Category: This is Feminism

As You Do

On By BekkiIn This is FeminismLeave a comment

I can tell already that it’s going to be a lazy Sunday, the kind where I stay in my pajamas most of the morning and a good portion of the afternoon.  I’m okay with that.  I woke up and made biscuits, and strawberry coconut popsicles, too.  (As an aside, that link goes to one of my favorite baking sites.  Her pictures are scrumptious, and I’ve yet to try a recipe from her that didn’t work.)

Today is also a closing tabs sort of day, which means you get a couple of little snippets of things that have been going on rather than a single topic blog post.

Neil Gaiman Signing

Tuesday,  A and I went to go see Neil Gaiman reading from his new book, The Ocean at the End of the Land.  It seems like a wonderfully magical, creepy, utterly Mr. Neil type of book.  I’m holding onto it until I have the time to read it with the attention it deserves, rather than in snatches on the subway.  It’s the kind of book I want to dive into and not come up for air until I’ve turned the final page.

The reading was wonderful, and Neil brought Amanda Palmer out to play a song and ask him questions.  Every time I see the two of them together, I’m struck by how palpable a thing their love for each other is.  Not in an on-stage-for-the-fans kind of way, but in a genuinely fascinated with each other kind of way.  (By the by, if you’re interested in ART and the making of ART, Amanda’s blog about the book is worth reading.  Some great thoughts in there about the way we incorporate ourselves into our art.) 

At the end of the night, Neil signed books, and I asked him if, since I’d rather run out of books for him to sign, he’d sign my back instead.  He very sweetly said yes.

Now that it’s gotten warm, A and I have been spending most of our time out in the backyard.  I’m still in a bit of shock that we now own a house, in New York City, with a backyard large enough for a grill and patio furniture and a garden.  A and I do most of our cooking out there.  Everything from pizza to burgers to pork shoulder to smoked duck.  With no AC in the house, being able to cook outside makes such  difference.

The garden’s done up in milk crates, a la Riverpark Farm.  We have corn, squash, tomatoes, bell peppers, hot peppers, peas, lettuce, arugula, radish, broccoli, basil, parsley…  The squash are in full blossom, and the peas and tomatoes are starting to flower as well.  It’s the first time I’ve grown my own food, and there’s something magical about watching it grow.

Backyard

Finally, I’ve been seeing a great deal of talk online recently about the fact that there is a group of men out there who are apparently still living in some 1960’s, Mad Men era world where it’s okay to publicly evaluate women based on physical characteristics and otherwise treat women as less than equal.  (I’m not going to put up links – if you’re curious just search Google for the SFWA debacle or the Kickstarter rape-book incident.)  If you’ve been following my blog, then you probably already have a good idea of my views on the subject.  Which is why I wasn’t going to post on the subject.   Then I saw something on the subway the other day that was simply too incredible not to share.

It’s morning, and the 5 train is packed, standing room only, so I’m standing and reading my book and generally ignoring everyone else around me.  As you do on the subway.  Then I hear a kid sounding out letters, like he’s learning to read.  Cute.  So I look over, and this adorable five year old is sitting on his dad’s lap, reading from dad’s magazine.  Super cute.  Then I realize there’s a large picture of a mostly naked woman taking up a good chunk of the page, and the kid is reading the headline from a sex advice column.  Yeah, you read that right.  The phrase the kid has been laboriously sounding out for the last five minutes is “blow it”.

I didn’t say anything.  I wanted to, but didn’t even know where to start.  Dude, that’s creepy?  Dude, totally inappropriate for a kid? For a public place?  Does your son’s mother know what he’s reading?  Have you considered what you’re teaching your son about the way he should be treating women?

You see my dilemma.  Plus, who wants to get into an argument with the creepy guy teaching his kid to read from Playboy on the subway at early o’clock in the morning?  Suffice it to say, I feel kind of sorry for the kid, who will probably turn out to be the kind of guy who can’t ever get a date and doesn’t have a clue why.

On that note, I’m heading out to the garden.  In my pj’s.

Leaning Out

On By BekkiIn This is FeminismLeave a comment

Yesterday was the first day in forever that I didn’t have to work.  It was wonderful.  I cleaned the house and made a lemon chiffon pie.  Then A and I took a drive down toward Coney Island, stopped at Spumoni Gardens to grab a pizza, and came home to watch Game of Thrones.

It was pretty much a perfect day.  The kind of day that made me think, I’d be happy doing this every day.  Except that would mean I’d be pretty much a stay at home wife.  And wouldn’t that mean I’d somehow failed?

I feel like women of my generation are supposed to want the high powered career, to become the Fortune 500 CEO or the partner with the corner office or the next Secretary of State.  Between the Anne-Marie Slaughter article and the Cheryl Sandburg book, it’s starting to seem like even though we were told we had choices, we were expected to go down the career path.  Which, in its own way, is as strange as telling women their place is in the home.*

I’ve seen a bunch of theories lately about how to keep women in the work force.  They range from tax incentives (treat child care as a fully deductible expense) to work/life balance suggestions (don’t schedule meetings after school hours).  The problem is that all these suggestions go toward disguising the fact that the American workplace is inherently un-family-friendly, rather than implementing the kind of structural value change that would give women – and men – the ability to have both meaningful careers and rich family lives.

Maybe, then, we’re looking at this the wrong way.  What if women are leaving the work force because they aren’t interested in playing by the same rules that men do?  What if women would rather opt out of the system — some by starting their own businesses, some by staying home with the kids — because they don’t buy in to the corporate ethos in this country?

What if the solution is not for women to lean in, but to drop out?

Let the men run the rat race if they want to.  Let them pile up money they don’t have time to spend.   Let them miss the baseball games and the school plays.  And maybe, by the time I have daughters who are the age I am now, the question won’t be why women can’t have it all.  It will be why it took men so long to figure out that there was a better way for everyone.

*If this sounds familiar, it’s because I’ve written about the subject of women in the workforce before.

“Precious Things”

On By BekkiIn Pinned Posts, This is Feminism4 Comments

Yesterday, Amanda Palmer posted an amazing blog on internet hatred and bullying.  You should go read it.  Spend some time in the comments.  It will probably break your heart.  It broke mine.

When I was a kid, I was drawn to the kids who were different.  The ones who were fragile and fantastical and generally quite fucked up.  I didn’t hang out with the cool kids, partly because there was never money for whatever the latest craze in toys was – slap bracelets, troll dolls, sticker collecting – but mostly because the cool kids were boring.  My friends were never boring, but the flipside was that they would turn on me in an instant.  I had frenemies long before the term was popular.  Girls who loved me one day and said vicious things about me the next.  Or kicked me as we went down the stairs to recess, so that one year my shins were black and blue from September to June.  Or poured chocolate milk all over me during lunch.  Or took the confidences I had whispered during sleepovers and spread them among all the other girls to get a leg up the popularity ladder.

Seventh grade was the worst.  It was the year of the bar mitzvah’s.  I grew up in a mostly Jewish town, went to a mostly Jewish school.  There was a bar mitzvah almost every weekend, sometimes two.  The rich kids had their parties at the country club, where there would be a magician or face-painter or a DJ, or sometimes all three.  The popular girls collected photo albums of invitations.  Even the unpopular girls like me got invited to their share – someone who invited all of their homeroom, or all of their Hebrew school class, or whose parents made them invite the kids who’d been in carpool.

I don’t remember which one of them thought up the game.  I don’t even know why it was so funny to them, or so hurtful to me.  It went like this.  I would be sitting alone, staring at all the kids out on the dance floor and wishing someone would come over to talk to me.  A group of the popular boys would be hanging out at the other end of the table, whispering with each other.  Suddenly, one of them would run over to me, get down on one knee, and ask, “Will you marry me?”  I would sit there in shock and confusion, without a clue as to how to send him away so that I came off as the cool one.  Then, laughing hysterically, he would run back to his friends and they would all exchange high-fives.  I was convinced, utterly and absolutely, that what they were really telling me was that I was hideous, and ugly, and that nobody would ever, ever want to marry me.

By the time we hit high school, it was mostly over.  I hung out with the freaks, took the honors and AP classes, played lacrosse, dated a guy who thought I was gorgeous, and pretty much tried to ignore everyone who had caused me so much misery a few years back.  It worked so well that by the time senior year came around, I was a certain kind of cool.  At senior prom, one of the hottest guys in my class told my boyfriend he’d never realized how hot I was.  The popular boys wanted to pose for pictures with me on the last day of school.  I told them all to fuck off.

Which should be the end of it, except for one last thing.

About five years ago, one of the boys who’d played the marriage game found me on Facebook and sent a friend request.  I’ll admit, my response was not as graceful as it could have been.

facebook

I never wrote back, because I didn’t know what to say.  In truth, he wasn’t even the worst of them.  In high school, he was actually pretty friendly to me.  I still hated him, even more than I hated the ones who had bullied me for so long.  The way I saw it, they were idiots.  They couldn’t help themselves.  He was smarter, more popular, better than all of that.  He could have stopped them, if he’d wanted to.  He never did.

***

So.  To all those kids who made my life a living hell.  To the kids who lived through it from the other end.  To the ones who bullied, and were bullied, and watched the bullies and did nothing.  If you want to talk, I’m here.  I’m listening.  Hit me up in the comments.

And to all those kids who are going home after school and crying, and cutting, and wishing they could die:

IT.

GETS.

BETTER.

“Doll Parts”

On By BekkiIn This is FeminismLeave a comment

A few months ago, Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote a great article titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.”  If you haven’t read it yet, you should.  Go ahead.  I’ll still be here when you’re done.

My reaction to the article was somewhere in between “of course” and “there’s no way that kind of systemic change will ever happen.”  Then I went on with my life.

I’m one of those women who has been told, from Day One, that I can have anything I want as long as I’m willing to work hard enough for it.  So I did.  Husband?  Check.  Career?  Check.  Kids?  Not yet, but on the horizon.  Lately, though, I’ve been feeling stretched over too many places, as if there’s not enough of me to go around.

I feel guilty that I don’t have enough time to spend with my husband, frustrated that I don’t speak another language (or another two or three) fluently enough to work in, stressed because it seems like there’s never time enough in the day to go to the gym or to yoga class.  The only time I feel peaceful is when I’m writing — but that means waking up at early o’clock to claw space out of my day.

I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one who feels this way.  For me, so far, the balance has been in learning what things I can let go.  Getting fluent in Spanish?  Forget it. Nightly workouts at the gym?  Not gonna happen.  Even so, it feels like there should be a way to move to a place, not where we can have it all, but where we don’t have to feel guilty about letting it go.

 

“Siren”

On By BekkiIn This is FeminismLeave a comment

I saw the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movie the other weekend.  It was phenomenal, much, much better than I had anticipated.  (SPOILER ALERT:  If you haven’t seen the movie yet but want to, you should probably stop reading here.  Ditto if you haven’t read the book, although I think there are enough differences that it won’t matter so much).

Incidentally, I happen to think that this is one of the few (perhaps the only) movies based on a book where you are expected to walk into the theatre with a working knowledge of the characters and the plot.  Otherwise, it seems that the viewer would get lost in the tangle of relationships and plotlines.  If you saw it and hadn’t read the books first, I’d love to know what you thought.

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