Celebrating through photos: a personal account of coming-of-age, female, in Los Angeles.
If I didn’t have access to Planned Parenthood in my twenties, I would have had zero health care. Neither would have my sister, four years younger. I was reminded of this a few days ago, when I went to get some vaccinations for an upcoming trip to a developing country and my doctor asked if I had a Hepatitis A immunization in my past.
My response: “I have no idea. Maybe we can call Planned Parenthood in Los Angeles?” It was in this moment I realized that throughout my twenties (until I moved to Vermont where it’s actually possible to find accessible care), the only doctors I ever saw were the ones at the reproductive health clinic.
See, that’s the thing. Reproductive health, especially for women, is just plain health. The expert, kind, and immediate care my sister and I were able to receive to keep ourselves safe and healthy, had absolutely nothing to do with a favorite line of baffling dissenters: “keep your legs closed.”
“Keep your legs closed.” There’s a lot more than that to women’s health.
There’s so much more to women’s healthcare than our personal choices around sex. Including opening those legs bravely in a gynecologist’s chair. Too graphic? Try doing it.
It has to do with the fact that our reproductive systems are a central part of our beautiful, complex bodies: interwoven, vital organs that, when cared for properly, help us keep our physical, emotional, and even spiritual sides ticking happily. And that’s what makes the marches around the country – the biggest rallies ever in our country’s history – so important today. Because, as so aptly chanted: “Women’s Rights are Human Rights.”
The woman’s marches around the country today also remind me of my early upbringing in a Christian fundamentalist sect. When I was dubbed a flirt and a Jezebel as a young girl, I resolved to be the loudest, nastiest, most rag-tag tomboy that group had ever seen. A woman’s place was more than in the house, I knew, and I fought back. Today, I have the privilege of seeing slogans in the crowds like, “A woman’s place is in the house. And the senate. And the oval office.” Celebrities like Ashley Judd reminded the bright pink crowds in Washington DC – turned out in bigger numbers than the inauguration – “…if you a nasty woman or you love one who is let me hear you say, hell yeah!”
“These marches are a thrilling validation to my childhood instincts to fight for equality and a invigorating reminder that we, not just as women but as a people will continue to come together for the freedoms and rights that America is founded on.”
Rachel Bujalski’s photos, featured here, are in honor of the Planned Parenthood that kept me safe and secure in my early adulthood and the vibrant, rebellious spirits of women and girls of every culture, race and gender-orientation who know what they deserve – to be seen and treated as non-objectified equals.
As far as any divisions and politics behind these marches, I simply repeat the words of the iconic feminist Gloria Steinem spoken in DC today: “Make sure you introduce yourselves to each other and decide what we’re going to do tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow, and we’re never turning back!”
