Feminism and More

In the lull that’s needed to process the big events of life (my visit over the weekend from my Norwegian friends qualifies), I saw a wonderful article in “More” magazine about satisfaction.

Here’s what was said in the Table of Contents blurb: “What price happiness? Are modern women too self-centered to be satisfied? Are we crippled by freedom?” The article’s written by famous feminist and best-selling author Naomi Wolf. Wolf looks at the question of whether women are, as some studies have claimed, less happy now than they were 40 years ago. She posits that we’re much more likely now to claim our dissatisfaction than we were then.

She grabbed me with this description of a possible exchange between successful women:

“If someone in this realm asks me how I am and I smile and say, “Everything’s good, thank heavens! Kids are healthy, partner’s great, work is going well,” people gaze at me blankly for a beat, as if I have just gotten off the bus from a small town in a forgotten agricultural region.” They are more likely, she said, to answer the question with a “list of complaints: too busy, too tired, workload too heavy,” and so on.

Then she asks, “Does this habit of seeing and talking about what’s wrong – at the expense of noticing, let alone being grateful for what’s right – mean that modern Western women would want to return to their mothers’ more limited, prefeminist lives? Of course not. Nor does it mean that feminism made women unhappy. It does mean, though, that there are certain contemporary pressures working against women’s contentment and those are worth paying attention to.”

“Certain contemporary pressures.”

One of feminism’s claims is having given permission to “drop the façade of perfection; permission to articulate what was not, in fact, OK.”

Then she mentions a few movie heroines: Melanie Griffith’s Working Girl, Julia Robert’s Erin Brockovich, the heroine of the more recent Precious, and Hillary Clinton. She wonders how appealing any of them would have been if they’d tried to adapt to their circumstances.

“Feminism has defined a smart woman as one who is questing and aspirational. Satisfaction with the status quo is for saps.”

I could quote on and on, including some good stuff about the difference between the brains of women and men and how women succeed without it meaning that the current model of success is the right model for their satisfaction. There are many nuances that Wolf captures well. But the more common things are the ones that gave me pleasure. It really did provide a satisfied moment to read these words about questing, complaint, and the status quo being for saps.

You’ve got to choose your own version of happiness, I guess.

I’ve seen a lot in the past week about mine. Man. When you see your life through someone else’s eyes for a few days, while at the same time you get a rare chance to step outside of it, it calls up questions of gratitude (or ingratitude as the case may be). All the things I complain about are, more or less, the result of me choosing my version of happiness and having it work out the way it has. Gee…you mean I can’t have this choice and that other too?

I think it’s what Wolf is talking about a little. You choose for the successful life and you lose time and certain freedoms. You choose time and certain freedoms and you can lose the rewards of the successful life. Somehow you keep holding onto the hope that you can have it all and that hope tends to grow your dissatisfaction. I mean really. I’ve been thinking a little more practically lately and asking myself why I ever thought I’d make a living writing. I am not that ambitious or talented or prone to writing what sells. And that’s looking at things strictly from the perspective of how I’d like to earn a living and with none of the spiritual stuff thrown in. And yet Wolf isn’t saying to accept this, or that the non-acceptance signaled by dissatisfaction is a plague. She’s suggesting, more or less, that the “model of success” can be changed, and that the dissatisfaction may be part of what’s needed to change it…or at least that it’s part of the process.

Angie put the magazine out for me as I left for Colorado. I had no space in me for magazines at the time. I left it in the bathroom. I didn’t have any space as I awaited my visitors from Norway. Now they’ve gone and I’ve got space again.

It feels kind of bizarre to write about this when so much happened over this past week, but I’ve not sat with all that long enough yet. I wanted to write thank you notes tonight and have them waiting (at least electronically) when my friends got home. But I’m not ready. I don’t know what to say.

Something in me has been re-ignited. The article, and its questions, fit somehow. I’m simply not sure how.

Wolf, Naomi. “What Price Happiness?” More Magazine, April 2010, 108-109.