My black satin heels were killing me. My toes were jammed, hurting like hell. I wore them to feel good, sexy, over the top. My face was covered in foundation and makeup. I felt like it, that’s all. I felt like feeling pretty. I wanted to please myself. But, as I walked around the parking lot, tired in my heels, I thought about how being a woman is not easy. In a free country, a woman has so many clothes to choose from. She may even have a lot of men to choose from! In a free world, a woman is still a woman in a world full of men. She wants attention, power, money, the top job, the top car. If she’s the family type, she wants the house and the kids, but she wants her job too. In a world like ours, women compete not only against men, but against other women as well. It’s a competitive job. Being a woman, being a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a wife is not easy. Women want everything. They want sex, yet they don’t want to be objects of pleasure. They want money, yet they don’t want to give up having a family. They want to be good mothers, yet they will hire a babysitter. I admire women. I admire their desires, the sacrifices they make, the ambitions they have. In the Middle-East, women are fighters and believers. They too have dreams. They too have desires and ambitions. Women are beautiful. Their stories are beautiful. Their dreams are beautiful. There are women who fight, like my mother and her sister. There are women who stand up, like Rosa Parks. There are women who believe, like Harriet Tubman. There are women all around the world who have defined what a woman is. I’m proud of them. I’m proud of their hard work and ambition. I’m proud to be a woman.