Somewhere Between Wonder Woman & Maggie’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
By Beth in Uncategorized, Feminist, Female Empowerment, environment, yoga, Classic Rock, Music, Pop Music on April 1 2007
As a little girl I was obsessed with female icons. Not so much Wonder Woman as Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Gos. She looked like she was having so much fun on those jet skis in that “Vacation” video. Indeed, she and her bandmates were to the point of excess, indulging themselves. After I learned of this, I no longer looked at the band in the same way, but I still dug what they’d managed to accomplish. They were chicks doing their thang, or rather the “guy” thing. They didn’t take any shit, lived fast and furious lives and had, what looked to be on the surface, a whole lot of fun in the process. They weren’t subjecting themselves to archetypal 60s female folk roles of the”girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair.” They were playing in an industry long dominated exclusively of men and saying, “Look, we’re women and anything you can do, we can and will do better.” I loved that they exuded this energy and I was beholden to it. I realize that the Wilson sisters were rockin’ out long before The Go-Gos but I’m not a classic rock gal and I never will be even when I begrudgingly succumb to my husband’s weekly quota for Led Zepellin on our car rides.
So over the last few days I’ve been preoccupied with female role models and the need for young women to hear encouraging, supportive feedback as youngsters or at the very least someone (preferably, a mentor) to tell them, “It’ll all be alright” and really mean it.
And then boom, I look at the front page of the Sunday New York Times today and the cover piece is devoted to Newton North High School and the female over-achiever. It documents the lives of a few of the “perfect” girls who go to school there and all the extra-curriculars they engage in along their quest to be the best or die while trying to live up to their parents’ expectations. You get the feeling from the article that none of these girls has particularly high self esteem (the cover girl frequently complains she is “no athlete” and is haunted by this deficiency) and moreover may suffer from what her mother calls “anorexia of the soul.” This anorexia of the soul manifests itself in the desire to succeed at all costs but with little grappling over where this drive stems from.
I’m well acquainted with Newton North and its social milieu, the yuppies that shop at the Whole Foods Market which is in close proximity to the 4 Starbucks, 2 yoga studios, and 3 SAT prep centers all in a radius of a quarter of a mile. It’s a generic affluent Northeast suburb and might look like any other in such an area. It manufactures similar kids, ones that are destined from birth to over-achieve because their parents ingrained in them the importance of excelling and because engulfing their every move is the latent pressure cooker reminder of failure not being an option.
From this article, I should be impressed that Colby Kennedy practices a gazillion hours a day on the piano (i myself know what it’s like) or that Esther Mobley reads and can actual digest Nietzsche and Kierkegaard or that another of their classmates is trying desperately to balance all her AP courses and a starring role as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. These girls are undoubtedly dedicated and hard-working and should be celebrated for their accomplishments, but I can’t help but be concerned for their futures. Perhaps because I too suffered from this mindset in high school and in my early 20s nearly fell into an emotional abyss.
If we’re instilling in our girls the proper instruments and tools to learn and succeed are we also making time to teach them about how to laugh, smile, and have a bit of fun from time to time? Are we checking in with them emotionally on a regular basis? Or are we trying so hard to convince our girls that the fun will come later because we’re still waiting for it to emerge or trying to remember what it was like to once live a stress-free life.
To witness Belinda Carlisle’s face transform into a grin as her jet skis splashed water over camera lens, ever so innocently, was for me as a child one of the first images I associated with elation. For this I am indebted to my Go-Gos. If only vicariously as a child, they taught me to be cognizant of what bliss looked like so that later in my life I could identify those exact emotions and know how to embrace them.
Thoughts on the symbiotic rapport between yoga and guns courtesy 