Me, The Professor and The Come to Jesus

Some of you have been inquiring about the status of The Professor, considering my mention of a less-than-stellar date with Mississippi and his absence from the tags on posts about the Coldplay concert. The former can be attributed to my determination to keep my options open - I just got back in the saddle, so it seems awfully soon to be narrowing down the field of play. The second can be attributed to my need to keep Coldplay untainted by my flailing dating life.

It wasn't so easy in actuality to separate "The Scientist" and The Professor, since our journey to, enjoyment of, and return from the concert put us together for a solid eight-hour stint. We managed to avoid the heavy stuff until the return trip...but there was no denying it was time for a talk - for each of us to lay out our case for Defining the Status.

He kicked it off by lamenting my distant demeanor and his inability to crack through my shell.

I countered with the well-known fact that three out of the past five weekends, he's spent with his ex-girlfriend (if you count the weekends bookending the entire week she visited). And on that latest jaunt into the past relationship, he attended a Halloween party dressed as an angel - to counter her devil costume. Score one point for me.

But he persisted and explained (as best he could) the tangled and undefined nature of the broken-up-but-friends-not-dating-but-special-relationship situation. If you can deconstruct that one for me, I'll give you a dollar.

And then I explained that this crazy web he's weaving doesn't make me want to let my guard down. Score another point for me.

Then we moved into the P-phase of the discussion in which he used the word "priorities" a lot. I mean. A. Lot. As in, he would really like to be a higher one of mine. (Please, see counter argument numero uno in which I cite his involvement with The Ex.) We went tit for tat for a bit, with him shooting out needs like Han Solo's blaster gun and me deflecting them at every turn with my light sabre.

By that time, we had circled one another quite exhaustingly in a verbal endgame, and we were rolling into the driveway. This provoked a round of conversation in which there existed in his tone a subtle note of disdain for my current living situation that was tempered with (excessive) praise for the closeness of my family and punctuated with The Declaration of Independence: "I just want to make sure you know that I'm dating you and not your family."

In that moment, at 1:30 a.m., hoarse and overwrought from three hours of screaming and the hour of verbal sparring, I felt approximately one quart of acid dump into my stomach, a gallon of ice water pour through my veins, and experienced instantaneous paralysis.

At which, The Professor knew he'd stepped in It. He tried to retract, backtrack, strike the previous statement from the record. Especially after I said, "My family...is non-negotiable."

In the end, it was time to get out of the car, weary, bewildered and bleary-eyed...to bid him adieu on good terms for having bought such amazing seats, and to take his arguments to the jury room with me.

So far, the jury seems to be voting in my favor, pondering holding The Professor in contempt of court, and finding him guilty of being unsuitable for long-term dating. If said verdict is returned...what will the punishment be? Life...in the Friend Zone.

Feminist Fatale

Dear Ms. Gerdes,
I read, with great interest, your recent column lambasting the feminist doctrine of Sex & the City. And I must heartily disagree with you that the gals of S&TC are bad for young career women. I'm not sure how you can make that claim when you look at the four women on the show - Carrie, who decided not to give up the career she loved for The Russian; Miranda, who made being a high-powered attorney work with being a mom; Samantha, who's chosen to have neither children nor a husband in lieu of career and a life lived at her whim; and Charlotte, who did give up her career for family - but that's what she wanted to do. And maybe that doesn't qualify for your definition of career woman, but to me, that's the beauty of the show: it's a cross-section of women choosing different careers in ways that work for them.

So why all the bitterness and judgment? Isn't the message there that you can do what you want to do? And isn't that, in and of itself a "feminist" message for women? I think possibly, you should rewatch the episode where Carrie catches Samantha with the Fed-Ex delivery man for a PSA on judgment.

You uphold three people in your column. Gloria Steinham, Hillary Clinton, and Jenna Jamison (really???). While I find Steinham and Clinton inspiring in what they've done making inroads for women everywhere, I don't think they're like me. I don't identify with them. To me, it's taking feminism back to a level that made it hard for a lot of women to swallow by making it radical in its definition. In order to be feminist - and here's where you uphold yourself as "feminist" - you have to renounce marriage and family, devote yourself wholly to your career, and idolize political and social icons. It's taking feminism and limiting it to those who choose this all-or-nothing approach and those who are willing to make a statement with their lives.

That's not me. I don't want to make a statement. Other than that I am a woman and I feel empowered to do what I want to do and that I am still strong and still independent even if that vision of who I am and what I want to be includes marriage and a family. And right now? I am a career woman, but I don't think that's what makes me feminist as much as my belief that women can be whatever they want. I object to the idea that being a wife and mother - whether a SAHM or working mother - is anti-feminist.

Plus, I'd like to remind you that S&TC is entertainment. That's what made it fun. That it wasn't a documentary about Gloria Steinham. That it was about women who had all sorts of insecurities and frailties (not whiny as you suggest) and problems with men and career (I assume you've had these?) and that they looked fabulous while dealing with it.

And lastly, I should probably remind us both that we're talking about a television show. A ground-breaking one. A generation-defining one. A revolutionary one, even. But also one that was written to engage us, make us laugh, make us think. And that in and of itself, should grab it a place in the feminist hall of fame.

So you may be disillusioned by S&TC. But me? I still uphold my pink suede box set with pride.

Viva la Bradshaw!
Ash

U-nope-ia

This is not a post about a revolutionary idea. This is a post about a revelationary moment.

Everywhere you turn, no matter what stage of life you are in, there is the pressure to be perfect in it.

Okay. So you're thinking, yeah, so?

So I was watching TV the other day and a Target commercial came on - the one that has the Beatles' "Hello Goodbye" in it. It's one of those stark red and white commercials they've rolled out, commercials I've admired for their simplicity, ingenuity and strong branding. But on this day, I took off my marketing hat and put on my consumer hat and really looked at that which I consumed.

And I realized that the 30 seconds were jam-packed with anesthetized utopian presentations of various stages of life. Love and marriage, birth and family. Everyone smiling. Everyone neat and clean and antiseptic. And in that moment, I found it almost scary.

Now I see it everywhere I turn - this utopia, this smiling, khaki-and-white clad, gadding-about-town family. The attractive husband and the lovely wife. The well-dressed children. The picture-perfect family gathering.

I've been in the industry for over seven years, and I know how it works. It's all about presenting the iconic image of what we want. It's all about defining an absence and proposing a solution. And for a sparkling clean floor, that's okay. But for life, well, it's just...sad. It's just sad to be surrounded by images and messages about all that we lack. Not just the things we lack - but the people and circumstances we lack. And not only do we lack them, they don't even exist.

Life isn't perfect when you're in love; I can only assume that holds true even after you marry. Children are a blessing - and a burden. Families are wonderful and maddening. And for every happy gathering, every family member you love and treasure, there's got to be at least one who's totally dysfunctional and certifiably crazy.

There are perfect moments in life, for sure. There are moments when it all comes together. When you breathe it in. When you are alive. But they are fragile, spun-glass moments, just filaments barely holding together. And this place, this magical utopian place where the table is fashionably set for 18 of your closest friends and relatives in their designer best and their Crest white smiles? I'll check my Garmin, but I don't think it's out there.

But we look for it. By God, we wear ourselves out searching for it. We castigate ourselves for all the things we're not, and we worry over what we don't have. We worry about the places we're not and the people we're not. We strive and strive for something else...to say hello to the perfect and goodbye to the imperfect...and really, we're just stuck with something in between.

So the point is...the point is I'm going to try to stop buying in to all this. I'm going to try to shut out the messages - the ones I sometimes help create - and just figure out me and whether or not that's a good thing or a bad thing based on an entirely different set of standards.

She is 16 Going on 17

Yesterday, I debated about whether or not to post about the ongoing media maelstrom surrounding the Spears family and its latest announcement that its youngest (and most wholesome) member of the family is pregnant. At 16. But I just can't help myself.

As everyone knows by now, unless you live under a rock, Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant with her 19-year-old boyfriend's baby. A fact she and Mama Spears decided to disclose to the world on the cover of OK!.

All day as the headlines rotated on Yahoo! and the news tidbits appeared on Perez Hilton, I couldn't muster any snark at all about the situation. In fact, it made me almost sick to my stomach. While I don't want to sit here and judge her, I felt weird about seeing her on the cover of a magazine making her teenage pregnancy announcement and somehow making it seem normal?

When I was looking for a photo to post with this, I found the pregnancy story with a comment thread. One girl had written that she was happy for Jamie Lynn and that she thought she seemed responsible and would make a good parent. And I wondered - and it's impossible to really know - if I would've thought anyone would've made a good parent when I was sixteen. And now that I'm older, I know how very silly and stupid you are when you're sixteen. Though STGD pointed out that JLS has lived in the spotlight and probably does have a slightly elevated maturity, it can't be discounted that she still is just 16.

Maybe this is going to be the new norm. Maybe we're going to get all Victorian and go back to settling down before turning into old maids at the ripe old age of 18. Man, I am a spin-ster.

Say What?!

The New Company I work for has an annual retreat. And aside from all of the anxious feelings this conjures for me about traveling, get-to-know-you games, the possibility of having to do a trust fall into my coworkers' arms, and the idea that at some point, I may be forced to chant a motivational phrase, I'm pretty stoked about the all-expenses-paid trip to Savannah.

After the staff meeting the other day, a few of us were asking what to expect of an officemate who went last year. The discussion came round to the attendance of spouses and significant others. Spouses are invited; significant others are not. So far, I've been able to ascertain that two of my coworkers are married, three are in serious relationships and one is a mystery to me. But one of the girls who is in a serious relationship said that she felt disappointed that her BF wasn't invited. "I'm never away from him. I just don't think I can have a good time without him."

I debated about whether to post this, but days later, it's nagging me still. I was astonished at her very real distress about being away from her boyfriend for three days. And I understand that she's going to miss him, but to say that she couldn't have a good time without him? I didn't know what to say.

In general, I like to advocate for not judging. But I admit, in that moment, I full on judged her. I may be judging her still. It's shaded my whole outlook on her as a person - like somehow, this one earnest statement make her a certain kind of person. And judgment or no, wrong or right, I just know that I don't want to ever hear those words come out of my mouth.

Them's Fightin' Words

When I arrived at Eva & Justin's house last week, I interrupted play group. This means that I walked into the kitchen filled with four mothers and six children. Eva had warned me, knowing that there's no love lost between me and other people's children.

I was handling it pretty well, seeking refuge at one end of the kitchen table and trying to make polite conversation and keep up with talk of Exersaucers and Johnny Jump Ups. Eva had just finished feeding Dillon and handed him off to me to take one of the other mothers to see a project she'd been working on. He fussed, and I checked his diaper and confirmed that it was wet. I said as much aloud.

That's when one of the mommies totally overstepped bounds. In this voice one would use to speak to a child, she said, "Since Auntie Ashley is holding Dillon, will she change the diaper?"

In my head, I turned to her and said, "Don't patronize me or I will cut you." But in real life, I simply gathered Dillon up and headed off to change him. And she followed me. Standing over my shoulder, she cooed to her own infant, as though giving her approval, "Look at Auntie Ashley go!"

I held my temper in check, but I was so enraged that I couldn't quite get over it. What was it about this woman's ridiculous behavior that had me itching to lash out at her? Perhaps it was due in part to facing one of those moments when I felt more Bridget Jones-esque than ever, surrounded by the Mom Squad with their infants and toddlers, and me wondering if they were feeling sorry for me or thinking "tick tock, tick tock." But more than that - because I didn't feel this Hulkish rage toward anyone else - I think it was her condescension to insinuate that I would be too squeamish or too inept to change a diaper. And no disrespect to the moms out there, but rocket science it ain't.

I couldn't help thinking about the book I blogged about recently that called women on the carpet for being stay-at-home moms. In that moment, I found myself faced with the complete opposite opinion - someone who thought that they could talk down to me, treat me like a child, because I am unmarried and childless. I was angry at the woman, and I was angry at myself because, what does her judgment matter to me? She isn't someone I know, and certainly (after this) someone I respect. Why should I allow her to make me feel so inadequate about myself? It was dispicable, really.

But there, with her cooing her baby-talk commentary, I seriously considered punching her in the mouth. And I'm pretty sure I'd have been sent to timeout.

A Mistake in Judgment

I came across an article on Yahoo last night about a new book called The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts. I couldn't find the same article this morning, but I did find this insightful piece about the book on Salon.

In the book Bennetts makes a call to arms for young women not to sacrifice career in order to stay at home with children. Her argument is rooted in staying self-sufficient, maintaining earning power (which drops 37% after just three years out of the workplace) and being prepared for a husband or partner who loses his job, develops a drug, alcohol or gambling problem, or skips out on the marriage for a newer model (usually one, according to Bennetts, who is more career-minded).

Bennetts' arguments are not new. In fact, this debate has been going on since women entered the workplace, and I suspect it will go on for generations to come. In my view, the stay-at-home or stay-at-work choice is intensely personal. I have close friends who come down on both sides of the fence for reasons that are personal and economic. So that is not why I call attention to this article.

Instead, I call attention to the crux of the first paragraph of Joan Walsh's review: If female fear and self-doubt were ever eradicated, the publishing industry would collapse....no matter the issue, the premise is pretty much the same: We're doing something wrong. And in the article I read last night, Bennett was quoted as saying, "Women are so defensive about their choices." Well, no wonder. We're under attack from all sides for what we did or didn't do.

Look at me. I'm 27-going-on-28, unmarried and childless. For every person who thinks I'm living the life, there's someone to judge me as inept, incomplete, or just plain sad. A career may be completion to some, and for others, I simply haven't found my purpose until I have a baby. There's judgment for all of our choices, and most of the time, they come from other women.

We have so many choices today - which is a blessing and a curse. Believe me, I'm thankful for that - if I ever needed further convincing, I could revisit my Women's Lit text or rent HBO's Iron-Jawed Angels to reaffirm that we've got the long end of the stick. But because our place isn't dictated by society anymore, it's dictated by us. Which puts an enormous amount of pressure on choosing a direction.

The freedom to choose has also given birth to some sort of inherent insecurity about those choices. Instead of banding together and supporting each other and embracing the classic viewpoint that it takes all kinds, we spend our time defending ourselves to each other in case anyone should think we've failed womankind by taking a certain path.

All this to say that I find people like Bennetts distasteful. Her need to push her lifestyle choice to the front, to suggest that anyone who doesn't go that way is damning herself to a life of misery, points to insecurity rather than certainty. I know several stay-at-home moms who are very happy, in healthy, stable relationships and very fulfilled by the time they spend with their children. I also know a number of women who work every day and love and support their children just as much as the stay-at-homers.

Beyond the Mommy Wars, the pressure to have the right career, choose the right husband, be the right kind of homemaker is overwhelming. The Have It All Agenda is still out there, providing the illusion that we can have it all with no sacrifice - and that anything short of the sum total of all the facets of wife, mother, career woman, and individual - doesn't add up.

Yet, I think of the women I know and the choices they've made - my mother who gave up an excellent job to stay home. Pen, who stays at home and Andi, who is a working mom. Niki, who's pursuing law, and Jenn, who's pursuing social work. All of the women who read this blog and are career women, students, writers, mothers, wives, friends. And I'm proud of them all for making the decision that was right for them. No judgment. Other than I think you're all amazing women.