The Girl Within, The Woman Without

I had the opportunity to sit in on a discussion with some young ladies the other day. It was enlightening and yet not. Some things never change. Some dorky big guy guffaws his way through class making fun or putting down the feminine species. It's just a big joke to them. The put downs. But their comments can hurt. And what is truly amazing is that it doesn't dawn on these Neanderthals that these young ladies will remember the name calling and the dismissive snort far longer than they will remember doing it. They will remember and the guys better hope one of these smart, funny, savvy people doesn't become their boss, or well, let's just say payback is not always a pleasant thing.

The other thing I noticed is this:  although I am significantly older than these young ladies, we all had kind of an aura around us which was obviously learned from somewhere that we are not the power holders. We are the power seekers. We strive and strain and lurch our way to some goal feeling all the while that we have to be better, faster, more somehow, than our male counterparts. Why is this? Who taught us this? Where did this model come from. My mother, a product of the '50's mentality, had this as part and parcel of her upbringing, but I don't remember her beating it into me. I grew up with Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinheim and bra burning. I am woman, hear me roar, remember those words? We sang them with gusto. We believed them! Then we got older and it was harder to live up to those ideals and promises. We had careers but we may have stopped to raise kids, or we raised kids and kept the career and there we were being pulled so many different ways that we even forgot there was something we were striving to do! How did that happen? You can let someone have power over you, we were told, or we could show our own power and shove back. Are we shoving back? Not so's you can tell. The power still seems to be in someone else's court. And the bullying, blathering big guy with the big mouth is still leading. I don't like it, I don't like it at all. Something's got to change. We need a new Helen Reddy with a new anthem. Something to move these young ladies to go forward. Something we older women can get behind and push for them. What do we have? I don't know. I'm still looking around. And I'm not feeling hopeful at the moment.