Maureen Dowd on Retrosexism, Dating and the Working Woman
What's a Modern Girl to Do? asks Maureen Dowd about something I've been noticing from the fashionistas of New York to the hipsters of Minneapolis -- young women want to get married and take their husbands' names and a lot of them choose to stay at home, avoiding the grind of the working world. Taking your husband's name for my generation seemed retro-- in a daring sort of way. It displayed one's defiance of the feminist superego!
But Dowd's reflections on what I like to call retrosexism makes an interesting point that needs to be amplified. The working world has gotten more sexist, not less. It's harder than ever to be a mother and have a career. Our overachieving privileged boomer fore-mothers set unreal standards: they worked twelves hour days, had four nannies, made partner after having twins and married supportive millionaires. In academia, the ambitious women of the previous generation didn't usually have children.
Most middle class women I know who are not driven by ambition just tell me that they have not found work that is particulary fulfilling or lucrative. Work sucks. They choose to stay home because it is economically rational -- the cost of childcare is prohibitive. Most of them didn't marry rich guys. They are interesting women, they're not Stepford Wives, but they're not feminist fanatics either. Feminist forgot that work sucks for the most part and liberating women to work doesn't change that.
But Dowd's reflections on what I like to call retrosexism makes an interesting point that needs to be amplified. The working world has gotten more sexist, not less. It's harder than ever to be a mother and have a career. Our overachieving privileged boomer fore-mothers set unreal standards: they worked twelves hour days, had four nannies, made partner after having twins and married supportive millionaires. In academia, the ambitious women of the previous generation didn't usually have children.
Most middle class women I know who are not driven by ambition just tell me that they have not found work that is particulary fulfilling or lucrative. Work sucks. They choose to stay home because it is economically rational -- the cost of childcare is prohibitive. Most of them didn't marry rich guys. They are interesting women, they're not Stepford Wives, but they're not feminist fanatics either. Feminist forgot that work sucks for the most part and liberating women to work doesn't change that.
2 Comments:
dowd incorrectly assumes that there is a sea-change in young women's attitudes to work and career versus family and kids. once again the new york times went for one-sided reports that have long since been corrected (i.e. the story report from ivy league universities - faulty data and faulty interpretation; similar studies - ideologically skewed to please the paying pipers). the bottom line is, of course, that women have a choice that a generation or two ago they may not have had. let them choose.
I think you're right that we do have more choices -- but the choices may in fact be deceptive if in fact women are going to be discriminated against in the work place.
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