Being a Woman

There has been a lot of talk lately about women and their role(s) in society, and I've been watching with a lot of interest.  I haven't done much participating, except in hand-gesturey rants to the wonderfully understanding dude late at night.  This "war on women" is hazy at best.  Because it's such a grey area, it's easy for either side to suggest that it's not real (or that it is).  Every attack is from the side, and every barrage is really just a suggestion.

In the recent political campaigns, women have been reduced to numbers, which are quite black and white.  99% of us use some form of contraception.  We make seventy-seven cents to every dollar that a man makes (or do we?).  We make up 46.7% of the workforce, but are CEOs of only seventeen of the Fortune 500 companies.  Sixty-six of us rank career high on our list of life priorities (and have been duly warned by men that we'll have to make tough decisions as a result).  Maybe the key to untangling all these numbers is to actually ask women what their experiences have been.  I thought I'd start by sharing mine, because if there's one thing I'm qualified to write about, it's my own life.

My family is 5/6ths women.  I didn't grow up feeling less-than within my family, but I grew up in a generation of girls who saw a weird kind of feminism- the sex-as-power, girly girl movement.  The message aimed at us as we came of age at the Millennium was that the only kind of dependable power was the power that came from our bodies.  If we couldn't be everything that a male could be, we could at least dominate them with our feminine wiles.  This message came from the media, from the music.  Susan J. Douglas has an in-depth discussion of this in her fantastic book, and when I read it, my entire young adulthood made sense.

My late teens and early twenties were clouded with mixed messages.  As a flute performance major, I was surrounded by women flutists- but I was told to take off my shoes at an orchestral audition so that the committee behind the screen wouldn't know my gender.  As a practitioner of yoga, I was simultaneously practicing among women and studying a lineage of male teachers.  My professors told me that women were more powerful than ever- but a female president was (and is) a pipe dream at best (and at worst, a joke).  Every sitcom featured a female lead who could be reduced to rubble by her PMS, and at least for that week, was more of a laughingstock than her male partner.  My classmates and friends habitually referred to women (myself included) as "sluts," especially for no-nos like having a late-night conversation with an opposite-gender friend, or going home early to make a phone call to a long-distance relationship.  I was an invitee to a party thrown by a well-known older male musician, because he wanted to have a party full of "young women."  (I did not attend, and heard later that several women had been groped by the man.)  One of my male employers offered kindly to go do my job for me (my first day, with no history of failure on my part to do my job), as he wasn't sure I had the "clout" to get a pianist to rehearsal; another asked if my relocation plans involved "moving for one guy, or are you just going to sleep around?"

Are these major things?  No, not really.  Have I ever been a blatant recipient of gender-related unequal pay?  Not that I have direct evidence of (although I strongly suspect that I was, at one point).  Have I ever been fired for something gender related?  Nope.

But it's the suggestion.  It's that little grey area where enough people hint that you might be unstable because your hormones could be running rampant.  That your physical attributes determine your ability to do your job.  That you are invited to participate not because of your work, your expertise, your ability, but rather because of your butt and chest.  It's that little suggestion that gets in there, and after a few hundred times, starts to make women unsure of themselves.  This is quiet warfare.  This is a subtle, constant barrage of hints that we are not the same, we are not stable, we are not good enough.

In my lifetime, "feminist" has become a dirty word.  "Feminist" has become an insult.  Half the time, "feminists" refers to a group of loud-mouthed, pushy, bitchy women who believe that they should be afforded every opportunity without putting in the work (or having the brains).  Before I go on with my defense, I have to say that feminism has its issues.  I'm writing from a position of racial privilege, and feminism hasn't been kind to women of color.  There are lots of angles of feminism that I don't understand, don't support, or haven't researched adequately, but I do know that the systematic tearing down of the word "feminist" (at least in this way) is an attack on women- at least a good chunk of a part of us, if not all of us.

The Stuff I Should Do

I've been thinking a lot lately, and that's the trick of a blog, isn't it?  Getting your thoughts out.  It's so hard!  Because that thought is there, and then another thought that comes along and is like "naaaah.  Nobody will be able to relate to that first one."  So then you forget, or repress, or whatever happens.  And that's dumb, because if every great author had thought that nobody would be able to relate to the crazy stuff they were writing, we'd have nothing in the way of literature.  Even so, blogging about what's actually in your head is definitely an exercise in confidence.

Anyway, I've been thinking about why it's so hard to do the stuff that we know is good for us.  Not the stuff we HAVE to do; like I've heard myself saying to young children, "it's not a choice we can make."  I'm talking about the stuff we don't have to do but should do.  For me, the top three are as follows:

1.  Practicing the flute.
2.  Not eating crap.
3.  Getting on my mat.

First things first.  If these things are hard to do, I must not like doing them, right?  Right?

Praaaaaaactice meeeeeee.

Oddly, no... I thought maybe that was the case for a while, but if I only like the easy stuff in life, that means that all I like is drooling onto the futon while I check my facebook over and over to see if anybody I knew in high school has just gotten pregnant.  I like doing all of the above-listed things.  I feel good while I'm doing them.  I feel good after I've done them.  So that's not it.

I have a difficult relationship with 1 and 3, both because I get very self-destructive when I'm doing them and they are not perfect.  Now, I'm not often perfect, but I realllllly like when I am.  I like when I do things right the first time and never have to work at them.  I like being a "natural."  If I ever had any natural talent on the flute, the expiration date was up a long time ago, and probably about ten years ago I started having to work at it.  So I work at it, and that makes me self-conscious, and that makes me mentally very harsh with myself.  Same with yoga.  I want my body to do stuff automatically, without me putting in the hours to learn the balance, or build the muscle, or stretch the joint.  When I find that I actually suck at a pose, it's really difficult for me to get back on the mat and try it again.  None of this is much of a surprise to me, unfortunately; my nickname growing up was "Perfectly Margaret" because of my obvious superiority disruptive perfectionist tendencies.

So do I not wanna do this stuff because I'm lazy?

Short answer: yes.  Long answer: yes.  I am absent from my home from 8AM until 6PM.  I often come home tired, with aching feet or back or both.  I eat lunch at 1:30, which is not the best for my bio-rhythm, and as a result, often don't eat dinner until an hour or two before bed.  I also teach yoga and flute after hours, and play in a gamelan with a three-to-five-hour practice requirement per week.  I've also been sick so many times this year that one runny nose has blended into the stomach bug and cough that came after it, so I can't tell where one ended and the next one started.  So... I might be lazy.  I might also be overbooked.

I also wonder about self-sabotage.  Eating right is a constant issue for me.  I LOVE vegetables, don't eat meat, and am reasonably okay at getting all my required nutrients, but I have this sweet tooth that will not quit.  And then sometimes the sweet tooth does quit, but I eat sweet stuff anyway, just to be like HA!  Take that, BODY.  You thought you were doing so well, well enjoy your INSULIN SPIKE!

So what's the answer?  How do we start loving the things we should do?  I don't know, but I have some ideas.

1.  Boundaries.  Kids need them and I'm convinced that I do too.  No cookies before 8AM.  Stop it.
2.  Time for rest and time for not rest.  I'm convinced that not feeling guilty while resting is the key to making it productive, so I can move on when it's time.
3.  I heard this in my lesson last week: Nike.  Just do it.

When the going gets tough, the tough...

Stop writing?  Hmm.  Seems like it shouldn't be that way.

Getting older is very different than being younger.  I have to make my own decisions.  I have to pay my own bills.  And, most startlingly (for me), I don't live in a dorm surrounded by people who are always ready to hang out, consume beverages, and watch movies.  In fact, even if I did live in said dorm, I wouldn't have time for any of that.  Those were days when my friends worried about boys instead of mortality and we questioned professors' motives, not god's.  I know we all hit this point, and it's a comfort to know that I'm not hitting it alone.

The last few months have been a sometimes-epic, sometimes-disastrous clash of my work (which I have to do) and my flute (which I want to do).  Mostly I have been depressed, and have sometimes [personal revelation alert] spent hours sitting on the foof staring numbly at CNN Health stories about children with cancer.

No joke.  Who does that when they're depressed?

So then I get manic, and this month I did a few manically productive things.  I applied for a local masterclass with a well-known flute player, and by some miracle and some kindness on the part of the organizers, I was accepted.  I committed to a sort of minor orchestral audition (because even a minor one is major for me), and I started learning some pieces that have left gaping holes in my rep list, like the Dutilleux.

So now every day is a small, labored step on this larger path.  And music and yoga and anything in life sometimes seem to merge together into this giant journey upon which I'm only allowed to make slow and steady progress.  Breakthroughs come with setbacks, and setbacks require resolution.  So every day requires a new and different resolution than the day before.

And that's life right now, and sometimes it doesn't look very pretty to me.  Luckily, I have a partner who makes every day feel like a reward, and great friends and family to hash it out with when everything feels too gritty.  And a season like this makes a great stage for new yoga poses.