Two Inspiring Women (One Real, One Fictional)

Originally Posted - THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2009

Revised: September 2013

For some reason, today I sort of meandered down the road of recalling people who have most inspired me. The first two names that popped into my head were Erma Bombeck and Mary Richards.

My self-image as a kind of literary type would love to have those first two names be Germaine Greer and Lucy Maud Montgomery (the author of the Anne of Green Gables books), who were authors who inspired me. [I would be willing to bet this is the first time those two ladies names have appeared in the same sentence and I bet they'd both love that!]

But, my heart remembered Erma Bombeck and Mary Richards, first.

Upon reflection, I have to admit that my heart did a bang-up job of dredging up the two people who I most wanted to be when I was a young woman.

First, I (and most other girls I knew) wanted to be Mary Richards. She was pretty. She had a totally awesomely cool apartment. She was a single, career woman living alone in a city. She was a writer. She was everything I wanted to be. I don't think I missed one episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show during its entire run, and I probably watched most of the reruns. A lot of my friends were similarly inspired by that show. Mary Richards was a free-spirited woman who was not a bra-burning radical. She offered a sort of middle way for women who did not necessarily want to pursue a life of marriage and motherhood, but who also were not particularly radical.

My adulation for Erma Bombeck is a little more difficult to explain. I never had any intention of getting married or having a family. (I ultimately did both, but it was not part of the plan. I was going to be Mary Richards, remember?) I didn't want to be a mom living in Dayton, Ohio, writing about laundry and cleaning products. The things about Erma Bombeck that lit me up and inspired me were that she was honest and she was funny ... and she was from suburban Dayton, Ohio, which I took to mean you didn't have to be an anorexic, Bryn Mawr educated woman living in New York to be a literary success. (That was important because I was a fat, small town kid from rural Ohio.)

Women in the Midwest in the 1960's were not encouraged to be honest or funny. Bombeck managed to be both a nice lady and honest as well as funny as hell. Not to mention a fabulous writer.

I wanted to be a humor writer, documenting the life of a single career-woman.

I ended up a married, career-woman, who writes stories. I'm still working on the "funny" part.

Navigating the Rapids of Change: Easy Does It

In my late twenties, after years of working a grinding schedule, I had the opportunity to switch to working part-time, on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.  The first Tuesday I was off, I wandered from room to room thinking about all the projects I could undertake around the house, and day-dreaming about various creative things I wanted to do.  At the end of the day, I had accomplished exactly nothing. I didn't even cook dinner.

For the first time since childhood, I had large blocks of time that I could fill any way I wanted. I didn't know what to do with all that free time, so I basically frittered it away, accomplishing nothing for a couple of weeks. When I became acclimated to the schedule, I filled up my time with housekeeping, volunteering and lots of reading. (To this day there is nothing I love better than to spend a day immersed in a book while the rest of the world is at work.)

These days, here in my little Empty Nest, I'm undergoing a similar experience. I am at a turning point in my life, and there are a lot of options before me.  Basically, what I've been doing is looking out my window and daydreaming about all the things I could be doing.

I haven't written any fiction in a couple of months. That isn't because I've run out of ideas. On the contrary, I have so many characters and stories swirling around inside my head, I can't focus on any one of them in particular.  In addition, I want to do something new, something different from anything I've done before. I may try writing a new genre. I may experiment with some other kind of creative outlet.  Something is clearly bubbling in my Soul, but it has not yet revealed itself.

In the past,  I would have felt frustrated or depressed to be at such loose ends.  This time, I'm going to be kind to myself.  I'm going to give myself the time that my mind and heart need to settle into a new stage of life. Other than my boss for 8-10 hours a day five days a week, I have no one to answer to, and I can do as I please. If I feel like doing nothing, that's what I'll do -- at least until some of those characters and stories come into better focus.  Then I'll get busy again. Maybe.

Then again, maybe I'll just continue to look out my window and savor the utter magnificence of my surroundings.

Growing Old With Attitude

While I was in junior high, my mom and her three closest friends all turned 40. When the youngest of the group had her 40th birthday, they got together for lunch at the home of one of the ladies. It was summer, so I went with my mom. The birthday lady cried through the whole party. The other women tried to console her, but she couldn't stop crying. She said she felt that all she had ahead of her was loss: menopause with the loss of fertility; the loss of her children as they grew up and left home; and, she feared, the loss of her husband's love as she turned into an old woman. The others pointed out that there were good things such as not having rug rats constantly needing something and the opportunity to occasionally go out for dinner alone with your husband. The oldest of the women, whose kids were already grown, insisted that her marriage got better after the kids left home. The birthday lady wasn't having any of it.

I have never understood why people are so freaked out about getting older. I've always thought older people (especially women) were very interesting. My idol was Kathryn Hepburn, who was in her seventies when I was in my early teens. I loved her crotchety, smart and funny persona. I made it a point to watch every interview she ever gave. (The Dick Cavet interviews are classics!)

The women I knew personally whom I admired the most were all older women. My mentor and "other mother" was a childless woman who was one of my mom's best friends. She didn't wear make-up or a girdle, and she didn't wear a bra when she was at home. In my [small-town Midwestern] world that was very edgy. Another woman I admired was a lady who went to our church. She was cool because, even though she was in her sixties, she drove a Corvette, wore stylish clothes (including miniskirts) and didn't seem to give a damn what other people thought of her. I wanted to be like those women, but most of my life I gave in to cultural pressure. In other words, I wimped out and did what others told me to do.

Now that I'm flirting with sixty, and alone -- dependent on no one and with no one dependent on me --, it's time for me to conform to no one's expectations but my own. I don't have any expectations for myself other than that I will commit to savoring small pleasures and to being creative in as many ways as I can -- whatever that may mean. I'll figure it out as I go along.

Who would have guessed that getting old could be so exciting? Maybe it's not quite as exciting as the very first time you move out on your own, when you're too young and inexperienced to know that you should be terrified at the prospect of some of the shit that life will dump on your head. When you start over in the third stage of life, you do it with your eyes wide open and in the knowledge that you can survive (and even thrive) with a whole lot of shit on your head.

Today, most of the happiest people I know are women over 50. That includes me.

On the 50th Anniversary of "The Feminine Mystique"

This article on the 50th Anniversary of the publication of The Feminine Mystique got my attention because it's a worthy anniversary to celebrate. The article annoyed me. I got part way down the comments before I lost my temper altogether.

Like so much of contemporary journalism, the article is oversimplified to the point of being downright inaccurate. Friedan's book ignited flames, on both sides of the issue. Many women identified with the "Mystique" and joined together to resurrect the Women's Movement that gave women suffrage in the 1920's, and then lay fallow during the awful years of Depression and War. By the early 1960's the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum. Women participated at nearly every level, except in decision-making. Middle class white women were supposed to wait until racial equality was achieved before advancing their issues. After that, they were supposed to wait until the Peace Movement ended the War. 

Betty Friedan's book hit the bookshelves at the perfect moment to attract the attention of many educated women of all ages who believed their contributions to their families and communities were both undervalued and underutilized. They were smart, articulate and capable of doing so much more with their lives than the Cold War culture would allow. So, at first a few at a time and later in droves, they put down their aprons and got busy working for Women's Liberation -- which they were often quick to point out is really about Human Transformation. The Sisters wanted the Brothers to be liberated from their rigid gender roles, too. 

After I read the first sentence of this article, I thought it was going to be a satire. But by the time I got half way through, I realized that the author was actually (incredibly) serious when she wrote: In the 50 years since Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, women’s lives have been transformed, almost entirely for the better. Seriously?  On what planet would that be?  Yes, in the past 50 years our lives have transformed in ways that were unimaginable even in the world of the Jetsons.  Much of it has been good, but not all of it has been even close to "for the better."  

A lot of young women today write about the Feminist Movement as though it were over. Like President Bush standing on that aircraft carrier, they declare victory and prepare to move on.  It doesn't work that way. The war in Iraq wasn't over because our president declared victory, as we know nearly ten years later.

The movement toward gender equality isn't over, either.  Maybe equality, like freedom, is something so precious we will always have to guard it carefully, and be prepared to defend it when necessary. I would argue that, in recent years -- and I think largely due to the complacency of the women and men who think that the "strife is o're and the battle won" -- the movements for civil rights for women and men of all races have lost ground. A lot of ground.  

Women's rights are under attack on all fronts. We have popular religious figures and a few Republican office holders who advocate for the return of patriarchal marriage.  "Wives, be obedient to your husbands."  Our reproductive rights are under attack in many legislative bodies, including Congress. Sex education is virtually absent from our schools. Some forms of popular music and alleged "humor" are all about denigrating women.  

While some research seems to indicate young men are stepping up somewhat (good on them!), working women are still responsible for most of the care and feeding of their families. They are responsible for lining up babysitters, doctor appointments, doing the shopping and the cooking, helping with the homework, doing the laundry and doing the lion's share of the housework. In many households the wife/mother is doing everything that a full-time homemaker would do, plus holding down a full-time job.  This is better for her and her family? How?

Friedan lived in a world where smart, educated women were kept in a pink ghetto, baking cookies and waiting for their husbands to come home, so they could serve him a martini and dinner. I love Frank Sinatra's music, but to this day, I hear the first few notes of Hey, Little Girl and I want to break something. That was truly the attitude at the time. My dad once (jokingly - ?) asked my mother why she didn't run the sweeper in pearls and heels like June Cleever. He lived to tell about it, but he never asked that question again. 

Friedan and her contemporaries, the founders of NOW and other prominent feminists of the era, including the incomparable Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas (whose tone was less strident but whose commitment was and remains as deep), offered both women and men a new way of looking at gender relationships.  They invited both men and women to step out and be more, do more, and offer more to one another than traditional gender roles allowed.

Their courage in the face of ridicule and threats of physical violence gave women of my generation opportunities to learn, grow and participate in our communities in ways that were not possible for our mothers. Our daughters take those opportunities totally for granted. 

Unfortunately, the progress that men and women have made in the last fifty years is under attack on many fronts. 

Betty Friedan didn't "start" the Women's Movement. She gave women a vocabulary with which to discuss the "problem that had no name" that plagued women in the Cold War culture of the early 1960's. In so doing she helped to reawaken the yearnings that created the Women's Suffrage Movement a hundred years before. Friedan then lived the rest of her life devoted to furthering the cause of women. She has gone to her rest, but the struggle is not over. 

If you want proof, scroll down to the Comments at the bottom of the article.  I couldn't stomach all of them, but the ones I saw were enough to affirm my opinion that we have a lot of work to do. 

This is what I'm talking about!

This is potentially a step in the direction out of the morass I referred to in my last post!  Led by Beyonce and sponsored by Gucci, the Chime for Change initiative was launched last night in London. It advertises itself as: "a community of people working to promote education, health and justice for every girl, every woman, everywhere."

I am not celebrity-watcher or a follower of  contemporary music. [I quit listening to the radio sometime in the early 1980's. I've probably heard Beyonce sing on some random car radio or TV show, but I wouldn't recognize her voice.]  I do recognize the power that celebrities have to focus attention on certain issues and to raise staggering amounts of money for charity and political causes.

Learning of this organizatiob made me want to stand up and cheer.  For too long young women have let the Sisters of the Sixties lead the women's movement. I don't know how much of that is a case of the youngsters not stepping up or the Sisters holding on to control. A combination of both, most likely.  In any case, for too long "feminists" have been mostly old ladies (and we're getting older by the day!). I think a lot of people think we are a bunch of old cranks and they pay as little attention to us as possible.

It is positively thrilling to have cool and beautiful young women step up ( as well as some cool, beautiful and young-at-heart-if-not-in-age women like Madonna) to use their forum and their money for the benefit of women and girls.  It's even cooler for them to bear public witness to the fact that you can be sexy and in love with a man or a woman, and still be a feminist. Special kudos to the Jay-Z and all other men who support this initiative.

It is also gratifying that a business woman like Frida Giannini, whose company caters to the wealthiest segment of the populace, is "leaning in" to give back to others. Check out the membership of their advisory board. They've certainly assembled a lot of the right people, and they've made some noise.

Now, let's see what we can all accomplish together.

Being more into country music than pop, all I am compelled to quote Martina McBride: "Let's hear it for the Girls!"

"Open Season on Women"

A while back, in my post about Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, I wrote that it sometimes seems to me these days it is "open season on women." I took that phrase out and put it back into the post several times before I convinced myself that it wasn't hyperbole.

Since then, that phrase and the reports of brutal rapes (some of them done in public) in India, Afghanistan, California and Canada that caused me to write it in the first place have niggled at the edges of my consciousness. The horror of those attacks isn't something I want to think about. I don't want to think that in the United States of America boys would attack a girl, film the assault and make the film public -- adding humiliation on top of sexual battery -- to the point the girl chose suicide rather than facing people who may have witnessed the her debasement. How can this be in our country? 

As a woman and as the mother of a daughter, I want women to be able to live their lives without fear. I would like to believe that the efforts of the women and men who have labored for gender (and race and religious, etc.) equality would have made more progress than this. News reports and my heart tell me that I'd be naive to believe that.

I am old enough to remember when it was more or less unquestioned among everyone I knew that if a woman was raped, she somehow invited it. Perhaps it was because: her skirt was too short (it was the Sixties); her blouse was too tight; she wasn't wearing a bra; she was out in public at night (when she should have been safely locked away at home). [Choose any or all that apply.] Rape was considered to be a sexual act. The woman somehow caused the man to be so aroused that he couldn't help himself -- and that was her fault, not his.

That is the kind of bullshit that has oppressed women since humans started walking upright. Too many people still believe it. In reality, I think rape should be classified as a hate crime. It's not about sex, it's about power. Gang rape is not sex. It's battery using a penis for a weapon.

This problem of rape (especially violent gang rape) seems to be getting worse, not better. Evidently men who feel powerless are prone to take out their frustration on the only people they feel have less power than they do: women and children. We can't solve this only by empowering women to be strong and defend themselves. Too much of that actually might make the problem worse.

It seems to me that both men and women need to learn to behave as though all people have personal worth and dignity simply by virtue of being human. Even if they can't actually believe it at first, acting "as if" would be a huge improvement. People who respect and honor the sanctity of both their own existence that of others will do no harm to another. People who act in a respectful manner may ultimately come to actually feel respect for the Other. 

But, how on earth can we get from here to there?  

A Writer's Platform v. Authentic Life-sharing Online - An Evolutionary Journey

Writer Unboxed is a super blog for writers.  Recently one of their contributors posted this article about platform.

I have struggled with this issue on several levels.  On the one hand, I've pretty much decided that I don't want to write a "writer's blog" as much as I want to write a blog about my experience of the things that I write about.  The audience I want for the blog is not so much other writers, but potential readers -- who will are likely to be "fellow travelers" on the journey through midlife.

Perhaps, because I am not comfortable trying to hawk my books (or anything else, for that matter) from my blog, I'm more comfortable blogging about the kinds of life experiences that are common at this stage of life.

I love the post for a whole lot of reasons. For one thing, I like the free verse format. For another, it appeared in my Inbox literally while I was contemplating where I was going wrong with my blog. For me writing (both fiction and blogging) is an adjunct to the Journey. Because I'm a writer, I'm sure I'll blog about that from time to time, but I'd rather share more about my personal experiences of aging, in addition to continuing to recommend books and movies that I have enjoyed.

So, my plan for this blog is to have it:
 
          "Represent the complexity of [my] writing

And [me] as a person

Constantly evolving"

I love that.

Please, join me.