A WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

I’m not much of a girl. You know – a girlie girl. Never have been, don’t plan on every being. No make-up, hair in a ponytail, physical pain when I am forced to wear a dress and heels. I can count on the unmanicured nails of one hand how many times my fingernails have been painted. My sister once observed about a boyfriend of mine, (the kind girls dream of – a flower-bearing, poetry-writing romantic) “Suzanne, if he were a guy he’d be just like you”.

So when I started looking for a women’s self-defense method to teach that was not martial arts based (because I don’t believe you can effectively teach a martial art in 3 hours) and came across “Fight Like A Girl” from the Women’s Empowerment Series developed by Brad Parker out of Phoenix, Arizona (www.rapeescape.com) I had immediate flashbacks to my childhood. The ultimate insults to boy and girl alike: You run like a girl. You throw like a girl. You hit like a girl. You fight like a girl. To which was always the immediate and vehement response – “No I don’t!”. Those taunting words insinuated you were insufficient, inadequate, ineffective.

Weak.

Thankfully, I had been recommended to the self-defense website by someone familiar with it, and based on what she said, continued investigating beyond the title - to finally understand the play on words. Fight like a girl. Intrigued with what I was reading: that this method of self-defense is for all women no matter age, physical ability, conditioning, or training; that it addresses the scenario that all that you’ve done in preparation has gone wrong and you are in the worst position imaginable; that you learn to effectively escape from those positions, I signed up for the instructor’s training class. I went from interested but a little leery and disbelieving to stunned and impressed over the course of 2 days. I learned that fighting like a girl was a compliment, not a criticism. An honor, not an insult. That as a woman I was strong, not weak. I am no longer defensive when someone says “You fight like a girl”, I am proud of it. I even wear the t-shirt.