Mystique Redux
All these articles about how educated middle-class women find themselves being stay-at-home-moms, and how this is kinda good but kinda frustrating, blah-di-blah-blah . . .
Hasn't anyone, anyone, anyone read The Feminine Mystique???
I mean, this whole thing has ALREADY BEEN DONE, chicas y chicos!
Chicas, I don't mean to imply that I wouldn't be a cheerfuller person if I had a lovely trust fund and didn't have to work - if I could lead a life of leisure like Bertie Wooster I would not complain. I would keep busy. There are literally thousands of books I have yet to read and places I have yet to travel. But that is entirely not the same thing as, "Oh, even though I have this degree I might just want to stay home with my kids and do charitable work. Why is that not toally fulfilling? Does society condone or condemn my decision?"
Can anyone say backlash? Seriously, say it.
Then go read TFM by the late Betty Friedan and ask yourself if there's anything new under the journalistic sun.
Sheesh. This is just embarassing.
Hasn't anyone, anyone, anyone read The Feminine Mystique???
I mean, this whole thing has ALREADY BEEN DONE, chicas y chicos!
Chicas, I don't mean to imply that I wouldn't be a cheerfuller person if I had a lovely trust fund and didn't have to work - if I could lead a life of leisure like Bertie Wooster I would not complain. I would keep busy. There are literally thousands of books I have yet to read and places I have yet to travel. But that is entirely not the same thing as, "Oh, even though I have this degree I might just want to stay home with my kids and do charitable work. Why is that not toally fulfilling? Does society condone or condemn my decision?"
Can anyone say backlash? Seriously, say it.
Then go read TFM by the late Betty Friedan and ask yourself if there's anything new under the journalistic sun.
Sheesh. This is just embarassing.
posted by Joolya at
10:14 AM
5 Comments:
ugh ugh ugh!!!! i know!!!! you are soo right!!!
a corollary to the oft-recycled stories you mention are the recent spate of stories along the lines of "this just in, having career and children tough on women."
to all of them i say: enough already! shut up a minute and let us think! maybe our cohort will come up with some kind of better solution, but not if you keep freaking us out with the same damned story over and over again about how unsuccessful our careers will be if we have a kid someday! or how we should all just give up our hard-earned degrees and become dependent on the men around us! jeez...
maybe they are just a well-timed diversion, focusing energy on women and the workplace so we don't think about the war?
or maybe no one reads anything that anyone else wrote, and no one has any kind of historical context, so everyone thinks they are the first to have these thoughts?
i don't know- but it's totally driving me up a wall lately too. i'm glad i have joolya.
Yes, it's really weird! People don't half go round in circles.
springy, i am going to quit working as soon as i get my phd so you'd better get a good job as i plan to be dependent on mah man.
psych.
OK, let's stop using contraception and you can be endlessly pregnant.
...or maybe no one reads anything that anyone else wrote, and no one has any kind of historical context, so everyone thinks they are the first to have these thoughts?
I think you got it, Boomy.
Seriously, the most subversive thing in America today is a memory more than 5 minutes long. I think long memory is actively discouraged. It makes too many politicians nervous.
On a side note, funny you should bring this up, Joolya; I just got contacted this morning by my best friend from childhood -- who went off and got a chemistry PhD and a well-paying industry job, then found a millionaire property-owner to marry and now stays home all day with her kid and the animals, baking and gardening and riding horses. Ain't life grand?
In a weird way, I'm happy for her -- I mean, she's happy doing this. But I could never, would never do it myself, even if I felt inclined to divorce my present husband and go find a millionaire to marry. The other aspect of this is that I want to pull my hair out and scream, "What a WASTE!"
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