Tag Archives: modern woman

Pretty Little Lies

22 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Fempire

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A big part of the red pill involves unraveling all the pretty little lies we are told about how things work and are versus how things really work and really are. Often this occurs when those pretty little lies fall apart.

For men it may look something like this: All their lives they have been told that if they are good, kind, respectful, generous, sensitive, and so on that girls will like that, they will find a good girl, and live happily ever after. “Be a modern male,” they are told. Often this does not work as described and such men either don’t find girls as attracted to them as “bad boy” types or he does marry, does all the “right” things, and his wife is unhaaaapy and divorces him.

For women, it looks a little different. Women are told things like education and career should be their focus. Put off marriage and children. Be independent and self reliant, even in a relationship or marriage. You can do, be, and have it all. There are no limits. Don’t “waste” your potential. Etc. “Be a modern woman.”

I am simplifying as there are many many more layers than this. And many girls and later women work very hard to be and do all that. And it can even seem to be working or work somewhat. Society reinforces and props up the ideas on many levels, furthering the illusion. Yet for many women, despite doing and being all that, life doesn’t work “better” as described. A gnawing uneasiness develops as the mid-30s approach. The cause is often misunderstood. It couldn’t be the pretty little lies!

So she may double down, thinking more independence, career, self-reliance, etc. is what is needed. Maybe a divorce, sudden career change, or move is how it materializes. “Change,” becomes the answer. Perhaps it works short term. But as the decades pass, the discord between how it was supposed to work and how it’s actually working grows.

For many women in their early 40s and above, you are here. (It may occur earlier or later depending on situations and circumstances.)

A choice. Double down again, or admit maybe they were wrong? Maybe you were wrong?  There’s no going back, no do-over, just now. Maybe it’s time to start unraveling the pretty little lies? To reconstruct with what remains?

What do you think? Please share in the comments!

 

Working Mom Blues

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in parenting

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Even though I work from home, I still face many challenges other working moms do, and some unique to work from home moms.

For example, my youngest is home sick today, and was yesterday as well. And that’s the struggle of being a working mom — it doesn’t matter that I am under the gun with a big deadline this week, and had an important meeting I had to cancel, and have a long to-do list of mission critical stuff otherwise. It all screeches to a halt, or a slow crawl at best.

I am not sure how moms who work in an office do it — I can’t imagine I would be able to hold down a traditional job and take off as many days a year as kids get sick. I wonder how many working moms are forced to make this choice — send your kids to school sick or send them to daycare sick. Neither is ideal, both for the sick child of course, and because this only spreads the illness around to other kids.

If I worked at a traditional job and had to take the day off, I’d go without pay but at the same time I would not be trying to do what I have been for the past two days… try to work in bits and spurts anyway. When you work from home and run your own business, there really is no “on the clock and off the clock.” Or one has to be really strict with themselves, because it’s just too easy for those lines to blur.

Not that I am not thankful I can make a living from home. At least I am not working 9 to 5 and then commuting on top of that three hours a day. I know many working moms face that situation, and I can only imagine what that schedule must be like. Grueling.

I suppose what I am feeling and am trying to say is being a working woman and being a working mom are two different worlds. And the worlds “working” and “mom” don’t always fit together so well.  In fact, I often feel like I am doing a half a$$ job at both.

I know being a SAHM has its challenges too, everything does (and I am not implying being a SAHM is not a job in itself, clearly it is!) But part of me wishes when my kids had a sick day, I could just spend it nurturing them without feeling anxiety about all the things I need to get done for work that I can’t, yet also feeling guilty for not being able to simply be in the moment with a sick kiddo either. To add to it, I am now sick myself.

It’s times like this I really resent who ever sold society on this working mom bit and that because of that I was raised to think I somehow could do it all, and all at once, and not skip a beat, and if I couldn’t I was some kind of a failure. I’d really like to slap that someone (or multiple somebody) right now! Instead I write about it, push back on the crazy or at least call it out, because somebody has to, right?

Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant. It helps to get it off my chest. (Not that I really had time to write it but better than just stuffing the emotions, or blowing up, hopefully my taking the time to write this not only helped me feel better, but will help someone else, too.) This too shall pass. Back to double duty, and really I am just going to do my best and try to feel while maybe not perfect, it is enough, and try to have a cheerful heart despite the current situation. As I often remind myself when I get in a funk, things really could be a whole lot worse (My child could have a serious illness instead of a minor one, I could have no work or income and we could be losing our home, etc.) and for that I am thankful they are not!

What do you think? Please share in the comments.

The Enjoli Girl

17 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Fempire

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I may be dating myself, but when I was a young girl there was a perfume commercial with a very catchy jingle that pretty much summed up the times.

It went:

“I can bring home the bacon

Fry it up in a pan

And never, ever let him forget he’s a man

Cause I’m a woman

Enjoli!”

Granted by today’s standards this song symbolizing the liberated modern woman  ideal of that time almost sounds sexist. Were it rewritten today it would likely leave out the frying things up in a pan, or never letting him forget he’s a man, but trust me, at the time it was edgy.

Fast forward to today. Studies show women are more dissatisfied with their lives than they were in generations past, marriage rates at at a 93-year low, depression and other mental health issues are at all time highs, and things haven’t quite panned out the way they were supposed to.

So now what? When do we stop demanding more rights and concessions and change, and start realizing that’s not the answer? Realize that maybe the plan was flawed, and trying to have it all and all at once was actually a set up to fail?

I wish I knew how to fix this big old mess. I think talking about it openly would be a great a start. And admitting what was supposed to be the answer has actually led to other problems, more problems, unforeseen problems.

Trouble is, it’s taboo to talk about such things (feminism a fail?!?! What?!?!), but if we don’t talk about it, how can we understand it? If all the changes over the past forty or so years haven’t led to a better, happier life for women (or men or kids), where do we go from here?

What do you think? Please share in the comments!

 

 

A French Take on Feminism

30 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Fempire

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Hello all, I am still very busy with real life projects but all is going well, GREAT in fact! 🙂

So to keep things going, here’s a video from Marion Le Pen (the even more outspoken niece of Marine Le Pen, who is running for the leader of France) and her take on feminism. Watch. Consider. Discuss.

Do you think she is right? Too much? Not enough? Please share in the comments!

Rediscovering the Goddess of the Hearth

20 Saturday Dec 2014

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As I have mentioned before, I was raised to be a modern career woman, not a wife. And now that I am engaged to a man whose house is spotlessly clean while mine is barely controlled chaos, I realize I have some personal growth to do in the area of domestic skills.

I knew this day would come. Months before we met, I cringed when I first read this blog post telling girls if they want to attract a life partner, they should really clean up their house and car. I knew it was true.

Granted, as my fiance will so generously point out, he doesn’t have two young children living with him. That makes keeping house a lot easier. But even so, I have to admit I may be able to run a business but when it comes to running a home, I am “domestically challenged.”

When we started dating, I was afraid that he would run away screaming the first time he stepped into my place. It’s not dirty exactly, it’s just like the junk drawer exploded, then then multiplied. There’s simply too much “stuff.” My personal demons seem to be mail, laundry, and toys. They are everywhere.

I avoided it as long as I could. But eventually, the day came for the big reveal. Luckily he did not run. However he did say, very nicely, a few weeks later that he’d been thinking about it and decided if we were ever going to live together, we’d have to live, “more his way than mine.” And he made it clear that while he didn’t mind pitching in, he was happy to help,  he wasn’t going to do it all.

And he’s right. I am 43 years old and I don’t know how to keep house. But it’s high time I learn.

Luckily with a few Google searches I was able to locate exactly what I needed, a day by day, week by week, month by month list of things to do. It seems so simple when it’s broken down this way.  This I can do. Thank goodness for the Internet!

I am so glad that I have found a man who loves me and understands me and yet also challenges me to grow. (He just walked in as I am writing, I told him this, and he chuckled good-naturedly. He said I am challenging him to grow, too — in patience! Lol.)

One thing I love about this man is that he gets we all have weak spots and this one is mine. I am painfully self aware of it already. So I appreciate that he didn’t shame me, or bash me, or insult me. He just set the expectation and left it up to me to choose to rise to the occasion (or not).

Things are already starting to shape up and you know what? I love it! Being surrounded by clutter and “stuff” is draining and demoralizing. I have been going room my room and getting things in order and now when I walk into those rooms, it is like a sigh of relief. It makes me want to tackle the next room, and then the next. The kids love it too, and I plan to help them learn right along with me.

Together we are dreaming and clipping out images of interior designs we love, and he is busy planning the remodel. It will be a fresh start. My house will become “our” house. (Meanwhile he’s debating between selling his house or renting it. Either way all he would have to do is put up a sign, it’s already “show” ready. Cute as a button, it will be rented or sold in a flash.)

As we move toward that day, this year, I plan to go on a journey to rediscover the Goddess of the Hearth. In a post feminist world, she’s been lost in the shuffle. I realize I have missed her, I long for her, I need her, she’s my missing element. I want her to help me build a nest that is cozy and warm and a place of sanctuary for myself and my family.

How about you? If you are missing her too, join me! Court the Goddess of the Hearth in 2015. A beautiful, orderly, nurturing home awaits.

“Turn away from the world this year and begin to listen. Listen to the whispers of your heart. Look within. Your silent companion has lit lanterns of love to illuminate the path to Wholeness. At long last, the journey you were destined to take has begun.”
― Sarah Ban Breathnach, Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy

Let those who have ears hear.

Is a Woman’s Work Ever Done?

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Fempire

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In the early 1980s there was a perfume called “Enjoli” that was sold as capturing the essence of the post-feminist “modern woman” in a bottle. The commercial’s jingle went like this:

I can bring home the bacon

Fry it up in a pan

And never ever ever let you

forget you’re a man

Cause I’m a wooooman, Enjoli!

(And it continues so if you like, you can watch the whole commercial here. My apologies to readers who now can’t get the jingle out of their heads.)

Yep, she lived life to the fullest, she was the 24/7 woman. She could have a career, keep house, entice her man, read the kids a bedtime story while her man made dinner, and then they would hop in the sack and finish off the perfect day with some hot sex.

I was thinking back on this commercial over the weekend while I felt myself trying to keep up with this “have it all” lifestyle expectation and feeling like a miserable failure as it was one step from chaos collapse on all fronts. And once again was wondering is it just me who can’t cut it, or does any woman really “have it all?”

It brought to mind a trip I made to China and Hong Kong when I was around 27 years old. I traveled with my mom’s twin sister and her husband, who was born in China and raised in Hong Kong (they married when he was in the U.S. to go to college).

Thanks to my uncle, I got to see life in Hong Kong and China “from the inside” as we were welcomed guests into many of his family and friend’s homes.

Now at that time Hong Kong had only recently been handed back over to China by the British and the two cultures had not yet commingled much. Hong Kong was uber modern, densely packed, and it seemed like everyone worked 12+ hour days. I thought I had seen capitalism in the United States, but it paled in comparison to the capitalism that was Hong Kong. It was an island with seemingly one purpose — money, money, money.

One woman who was married to a good friend of my uncle had us over for dinner. She was a career woman, and like most households in Hong Kong, they had live in Philippine housekeepers. This woman was calm, collected, and stylish. Their apartment was impeccably furnished and had an amazing view of the city and the bay of Hong Kong.  At one point during the evening she turned to me, looking somewhat aghast, and said, “How do American women do it?”

Confused, and worried this was another curious interrogation about Monika Lewinski, I stammered something along the lines of, “Do what?”

“Why have a career and keep a house, too?” she responded. “How could anyone possibly think they could DO both?”

It was the first time I had ever heard anyone ask that question. The discussion went on and we came to the conclusion that it was the labor laws and minimum wage that made it impossible for American women who were not in the upper class to have live in help. Yet, I realized, we were still expected to perform somehow as if we did. Interesting.

In China, we visited my uncle’s youngest sister, born to his father’s second wife and secretly raised by her mother and supported by their father in China unbeknown to the rest of the family until his father’s death. (Multiple wives were not that uncommon in China just a generation before, and so my uncle’s mother and he and his siblings embraced her as their sister and they are now one big happy family, including the two wives!)

I got the feeling that this sister had lived a more privileged life than the average Chinese girl. She was well educated and had married a star of the Bejing Opera (Sort of the equivalent to a rock star in the United States.) She had been a career girl before she married but stopped working when she married. Her husband was away traveling, but we visited her, her mother, and the sister’s cute as a button one year old son. Also there was her live in nanny/housekeeper, a young girl from a poor rural village.

As the sister excitedly entertained us with stories of her life, her mother and housekeeper prepared and served us a wonderful tea. The baby sat with his mother when he was happy and content, but the minute he was hungry or fussy or dirty he was whisked away by grandma or the nanny, only to return when he was happy and content again.

The sister looked at me (I did not have children at that time) and remarked quite dramatically, “How could a woman possibly take care of more than ONE child? I am exhausted!”

Again, I did not know what to reply. Few American women had anywhere near the round-the-clock and live in type of support this “exhausted” young mother had.

These two moments from years ago came back to me this weekend, as I felt incredibly stretched trying to run my business during one of the busiest three day tourist weekends of the year, then scrambled about each morning trying to find some clean clothes and did load after load of dishes each night. I went out to eat twice with my new beau and tried my best to be alert and attentive even though what I really wanted to do was hide from the world and sleep. Great guy that he is, he completely understood (and even unloaded the dishwasher).

All weekend that stupid Enjoli jingle kept going through my head, mocking me for not being able to do it all and be it all while smiling and looking breezy.

But today I am starting to wonder, is it really me? Do I just “not get it?” Or is it just impossible? Can a woman really have it all, without paying someone else to do part of what women’s work used to be?

Born in the early 1970-s, I’ve never known a life where I wasn’t expected to get a education, have a career, do and be it all. In many ways I am the Enjoli woman, all grown up. And quite frankly, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So I am just going to say it, based on my experience and the frenzied lives of women around me who have tried to follow the same path, what a crock! Where do I get the last 20 years back?

Or maybe I am wrong. What do you think? Is the empowered and fulfilled post-modern feminist reality, or was it a myth all along? Or was it maybe, in America anyway, only reality for the few women born into a class who could afford live in help to do the work women have always done so they could live the Enjoli dream?