Blogs Happen – And for Me, This Is How

Recently – okay, this morning, which is probably about three months before you will actually get to read this – I was lying about in bed. Because of the pandemic lockdown, as well as a dreary-looking day, I didn’t have much reason to get up.

The result was that I had plenty of thinking time, and as a consequence, two things came to mind: the idea of pretty, swiftly followed by the idea of feminism.

It started when I began thinking back to a blog I had written about dresses and why I hate to wear them. And I wondered when the last time I did wear one was.

My sister-in-law’s wedding, probably 20 years ago? My first trip to Wales at a posh castle-hotel 18 years ago? My brother’s wedding 12 years ago?…

No, to my horror, probably only about 5 years ago, on one of the river cruises Blue Scream and I took. It wasn’t for more than an hour, and I can’t imagine why I bothered. Probably because I packed the thing, and I like to wear everything in my suitcase at least once.

Then I remembered a friend’s comment on that blog, and how she disagreed with my assessment. She liked wearing dresses. They make her feel pretty.

Fair enough.

I presented my thoughts and feelings. I didn’t expect anyone else to conform to them. In fact, I’d be worried if they did.

But pretty – there it was again.

I’ve never felt one way or another about myself because of clothes.

Okay, I’ve felt uncomfortable in some clothes, either because they didn’t fit properly or because they didn’t fit the occasion for which I was wearing them.

But pretty? Ugly? Like a princess? Like a virgin – Oh wait, that’s a song!

No, never once.

I’ve looked at clothes and thought, That’s beautiful! Or, You could not pay me enough to touch that, much less consider wearing it.

But clothes have never transferred their beauty to me or how I feel. I guess that’s why I’ve never been a slave to fashion.

But as far as pretty goes, I consider it a false bill of goods women have been sold for centuries. Even though we’re no longer seen in society as purely ornamental, we’re still expected to feel ornamental.

“Oh, but doesn’t wearing sexy underwear make you feel sexy?”

Um, no.

Those lacy bits of butt floss that pass for underwear and padded, wired brassieres on someone who neither needs nor wants wiring or padding are simply uncomfortable. Even if I knew what “sexy” felt like, I couldn’t begin to have any notion of it while wearing such uncomfortable clothing.

Sell sexy if you like. I’m not buying it.

Which brings me to feminism.

Growing up, I always insisted I wasn’t a feminist. My rationale was that I didn’t believe in “girls are better than anyone.” I believed in equality. And I didn’t think feminism was about equality, but rather, about pushing girls to the fore, above everyone else.

I didn’t like being disqualified from doing things because I was, “just a girl.” I didn’t ask for it, so why should it be held against me?

My mother used to frequently say, “There may be people who aren’t as good as you, but no one’s better.”

She never said there were people better than me. I was as good as anyone else. (Irish mothers aren’t known for praising their children.)

Still, I did not see myself as the next Betty Freidan.

It wasn’t until the new wave of feminists, people like Emma Watson and Benedict Cumberbatch in the “I am a feminist” ads that I realized, That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I am a feminist.

It isn’t about girls being better. It’s about equality.

When I was first introduced to the word, I was still enmeshed in being disqualified. My brother, Rob, told me I would never be accepted to Penn State because I wasn’t smart enough – don’t even get me started on the fact that nearly all of my high school classes were what would now be considered AP classes. Then, when I was, in fact, accepted, he told me it was because I was a girl, and the university was trying to get more female students.

I proved I was as good as. But, to my mind, that didn’t make me a feminist.

“Women’s libbers” as they were called at the time were generally the ugly, long, unkempt hair, braless, paisley-clothes-wearing women who carried signs and didn’t know how to use their indoor voices.

I didn’t want to be one of those. Short hair, three-piece-suit with a shirt and tie and Oxford shoes was more my style.

At about that time, Janis Ian’s At Seventeen album came out. The eponymous single was the anthem of every girl from puberty to 30. Everyone of a certain age born without a Y chromosome could identify with the “ugly duckling girl like me” in the song, even the tall-thin-gorgeous women who hadn’t known an ugly day from their Gerber Baby beginnings to prom queen.

Yet, even though I strongly identified with the song, that was the only one on the entire album I never figured out the guitar chords to. I could sing and play all of the other songs a la Janis, which, in their own way, were feminist, but for some reason, I shied away from that one.

I suppose it was too close to the bone.

“To those of us who knew the pain /of valentines that never came/ and those whose names were never called/ when choosing sides for basketball…”

Maybe I wasn’t quite a feminist then.

Perhaps I was still seeking permission to be one.

Perhaps I should spend time lazing in bed considering things more often.

The Feminist

My mother used to tell me she wished I had a sister.

I’m not sure what effect a sister would have had on me, but I doubt it’s the one she intended. Had the sister been older, no doubt she would have bullied me and bossed me around as big sisters of my acquaintance seemed to do. Had she been younger, I would have resented her, because my mother would have constantly tried to impress on me the importance of being a good role model.

My life should stand more as a warning than as an example.

My parents had so much difficulty having babies, though, if I’d had an older sister, they probably would have given up before I was born, which is probably why I never had a younger sister.
For myself, I never had much use for a sister, other than the belief that it would have allowed me to get bunk beds. I would gladly have forgone the whole idea of a sister if I could just have had a loft bed.

For a brief period of time, I did have the role of “big sister” thrust on me when a much younger cousin came to live with us for about a year. While I loved my cousin, I hated the fact that he had, albeit briefly, usurped my role as the baby of the family. Worse, it came just at the time I discovered that female puberty was about to ruin my life.

Being the youngest, I had the benefit of having my brothers as an example, both of how to be and what not to do in this world. I learned from many of their mistakes. Of course, many of mine were far dumber.

I think my mother believed that a sister would have had a feminizing effect on me. I doubt it. Despite her best efforts at trying to teach me how to mother my dolls, I still carried them around by the neck or the leg. They often sat in chairs in groups, my audience while I sang or read to them or gave some sort of performance. They were the friends I didn’t have – or the captive audience friends were never interested in being.

My mindset was never being a mother. Babies were kind of noisy and demanding, and as an introvert, I definitely need down time. I never saw my mother get any of that. My dolls, after all, only cried when you squeezed their heads.

From my earliest memory, I had it in mind to have a career. Of course, my chosen career – actor/writer/rock star – never came to fruition. But it never occurred to me that marriage and motherhood were all that important, despite being told by most relatives that those were the best I could hope for and all that I should aspire to.

Yes, I was born in the ’50s.

Obviously, I did not accept their sage advice.

I knew what I wanted, even if I had no idea how to get it. And I was very definite in what I didn’t want – besides motherhood. I did not want to be a nun, a secretary, a nurse or a teacher. While all are fine careers – for someone else – they were not for me. They were also nearly the only careers open to middle class women.

I always found it very strange that people who thought they knew me would suggest that I was going to become a nun. Up until about a year before I married, one of our parish priests would refer to me – me, not the super religious girls – as “our nun.” And every time he did, I said in my head, “Ain’t gonna happen, Father. Not now, not ever.”

But I digress.

I came of age a few years after it became fashionable to burn one’s bra. Hippies were the dominant force during my late elementary school days and most of my high school years. While I may have worn bell bottoms because it was nearly impossible to get any other kind of trousers for women, I did not embrace hippiedom.

I did not march to the beat of Sgt. Pepper. In fact that album made me leave my precious Beatles for Herman’s Hermits and the Monkees. I didn’t like shoulder length hair and beards on men.  (Well, until Queen.) The most psychedelic song I liked was the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” I wasn’t interested in the drug culture. I was interested in things staying where they were when I was nine.

But one thing I did insist on was equality. I spent my childhood railing against the family double standard. Any time I wasn’t allowed to do something my brothers did, it wasn’t because they were older; it was because they were boys.

“That’s not my fault!” I’d reply. Later, my response was, “Blame my father for failing to give me a Y chromosome, but don’t hold it against me!”

Ah, you’re a feminist, people would say.

No, I just believe that people should be treated equally, regardless of a gender that is out of their control.

In high school my “guidance counselors” would take a group of us for college counseling. When they would ask what we wanted to be when we grew up, two of the five of us would say teachers, two would say nurses and I would say, “I want to be an actor.”

That was immediately met with, “I don’t know anything about that. But my sister is a nurse.”
So, we would spend a half hour talking about universities that had good teaching programs and those with good nursing programs, and I was relegated to fending for myself. The best I could say of those sessions were that they got me out of class, where I would have preferred to be. Obviously, my “counselors” had no idea how to deal with someone who wasn’t going into good girl (feel free to pat them on the head) professions.

When I would complain, I was told I needed to be realistic. I didn’t want to be realistic, I wanted a career! I wanted fairness.

Ah, a feminist. That was really looked down upon by the nuns in the Catholic schools I attended.

No, I just want fairness.

A few years later, while attending the wrong university – where I didn’t get the training I was looking for – I ended up graduating with two rather useless bachelor’s degrees. The highlight of my college career, the only reason for choosing my second major, was getting to spend a semester in the UK.

And still I tried to insist on fairness.

Oh, you’re a feminist.

To quote Charlie Brown, “Good grief!”

While I never achieved my career goal, after another stint in a university, I did end up in a job that allowed me to afford to travel, at least.

During a recent conversation about feminism, I suddenly realized that what most women call feminism is all about girl power, and putting men down as “less than” them. It’s about women who were so insecure in their being that the only way they could feel empowered was to put down those who weren’t them.

I don’t know what those women are, but I don’t believe they are real feminists. Listening to modern women who call themselves feminists, I think the real deal is someone who knows what she wants and goes after it. It is the woman who doesn’t need to “find a man” to have an identity, but who also doesn’t need to put men down to feel good about herself. She doesn’t accept the idea that “Women don’t do that.” Being a woman has nothing to do with what you want as a career – unless, perhaps, you’re trying to break into the oldest profession.

I still have a problem with being called a feminist. I guess it’s just the fact that, since I’m not a jar, I don’t like being labeled.