---------------------------- Lyrics by : Kathlene Rushing © 2025 Kathlene Rushing original music by creator – full rights owned All rights reserved. ---------------------------- I am sixty-nine years old. I have marched. I have shouted until my throat burned. I have worn the scars of battles for women’s liberation — equal pay, equal opportunity, a voice in the rooms where decisions are made. We dreamed of more women in the White House — not as decorations, not as ornaments in designer dresses, but as leaders, thinkers, fighters, women whose minds could sharpen the policies of a nation. And now? I see women there — but too often, they are blonde beauties, chosen for loyalty, for polish, for photogenic smiles. Not for brilliance. Not for the hard-earned wisdom of the trenches. My heart hurts. Is it always about beauty? And who gets to define it? If society worships one kind of beauty, what happens to the rest of us? To the women whose beauty is strength, whose beauty is intellect, whose beauty is the courage to speak truth to power? Where are the beautiful Black women in those positions of influence? Where is the diversity of beauty — skin like mahogany, hair like a crown of midnight, eyes that carry the storms and the stars? Why is the White House still painted in one narrow shade of "acceptable"? I fought for equality, but I did not fight for this narrow stage, where women’s worth is measured by how they look under the lights. We deserve more. We deserve all of us. And I will not stop saying it until the day comes when the word beautiful means the whole of what we are.
