Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 September 2007 11:23:34
As a mum reading articles like this one in the Independent on Sunday scare me. The idea that girls, as young as Third Party feel they have to be "superwoman" and successful in everything scares me. Reading the article though I know it's not just young people who feel they have to be "superwoman" and become self-destructive when they can't or in their pursuit of trying. If I am honest I can see the same underlying desire in many of the thirty somethings I know (including, to an extent, myself).
Now I know it easy for feminists to blame a male dominated media for portraying these images, but I think we need to look closer to home and take some of the responsibility. Second wave feminism changed the structures so the playing field was far more even and third wave feminism argued that you could have it all and do it in heels. The results were positive, girls started to achieve more at school and women started to achieve more in the boardroom as well as the bedroom. Glass ceilings were shattered and the sisters were finally doing it for themselves but there was a cost. Of course as good feminists the costs are generally put forward as being related to men & their insecurities or continued control of a patriarchal society, but I think it's time for feminists to stop and take responsibility.
If we want our daughters to escape the image of "superwoman" and our sons to feel a bit more secure we need to take a step back and look at what's gone wrong with feminism. Firstly I think our measures of the success of feminism have become to closely linked to the measures of success of capitalism (i.e. consumption and earning potential). Secondly I think that we have to admit that nobody, of any gender, can have it and do it all (we all have weaknesses) - role models are good but role models are not what we "must be". Finally I think that we have to learn to smile and play again and just be who we are.
How we do all that, I have no idea. It certainly won't mean that we get rid of encouraging our children to have dreams or ambition, or that we swap the lippy and heels for dodgy looking dungarees again (unless that's the look we really want to go for). But it might just mean we ease up on our kids and that we set examples by stressing an ickle less about how many calories we've eaten today & how close to our gda's we've got. It might just require us to stop caring quite so much about where our kids schools are in the league tables and finally it might also require us to do an ickle less keeping up with the Joneses and focus an ickle more on what money can't buy with our kids.