D is for… Damsels in stress
Fortunately enough, when talking about women and them waiting for some handsome prince to save them is no longer the rhetoric or at least that’s what I hope for. But, have we gone too far on this? Are we trying to do everything better, bigger, smarter and faster? That is what I’ve been debating with myself (if that is even a thing, maybe just pondering) for the last couple of weeks. When did it all become this foolish nightmare?
Maybe I’m just talking about my own experience here, but I know some women that could relate on this. When the first amazing ladies stepped up their game in Wall street and politics in the early nighties they needed to prove their point of being equal (because at that moment it was equal not in a million years better, at least for some entitled men).
They needed to dress in a manly style, but at the same time look gorgeous, they needed to have a heavier work load, having a family was secondary or not in the picture at all and they needed to be way more effective than men. I can understand being the first females entering these fields (NOT as assistants or receptionists) and the pressure to prove a whole gender wrong, and all I can do is applaud them and thank them for opening the trail for many of us.
But has this changed at all? I know that now we can dress in a more feminine way, maybe even and A skirt, a cute top and heels with daises on them, or maybe I’m just picturing Mindy Lahiri from the Mindy Project, and that may not be even a thing, but who cares. That’s just a random example that literally just crossed my mind. Anywho… when I say that this is still the same, I mean that it could be a lot worst.
We have put on a pressure in ourselves that can only lead to breakdowns and emotional crisis, (hmmm this may sound a little too familiar, but it happened to a cousin of a friend I swear) Kidding, it’s totally me! Ok, but as said earlier is not just me, I see friends struggling to balance their work life, their success, their family, their children, being sisters, friends, daughters and being Mother Theresa’s, because c’mon we all know that as women we are expected to have a “heart of gold” if we don’t we are straight on bitches. But it’s also the pressure that we put on each other, we are entering the men’s game on success.
Who has the most emails, the more phone calls, who’s having all-nighters, emergencies at work, who keeps on saying how “stressed” they are, who’s receiving recognitions in the now female power play, those are the ones that have the bigger dicks, excuse my French. But I don’t know how else to phrase it.
Oh, and if you exercise, take your kids to yoga and eat organic you are the queen of this obnoxious meme that goes around that reads “you can have it all if you work for it”. Ugh, I detest those “motivational” quotes. These women, because obviously, they are only some (I could never generalize a whole gender) feed off by saying how stressed they are with work, so if for any reason, you are “not stressed” maybe you are failing as a woman in the XXI century.
But trust me I’m not attacking anyone, no one does it on purpose, no one is really trying to put more pressure on each other it’s just happening as a consequence of evolution because only the fittest survive. It’s on our genes, our biology our survivor’s instinct. But it’s also ok to recognize that sometimes we are really struggling, that we feel inadequate, that we don’t want to be stressed to feel that we are making a career for our own, and that we put a load in ourselves more than any other, I mean when was the last time that you compared yourself with J.K Rowling?
