I love a celebration. Give me even the smallest, most insignificant of occasions, and I will celebrate the crap out of it. Half birthdays, quarter birthdays, birthday eves. Anniversaries of interviews, anniversaries of house moves, anniversaries of the minor dental surgery I had when I was six. Finishing a whole tin of lip balm, finishing a whole Biro. If it is even remotely noteworthy – and, indeed, if it is of no note whatsoever – it is likely in my diary, and I am likely planning some kind of pastel-coloured baked good to commemorate it.

It is in this spirit that I approach this Sunday: 8th March is International Women's Day, and, while some may be happy to mark it with a Facebook status and move on (or, perhaps, let it pass them by entirely), I won't have it. In the (slightly modified) words of Destiny's Child, you gotta do much better if you gon' celebrate this day for the empowerment of women, championing of their rights and investment in their futures.

You see, I don't want to let Sunday go by without a bit of a hoo-hah. Specifically, a chocolate hoo-hah: this is, after all, possibly the only opportunity I will ever get to use my vagina-shaped chocolate moulds, inadvertently purchased, and yet to be removed from their original packaging. I am really just being economical, here. It is simply a question of good sense.

Novelty cookware aside, however, International Women's Days is certainly something to celebrate – both because of how far we have come, and because we need a morale boost every now and then, when we realise just how far we have left to go. In a week when the Intelligence and Security Committee found that only 37 per cent of those working in the intelligence services were women, and one of the men responsible for the 2012 gang rape on a Delhi bus was revealed to have said that "a girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy", the idea of taking a break from all the bleakness and letting your hair down seems rather appealing.

There are a number of ways to mark the occasion. You might spend the day basking in the glow of other women's fabulousness. Watch a female-driven TV show: Girls, The Mindy Project, Orange is the New Black. Read a book by a woman who inspires you: Yes Please by Amy Poehler, How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, any volume of Maya Angelou's autobiography. Listen to music that makes you want to dance around your room in your bra and pants, and cry cathartically in the corner (also in your bra and pants), by turns: Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, someone less mainstream, who you know about because you are far cooler than me.

Alternatively, you may fancy some art and craft, in which case, might I recommend taking a pair of scissors, a glue stick and a big old marker pen to the latest copy of the Daily Mail and going mad with it. (Or else, if computers are your bag, head to Microsoft Paint, and get aggressively creative on the Mail Online, with particular focus on the Sidebar of Shame.) Jazz up photos, edit headlines, or simply start tearing pages out and burning. It really is up to you. My personal favourite is to doctor splashes on pregnant women so as to make them look as though they were about actual human beings, as opposed to a twisted invention of Steven Moffat's mind. But that's just me.

But maybe the most celebratory thing you can do on Sunday, as a woman, is simply to be a woman. To keep on doing what you're doing, and not stop. Every time you go running, get catcalled, and then go running again the next day – every time you are told that girls "don't do" something, and then you go ahead and do it anyway – these small acts of defiance are celebrations of who you are and what you can do. They are a banner for you to wave on this International Women's Day, by way of tribute to all those around the world who are like you, not so like you, or perhaps nothing like you at all. 8th March is all about celebrating women, and your wonderful self really is all the festivities you need. In the words of Destiny's Child once again (sort of), all the ladies who truly feel me, keep on being kickass, you fabulous, fabulous unicorns.