Tag: feminism

Pinky Blinders

Today’s writing prompt: “You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?“

Mine is:

“For me, the Fifties will forever be symbolized by Jayne Mansfield and her pink, heart-shaped pool.”

That is an image I have long carried of the Fifties. Beautiful, buxom, platinum haired Jayne Mansfield hoisted in the arms of her weightlifter husband Mickey Hargitay at the edge of her Beverly Hills swimming pool.

What is it about that image that sticks with me? For me, it was everything that was wrong with the Fifties. The garish and overt sexualization of women’s bodies. The plasticity and pretentiousness of the bottle bleached blonde. The artifice. The illusion of endless summer.

As a child you don’t know what is real and what isn’t. You learn what the accepted reality is from the adults around you and what – according to them – is supposed to matter.

Children have no choice but to accept and mirror this version of reality and it becomes their own. Until it doesn’t. The choice of opting in or out that comes with adulthood.

Even as a child, I remember being appalled by the behavior of a lot of the adults around me. Especially at our frequent house parties. The adults drank too much. Many smoked – a stupid, filthy habit I eventually adopted for many years and then finally discarded.

They laughed too loud. There was a constant low level of tension and forced frisson at these parties. Adults trying really, really hard to have a good time.

The disconnect between what many of these people said and what they did was evident to me. Way too much flirting and laughter in corners between men and women who were married to other people in the room.

I have come to understand how traumatized that entire post World war Two generation must have been. Sure, the Allies had been victorious over the evil forces of Nazism. Sufficiently to declare victory, disband the active war effort and move everyone back into a semblance of normal living.

Turns out that was easier said than done. Women used to making their own money and living independently were forced back into the domestic arena to make room in the workforce for the returning menfolk.

Possibly worse as an expectation, these displaced women were supposed to be happy about it. Doing their bit for the boys and country and all that.

Little wonder that the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield became popular. They were part of the post-war myth that life was not only better after the war, but bigger and better than it had ever been. These women and all the pretenders were symbols of all the freedom and glory the war effort won them.

It was bound to buckle. No society can live disconnected from the dictates of reality indefinitely. Enter the Sixties and what soon seemed to be constant social upheaval on every front: civil rights, the anti-Vietnam War protests, the rise of feminism, Baby Boomers starting to come of age. New rulebooks being written.

I see myself and my life goals as having been marinated in the stew of the Fifties. As an adult, I still tote around my little bag of values from the influences of that early upbringing.

The Protestant work ethic. The focus on external symbols of success. An expectation of affluence. A certain generational narcissism about our “uniqueness” that came with being part of the largest cohort of babies born in one period in the history of the world.

Today Boomers are vilified by many. Our focus on accumulating wealth and security worked well for us as a generation. To the point it seems that we have unintentionally scanted the generations coming behind us.

How in the name of heaven did a simple single family dwelling get to be so ridiculously expensive? Everywhere. I’ve yet to find a logical economic explanation.

While my autobiography would open with a description of that superplastic vision of hyper-happy and beautiful young and rich people like Jayne and Mickey, it was evident that fantastical image and lifestyle was bound to be time-limited.

It was a pablum period. No grit in the corn meal. No starch in the shorts. Just fun and glitz and partying and happy. Always happy. Perpetual adolescence.

The generation that lived it up in the Fifties eventually came back to a place of reckoning in the decades that followed. More settled and mature. Yet some of the Fifties core values are worth hanging on to.

A fierce sense of justice and atonement emerged from the detritus of war. An inherent world-wide sense of the fragility of peace and human life. The focus on stability to ensure the healthy growth of the upcoming generation. Medical and technological advances galore.

For those of us shaped within the confines of that decade, many of the images endure and maybe some of the values, too. Our crowd is leaving the planet and will have left its mark on the world as every generation inevitably does.

I recently read there are now more millennials in Canada than there are “baby boomers.” The great cull has begun. Soon, the pluses and minuses scored by our generation will be consigned to the history books.

And when it is, I have a strong suggestion for the image that best represents us for the cover.

It’s Not All About You

When I was younger, I was sure I was the source of every problem that cropped up in my life. And why wouldn’t I? I had a parent who was devoted to that narrative.

She flatly told me: “I love you but I don’t like you.” I couldn’t disagree with her. I didn’t much like myself.

But it takes a certain insidious brilliance to turn a struggling child’s every misstep into making them believe they have some core defect. Even moreso to blithely disregard the deficiencies and exposure to harm in the child’s upbringing into which that parent placed the child.

I guess I was supposed to take responsibility for that, too.

The dynamic is all too common and well understood in the therapeutic community. A child whose needs are not met and whose pain and needs are ignored will slowly come to the conclusion there is something wrong with them.

They cannot place the blame on their caregivers as their lives literally depend on them. And if they did, what power would they have to change anything? None.

I’ve been considering this lately in light of certain struggles in my life. I have been trying to evaluate where to draw the line between my responsibility and that of the perpetrator. It is not easy to work out when you were raised as I was.

Throw into the mix that I am a woman. Women are often perceived as bossy and mouthy and difficult and “other” when we speak up or out about something we take issue with.

I once read about a woman (maybe you know who it was; I don’t) who said: “I don’t know whether I am a feminist or not. I do know I am labeled a feminist whenever I speak up or take any action that distinguishes me from a doormat.”

I was lately labelled “fiery” by a new neighbor. I have often been called “intimidating.” I never got what that meant exactly. It probably meant I was not completely on board playing the requisite political games to advance my career. I paid the price but have no regrets about speaking up about what bothered me.

I may have extended my life (I hope the Universe doesn’t smite me for making this comment) by giving full voice to my pain and aggravations. I have not often held back my opinion or silenced my voice in the face of present or pending harm as an adult. Corrosive or angry feelings were often given full voice. Not very sophisticated or smart, I know.

All to say, I can relate to those who struggle with finding and using their voice. I am always surprised by the blowback experienced by people who choose to speak up. Like whistleblowers.

If there was ever any doubt about the power of words and expression, you need look no farther than the fate of recent whistleblowers for examples. Perception is reality. When a whistleblower speaks up about something that they feel is wrong, the usual defense tactic is to smear that person’s character and discredit them in the public eye. It usually works.

It strikes me how similar this is to the dynamic of the dysfunctional family. Truth is elusive and can be very subjective. This is in direct opposition to what we are led to believe about “honesty” and “transparency.”

In truth, it is a balancing act we struggle with from cradle to grave. Even a person raised in a perfectly happy and functional family soon has to learn “the rules” of whatever world they get involved in as adults. Some “worlds” are more desirable than others. All depends on whether you choose to make your career on Wall Street or Sesame Street.

Wherever you land, you are making constant judgment calls and tradeoffs between your truth and the shared reality you operate in. Most can suck up the shared reality and its inherent imbalances and hypocrisy for the payoffs in money or good reputation.

Children raised from childhood without consistent support for their emerging voices and inclinations may have more difficulties. They may have much more trouble discerning and acting on discrepancies in problems not clearly and easily attributable to “them” or to “me.”

It is a learned vulnerability. I am discovering that – while infinitely better than it was earlier – the grooves of self-doubt can be hard to surmount. Even knowing that makes it much easier than it was to discern between the “true” ownership of a problem. And its resolution.

You may play a part in your struggles but you are not operating in a vacuum. True, you must take responsibility to resolve problems as they arise. Determining the level of responsibility you must take comes down to a decision about what you can and cannot control.

Know that and sort out whether or if you can do anything about a problematic situation. If you can’t, do yourself a favor.

Walk away.

Ladies Lunch

The memoir progresses. This vignette shines a light on the hypocrisy-ridden social class into which Mom had married. In a small, mid-century Maritimes town, she could be a shocking, therefore, slightly suspicious character. Yet fitting into Fredericton society was my mother’s highest ambition. But she was determined to do it her way. The path that country-born little girl chose to achieve that ambition, which she eventually did, was fraught and not without considerable collateral damage. Mom’s strategy in navigating those social strictures could be clever if alienating – both for her and for her family. In a bigger city, she might have been featured in a woman’s magazine as a rising feminist. But this was the Fifties and the widescale feminist movement was many years away. Mom had to make do.

“Once she had married a lawyer, Mom became a de facto member of the local “lawyers’ wives” club. These women’s only social connection was what their husbands did for a living. In the Fifties, that was considered enough.

The lady wives all arrived shortly before lunchtime toting their contribution to the potluck in Pyrex casserole dishes. The crisp cotton knee-length dresses they wore were usually set off by a dainty string of pearls. Their huge diamond wedding rings were on full display. Lunch would be set up on a buffet side table and then each lady served themselves before sitting down.

I imagined a Jello aspic with ham and marshmallows as part of the menu. After lunch, several of the wives, who lived to play cards, would stay to smoke and wile away the rest of the afternoon playing bridge. Aside from the aspic, gossip was the real main course.

One day, the discussion moved front and center to the outrageous and indiscreet affairs of Edith A. who was one of their own. She was married to powerful local lawyer Francis A. who was generally regarded as a not-nice guy. There was considerable sympathy for her deplorable marriage as he was not only not nice but not terribly attractive. It seems Edith sought comfort outside her marriage to balance Francis’ emotional – and it was said – sexual inadequacy. The ladies cooed and clucked at length about “that Edith” and her indiscretions. “A disgrace,” they all said, nodding in agreement “Her poor children. Putting them through all that. And so publicly.”

Mom and Edith were once close friends. That is until Edith slept with my father some years later and the friendship became difficult to sustain. But at this lunch, Mom was still on friendly terms with her.   Mom felt a rush of protectiveness and outrage over the ladies’ savaging her dear friend, Edith. After listening quietly for a time, Mom piped up and directed a question to one of the other lawyer’s wives. “Ann,” she asked innocently. “How many times a week do you and Pat have sex?”

There was a collective intake of breath at the table. The lawyers’ wives were clearly aghast and embarrassed. Picking up on their shock and disapproval, Mom looked innocently around the table with a perplexed look on her face: “I’m so sorry. Did I say something wrong? Everyone was talking so freely about Edith’s sex life, I thought there wouldn’t be anything wrong with discussing our own.”

Mom neither smoked nor played bridge. However, I guessed that wasn’t the only reason she didn’t stay after lunch to smoke and play cards with the other lawyers’ wives. Or perhaps it was because her ham and marshmallow aspic wasn’t quite up to snuff. Hard to say.