From the Editor: Fear + Choice + Movement = Fearlessness, by Nikko Snyder

(Editorial, originally published in good girl magazine No. 5, Summer 2003.)

When we chose "phobias" as the theme of this issue almost a year ago, it seemed perfect for good girl. Fear is both an intensely personal experience and a universal part of the human condition, and while we may not always understand each other's fears, we all know what it means to be afraid. Fear can drive people apart, but it can also act as a stepping stone to empathy. At the time, we congratulated ourselves and thought, what could be a more relevant theme?

Months later, "relevant" doesn't even come close. This issue, conceived before SARS or the war in Iraq, falls smack in the middle of a time of fear that we just didn't anticipate. And as I sit here trying to come up with something intelligent to say about it all, the responsibility weighs heavily. It's terrifying.

The fear I feel at this moment is nothing new. It's a fear of being heard, seen and judged, and sometimes it's paralysing. It hits me when I'm at a party trying to think of something interesting to say to someone I barely know. It hits me when I'm walking down the street, uncomfortable in my body and imagining that other people are looking at me as critically as I do when I look in the mirror. And it hits me whenever I'm writing something that I know other people are going to read. Some days it's worse than others, but the fear is almost always there.

So I'm scared, so what? I'm probably not alone, and besides, most days I manage to leave the house, and sometimes I even make it to a party. But I’m still in awe of people who appear to float through the world without fear. What is fearlessness, anyway?

Ironically enough, I found my answer at the last place I was looking for it: this year's Oscars (nothing like a bunch of BOTOXed celebrities to teach you important life truths!). I knew beforehand that if Michael Moore won the Best Documentary Oscar for his film Bowling for Columbine he was planning to publicly criticize the war in Iraq. And being the good little conspiracy theorist that I am, I just assumed that the folks in power would have also caught wind of his plans and that they’d fix it to keep him as far away from that microphone as possible. So when Bowling for Columbine won I was shocked, pleased (it is an important film) and damned curious to hear what he was going to say.

He didn't disappoint. Ranting about the "fictitiousness" of both the president and the war, Mike didn't pull any punches. I came away sufficiently scandalized, not only by what he'd said, but also by the fact that the hypocrites in the audience had followed their standing ovation by booing him off the stage.

It was only after I had a chance to digest the scandal that I got to thinking about Mike's fearlessness. What fascinated me most was that although I typically subscribe to a fearful/fearless binary, what I identified as Mike's fearlessness didn't actually feel like the polar opposite of fear at all. In fact, his fear and fearlessness seemed weirdly interdependent as he stood up there, shaking his fist in front of millions of people.

The thing is, it was pretty obvious how scared Mike was as he hollered his message over the boos, and it made me realize that his fearlessness wasn't about not knowing fear. It was actually about understanding fear, feeling it, knowing the consequences, and making a decision to move forward anyway. Fear + Choice + Movement = Fearlessness.

What had started as a simple pop culture reference had evolved into my own personal epiphany about the nature of fearlessness. It was freeing to realize that fearlessness comes from confronting fear, not from never experiencing it. And that even if I'm scared all the time,it's still fearless to face my fears and keep walking straight through them and on down my path. Maybe that's all courage ever is.

I hope you enjoy the fearless voices that make up this issue. From activists like Allyson Mitchell who confront fat phobia, to writing the female voice, to looking death in the eye, this issue of good girl is about being scared and powerful, all at the same time.

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