We've never had it so bad
So today is International Womens Day. Yay! We can splurge on Erdem and be a bitch in the boardroom, and bake the perfect cupcake and....Oh screw that whole 'I can be anyone you want me to be' s***t. What do we want to be when we grow up?
It's the day to celebrate the acheivements of women, socially, politically, economically. We're meant to look (and presumably rejoice) at how far we've come. But have we really come that far? When we've only just recovered from a fashion three line whip that consisted mainly, of wearing vertiginous hooker heels, only to plunge boob-first into the next big thing - underwear as outerwear.
Can you bake a cupcake? Make a proper costume for World Book Day (with only 24 hours notice) can you project-manage that school place appeal, raise the kids, pay the bills. And still find time to act like a whore in the bedroom (thanks Jerry Hall). We're meant to play so many different (and sparklingly brilliant) roles in life, it's no wonder most of us just feel that life is a series of near-failures, like sleeping policeman, on our path to the impossible dream.
Because although we may feel like we can do it all, have it all and be it all. Hasn't it been slowly dawning (like the drip drip drip of an ancient water torture) that we can't.
Replay your formative years and in the background you'll notice your mother hissing their precious words of advice - "Don't make the mistakes we made, have a career, travel, don't settle down". And so we did, fervently. We went to Asia and Australia and drank lots of beer, slept with who we liked and upon our return, poured every ounce of our energies in building a monumental career. Just like mum told us. Actually, we attacked our careers like an enraged Britney with an umbrella (just marginally more controlled than Carol Vorderman on Question Time. Just). And then we hit 35 and our mothers physically took us aside and asked where their grandchildren were.
Suddenly we were fielding a barrage of the self-same questions our mothers had to take on the chin. We went from 'what do you do' to 'why aren't you married yet?' And honestly, it was shocking. Shocking to discover that in the end, in the very end, all that mattered to our maligned mothers (and actually to most of everyone else) when push came to... cesarean was, children, a husband, a family. But unlike a London Cab, we could not turn on a penny, especially not at 35.
And so we took hastily stock, maybe had some great guy in the background on hold that we could promote to OH or SO or DH or FB... Some of us married, some didn't, some got knocked up, some paid thousands in their attempts. (And, even at the end of that cynical-clinical whirlwind of pain, mortgaged to the hilt and punctured full of baby-shaped holes. There was suddenly an emptiness engulfing us, which we hadn't noticed before).
And 'the winners,' the women who had it all? The ones who stepped off the career ladder to achieve that final goal - a family. That was where another epic struggle began. Trying to come to terms with the seeming-to-be overnight transformation from career girl (modelled on a breathless Melanie Griffith from Working Girl) to the very epitome of the Stepford Mama. Suddenly there we were, strolling down the avenue, hands gripping both the handles of a pram, and a blackberry. Our minds pulled impossibly between our work, our sense of self, our child, our relationship, our friends. Not to mention our addiction to twitter/facebook/Greys Anatomy/The Week/Ofsted/house price rises, and whether the politicans really did give a flying f***k about the mothers vote. It's exhausting enough to read, let alone do.
Many women (and actually men) would probably say that women have never had it so good, while some others might argue that actually we've have never had it so bad, because at least back in the golden olden days, there was far, far less expected of us.
Of course we haven't got it all. We're just trying to do too much and it's probably much too late for us to change that. So perhaps this is one we should pass on to the next generation of women. It may even be time to start hissing it to your daughters, just quietly at first...'Don't kid yourself baby, you will never be able to have it all. So don't try. Oh, and wearing high heels may make your legs look longer, but they'll also give you bunions'.
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