least the ones I love and admire, are.

These women, the ones I love deep in my soul, also curse, talk smack, have tattoos, get mad as all hell, tell dirty jokes, command board and operating rooms, drink beer, enjoy sex and give not one damn if you think we are behaving like proper ladies.

We’ve been doing all of this while simultaneously folding the laundry, kissing the booboos, cooking the casseroles, mucking the stalls, driving the carpool and breastfeeding the babies. But slowly, thanks in part to women like the ones on the USWNT, what we’ve been doing for centuries by dim, flickering lights is becoming illuminated.

It’s what women, at least the ones I love and admire, do.

There will always be people, men and women, who try to put trailblazing, badass, take-no-prisoners women like the ones who are my heroes in a neat and tidy pink colored box. They will try to silence calls for pay equality and demand that women only love men. The dissenters and haters will call my kind of women unladylike, unprofessional, uncouth and even un-American.

There will be the ones who say that women who throw their arms wide in celebration of their victory should act like they’ve “been there” before; missing the irony that the ones saying this are the same people who have been actively attempting to keep them from “there”.

We’re here. We’ve been here. Forever.

You’re just now seeing us.

Soshally Awkward

Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.