There’s a
kind of popular image of twenty-first-century woman we have all somehow
absorbed—from magazines, TV shows, and news items, perhaps from the coworker
in the corner office down the hall. The image tells us that today’s woman is
strong, sexual, confident in her femaleness. She’s accomplished and
assertive, aggressive when necessary. Whatever road she’s on—married or
unmarried, career woman, professional, homemaker, mother—it’s one of her own
design. She is also a bit smug about all this; she handles her days with a
casually competent, I’m-on-top-of-my-game attitude. In the words of a
professor of media studies, today’s woman is often pictured as “tough and
smart-alecky as well as really self-aware.”
And why
shouldn’t she be? After all, women have become liberated. We have benefited
from a few decades of consciousness raising and role change. We have more
money, more information, more power, and, most significant, wider options in
all areas of life. The sky’s the limit. Or, as a popular actress told us
recently in a magazine interview, “We can have absolutely anything we want
now.” All is achievable.
At the same
time all is permissible. The roles that defined the generations of
women who came before us are no longer carved in stone. Unmarried? Embrace
your singleness! Working mother? Good for you! Happy homemaker? That’s
great! Lesbian? Why not? Or, as a popular media personality told us, “Women
have the power to be themselves.”
There is
truth and much that is good in this. The measureable gains made by women in
the workplace, for example, and the lessening of old taboos, constraints,
rules, and notions relating to a woman’s place and presentation in the
world—are real and to be applauded. We have, indeed, arrived at something
that looks like freedom. And yet, for our clients—and, we’re guessing, for
you—the experience of freedom is not great. Things have indeed
changed, but not that much (and in some areas, not much at all). What has
changed are the expectations we bring to what it means to be a success as a
woman living in this world.
The fact is,
being free to do or be as you choose does not inevitably make life easier or
more pleasant. On the contrary, the apparent freedom that is suggested by an
abundance of choices can feel more frustrating than exciting, and more
frightening than empowering. And so, many of us ordinary women end up
disappointed in our own degree of confidence and our own range of
accomplishments. We’re caught in a new kind of oppression.
