Still New Asics Gel Kayanos

or anything from my wishlist

off day again due to unfortunate food poisoning.

Why didn't you all tell me I broke my left column in IE? I think I fixed it.

Today, two more people weigh in on Dowd and feminism. Candy, with a unique perspective, and G-Man of Playsure, so thank the lord we get a man to contribute. In case you missed the first two entries, they are here and here.

Candy says:

It’s not about being a housewife or a bachelorette. It’s about being whatever the hell you want to be. As Budd Grebb once said, “A woman’s place is in the kitchen or wherever the hell she wants to be.” Yes, it’s about choice.

I chose to go to a small, artsy college in Pittsburgh. It’s now a university and is, essentially, a completely different place than where I earned my journalism degree. The close group of friends I made there and still have was formed on ambition. We were the kids striving to leave small, dying mill towns, and nearly everyone in our hometowns resented us for it. So we worked harder and found success early--in top internships, in administrative positions at award-winning college publications and through printed work in national magazines.

Though we did our share of partying and were never short of a Saturday-morning story about hooking up with the guy in 1608 who we had played truth or dare with freshman year, we always kept our focus. And our focus was being good at something. For most of us, that meant writing or broadcasting or photography.

Then one day, the visual genius of our group asked me a question and totally destroyed my perfect moment in the perfect window seat.  

“What would you do if you had to choose between the family of your dreams or a top writing spot at the New York Times, equipped with a Sex and the City lifestyle and wardrobe?” she asked. (Note: This was before Jayson Blair.)

Without hesitation, I chose the job. I had worked for that my whole life, and deep down I knew I could never do both. I’ve always believed professional success yields some kind of personal failure, and personal success yields professional failure.

I desperately wanted a family too, but I was willing to give that up for a swank Manhattan lifestyle. I was also barely 21 at the time.

A year later I was pregnant.

And nine months after that I was a single mom.

Here I am, about to turn 25, with a 2 year old I’d pick over a job any day; a career as a reporter at a stable, specialty paper; a huge, lovely apartment; a network of friends; a network of hookups; and a perfectly-handsome roommate who lets me cuddle anytime I need to.

I’m never a perfect mom. I’m never a perfect employee. When I’m successful at one, I’m a failure at the other. I’m defining failure in terms of falling short of my personal capabilities.

I never have perfection at both, but I still have both. Efforts of the early feminists allow me to have both.

I’ll never achieve the dreams I originally had to work at a huge paper in a huge city. I’ll never have the perfect, nuclear family. I’m realistic enough to know that.

But what I also know is huge papers in huge cities can be riddled with huge scandal faster than the last edition prints. The perfect family is never perfect. So I choose not to give up one or the other in pursuit of being a perfect writer or a perfect mother, knowing neither is truly possible.

What I have is not perfect, nor will it ever be. But it is enough. It is enough to make me happy.

My home is warm, my daughter is healthy and beautiful, the family I have under my roof is loving and loyal, my cupboards are full of various flavors of herbal tea, and I have a fireplace to sit in front of anytime I want to curl up and read a book that makes feel like a daydreaming child.

And with love, I will make sure my daughter has the same choice.

And G-Man of Playsure Says:

1) To maintain choice, means that you often have to support the wackos on the fringes. Not that Maureen Dowd is by any measure on the fringe of anything.

2) The idea of choice is nice, but thing is, dudes don't have to choose as much. Why accept that?

3) Instead of a backlash to 60s feminism, could it be that 60s feminism isn't even complete yet? Everything you don't like about feminism... might be part of the response to patrairchy. Ideology isn't about forcing people into victimhood, but about having people
volunteer for it.

4) There's nature and biological determinism... then there's being a douchebag about not wanting to make concessions for your wife because the guy can't entertain himself for a few hours. Seriously, aren't women able to see through that self-proclaimed feminist man bullshit for the posing that it is?

Yeah... whatever. Because if you believe my dissertation, feminism is bullshit and what we really need is a united working class.