Leonardo da Vinci often doodled in the margins of his famous notebooks, especially when he was breaking in a new pen. One of the words he wrote over and over was: dimmi. Meaning, “Tell me.” The word is emblematic of his profound and relentless curiosity. Sometimes this Italian word comes to mind when I am trying to understand something that seems as if it should be clear or obvious, but just isn’t. At least not to me.

In reading studies about self esteem in girls I have mentally  said “Dimmi, dimmi,” to myself many times. According to this study, and others too, the loss of self esteem suffered by white, Hispanic and Asian girls at adolescence, is in general not experienced by black girls in the US. They maintain their good self concept and appear emotionally stronger and more confident. There was something about these findings that seemed tantalizing to me.  I couldn’t explain it, or make sense of why it should be so, but it felt intuitively correct, based on my own experiences with girls in their early teens.

So when in researching International Women’s Day I stumbled across this footage of Maya Angelou, speaking about the women’s movement, instead of dimmi, it was aha. Oh. Yes. I get it.

I’d love to hear your reactions and responses.