Still New Asics Gel Kayanos

or anything from my wishlist

run 5, abs 300

Expect four actual journal entries this week. For sure! I kid you not!

So, for some reason a lot of people have been asking me lately about what my opinion is on the Maureen Dowd article from the NYT. I'm not sure when I became the voice of the anti-feminist backlash, but the reality is that I find a lot of what Dowd talks about to be right on. If you haven't read the article, I actually can't find the link to it since I refuse to enter the spam trap that is a NYT online subscription. But let me sum it up...

Dowd has a book coming out in the near future called Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide which is seemingly a review of the feminist movement over the last several decades and its successes and failures, excuse the mis-spelling. Most of Dowd's argument is that, while the original feminists took it too far with their militanism and insistence on unrealistic demands, the rejection of feminism by the current generation is dangerous. Key point: Much of the rejection of feminism by the current generation has to do with the fact that, like it or not, the ideals of feminism in application are the antithisis of the ideals required to trap a man. And we all know that we want to trap a man.

Courtship: Dowd points to the 180 degree shift in views on flirting and courtship as evidence. She points out how when she was given a copy of How to Catch and Hold a Man, she packed it away as a relic of an era gone by, but then in the past five years, books like The Rules have made it evident that women need to start learning to flirt again. Or if they don't need to, they want to. Of course, I think they probably need to, but that's just me.

Girl Money: Equal Pay for Equal Work is out. Girl Money is back in. Women wanting to use the check to assert their equality is out. Men paying for dinner is in. In Dowd's research, younger women (in their twenties) point to the whole "she should pay too" theory as evidence that early feminist focused on the wrong issues -- Minor places for women to assert power instead of the big economic issues.

Power Dynamics: Face it, Dowd says, men don't like smart, succesful powerful women. It goes against evolution. Who wants a woman who will be critical when you could have a woman who will be supportive and awed by you?

Ms. vs. Mrs.: Less and less women choose to use Ms. or to keep their own last names when getting married. The number of women asserting individuality in those ways as compared to the number of women taking the traditional "Mrs. His Last Name" shifts dramatically year to year at this point.

I'm simplifying, obviously, but not that much. So, what do I think of all of this?

At dinner the other night, I said "I've always been anti-feminist. The reality is that women aren't men. But on the other hand, I've been able to make more money, have more options, be more sexually aggressive and do a lot of other things for no reason other than the work that the early feminists did, so I guess I'm just a big huge hypocrit."

And that's very much how I feel. I've always thought that the concept of equal pay for equal work was bullshit. There are some awesome women out there who are probably underpaid, but there are also no shortage of women out there like the contractor I was working with a few months ago who missed a deadline and then had the balls to say to me, "I don't know how you expected me to get this done. I had 30 hours of work that week and a seven year old kid." I mean, seriously. The truth is that in many cases a female employee gives you less value than a male one. And I should be bitter about that because good female employees like myself suffer because of that, but reality is reality.

Here's the other reality. Can you blame men for not wanting agressive, assertive successful women? If you had hundreds of years of society where women supported men instead of competed with them, would the shift feel natural to you? I actually think one of the greatest dangers is that we've tried to teach men that they want something that they don't. That they should want to marry aggressive, successful women. Then, after they find out what that's really like, the realize that they didn't want it so much.

Sound ridiculous? Oh no. Without even blinking I can think of seven women I know who would attribute part or all of the failure of their marriage to their husband finding out that he really did want a wife who was tired from work at the end of the day, who was just as comfortable staring at hot men as he was staring at hot women, who had her own goals that were, often, as important as or more important than the goals associated with her marriage. And hey, fair enough because it's been okay for guys to live like that for so many years. Why not for women?

Here's why: Because unless you are one of the .0001 percent of couples who can live like that, chances are somebody will end up being unsatisfied in that type of relationship. Either you as a woman will give up on professional and lifestyle goals and independence that you've gotten used to, or he will give up on a level of support that years of society have taught him to expect.

Of course, there's the other solution. Understand that being part of the new breed of independent woman negates your ability to have that type of traditional relationship and revel in the new type of non-married, non-living together but still committed relationship that's popped up. Here are some of my favorite quotes to sum up this line of thinking, all said to me by close friends:

"I said to him, if we are not guaranteed that we are going to have children, I see no reason for us to get married, or even live together. I have no interest in that."

"My uncle and aunt have been together for 15 years. They don't live together and they have the most functional relationship I've ever seen. That's what I want."

"I mean, look, he only thought he wanted a smart woman with a career. The very first time I needed to be left alone to get some stuff done on a night when he wanted company and conversation, it became an issue."

Of course, there are also the other type of women. The type that don't so much make a conscious choice that traditional marriage won't work in combination with their much loved independence but who passively make the choice to prioritize independence over companionship simply by refusing to make the types of compromises they would need to in order to make a marriage work. Hard to merge things like finances when you want to spend YOUR money on what YOU want to spend it on. But also hard to hold it against a man who resents you for it when his money is considered the money to take care of both of you. And that's just one example. You know the math. The number of women in their thirties and forties who have never been married....and...

OHMYGOD...

FEMINISM REALLY DID KILL THE NUCLEAR FAMILY.

Okay, that's a bit of an overstatement, but in essense, here's where I agree with Dowd. A marriage, a family, that's a unit that has to fuction as a team. And all this teaching of women to be independent works against that. Following the essential tennants of feminim? That probably does work against your ability to find a mate and live happily ever after. I don't know many people of either gender who are interested in simultaneously building a partnership while also allowing one partner to make almost no concessions about subjugation, for lack of a better word. That probably doesn't work. I know I'm guilty of it.

Dowd is scared that, and I quote, "Having boomeranged once, will women do it again in a couple of decades? If we flash forward to 2030, will we see all those young women who thought that trying to Have It All was a pointless slog, now middle-aged and stranded in suburbia, popping Ativan, struggling with rebellious teenagers, deserted by husbands for younger babes, unable to get back into the work force they never tried to be a part of?"

And it's certainly possible. And scary, really. And here's where i think not only Dowd but also many women miss the point. Feminism was originally supposed to be about options and choices and not being trapped in a single way of life. Somewhere along the way, it became about this absurd concept of Having It All and total equality with men on all levels. What if we took it back to the original goal? Choices? What if I understood and embraced that as a woman, I have choices? I can have independence and career and all of those things, but if, at some point, I want to have a family and a partner, I will have to CHOOSE to let go of some of the perks I got when I was living as INDEPENDENT WOMAN and sacrifice some things in order to then get the perks of being PARTNER AND FAMILY WOMAN?

It's taken me too long to figure that out, but I think it's the crux of the problem. No, you cannot be an independent and assertive woman and succeed in a marriage most of the time (which is to say that I certainly know couples who make this work, I just don't think it's the norm). But you don't have to entirely give that up either. Just know that Have It All is a worthless slog. Not reality. We never get to have it all. Neither, really, do men. And isn't that the most equality we can expect?