Wonder Women Betrayed: The Secret to (not) Having it All

In which many plates, spinning in the air, are dropped at once

Debora L Spar, the president of Barnard College, released a book that of course attracted my attention with its title – Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. In it, she makes the argument that, essentially, my generation learned as children – because “Barbie can do anything!” that modern women should. That there is pressure to have a perfectly groomed size 4 body, have a sizzling sex life AND a stable marriage AND perfect children (because dammit, fertility is part of the myth of the woman who has it all) AND a smoking career on which she is “leaning in” and climbing that ladder – oh, and if you can’t be organically raising your own garden and chickens, cooking like Ina Garten (who used to be a nuclear policy advisor to the President of the United States, so…) and making your house more valuable by DIY retiling your bathroom and custom environmentally-friendly landscaping, well, you aren’t really a woman at all.

 I am here to tell you perfection is not possible. As a perfectionist myself, this is hard to admit. I was a bright kid, reasonably attractive and ambitious, and expected a lot of myself, namely, almost everything in the above paragraph. But this week’s, let’s say, challenges, highlighted a lot of my own clinging to the myth of the perfect woman.

So, this last week, this is what I had lined up: a visit with a friend to discuss our exchange of poetry manuscripts (reasonable enough, right?), followed the next day by the arrival of in-laws so we had to make the house seem clean AND attractive, followed the next day by a four-hour trial by fire of expensive medical testing and then meeting with specialists to discuss that testing, followed the next day by taking the in-laws for a tour of the city, followed by…Plus, I also expected myself to do the usual Poet Laureate work, my freelance work, scheduling, e-mailing, writing, sending out things, revising work, and etc. All while looking reasonable attractive, beaming a radiant grace towards all people, and etc.

And here is where all the plates were pretty much dropped, when life got in the way.

The night after my friend’s visit, I was visited by a less welcome guest – a fairly horrible gastroenteritis, otherwise known as stomach flu, that lasted several days. So there went any entertaining, plus my looks sunk about ten points with the flu-related lack of grooming, and failure to be a charming hostess to the in-laws, and I had to cancel the important and expensive medical testing and specialist appointments, which had been hanging over my head causing stress which I’m still trying to reschedule, and I got the bad news that the AWP panels that I had been asked to be on were rejected. Plus, remember, very little sleep and no solid food. So, the week felt to me like an abject failure, making me feel like I should give up on everything and feeling very grumpy towards the universe at large.

Most of the time, to the outside world, my life can look sort of like success, at least, I gather this from people asking questions about “how I’m handling so much success.” (Um, mostly by stifling laughter at that question.) My friends (and strangers) tend to exclaim charmingly about my happy marriage (but remember, I can’t have kids, so nix that from the equation of perfect woman.) And my marriage is pretty happy most of the time, but it’s not PERFECT. I have a reasonably attractive husband with a steady job who is kind and does the majority of the housework and cooking. But I have to remind people that our marriage was built over years – the first years were stressful and took adjustment, and my health struggles have necessitated that Glenn take over what most husbands would consider the “woman’s work.” We are lucky that we like each other quite a bit after nineteen years and are still happy to kiss each other at the end of the day, though I doubt we’d win any Cosmo “hot marriage” quizzes.

Career-wise, this week, though I felt like a failure because I had two rejection slips and the rejection-y sting from AWP, I had a very nice article in the local paper about my work, my mother pointed out proudly on Facebook that my name appeared on the front AND back cover of the 2014 Poet’s Market, and I found out that I’ll be part of a featured event at ArtsCrush, a local arts thing in Seattle I am really excited about, with two gifted artist and poet friends. I should have felt happy, like a success, right? But instead, I felt depressed and like a big loser because of all those dropping plates. But the expectations of doing everything and doing everything perfectly are going to cause a whole generation of women, if not anxiety, then a general dissatisfaction, that frankly, we shouldn’t have to worry about.

I mean, women in the past (and this includes women as recent as my grandmother’s generation) were happy if half of their children survived til 18, they had enough food on the table, and their homes didn’t burn to the ground in a prairie fire or they weren’t disfigured in a factory accident or by tuberculosis or something. They didn’t expect to look nineteen when they were forty-five, dazzle their families and friends with their homemaking skills AND careers. They didn’t have to worry if Joan at work was backstabbing them when they had to leave early to take Kitty to her doctor’s appointment. I was thinking about this, and I was thinking, even in my Facebook and twitter posts, even here, I worry people will disapprove or find me lacking. Which is crazy, right? “If I don’t have a perfect perky attitude from dawn til dusk, then no one will buy my books” I think the reasoning goes. “If I ever show a crack in any facade, people will lose all respect for me.” I believe this is why women are discouraged from crying in the boardroom. (And yes, I’ve done it. Act shocked all you want. It did get my team an extra week for their deadlines AND extra budget for staffing. )

The only way to free ourselves from the expectations of having it all and being everything to everyone is to start at home. We shouldn’t expect it of our mothers, our sisters, our friends, or ourselves. If you look at another woman and she seems to “have it all,” be comforted in knowing she probably has areas where she struggles, too. If X is a gifted cook and warm mother, it should be okay if she isn’t also a shark financial consultant with a stuffed 401K. If Y is a whiz at astrophysics, it’s okay if she only gets her hair and nails done once a year and she never bothered to get married at all and her house is kindly called “a disaster zone” by friends. If Z is a writer with a happy marriage but struggles with her expectations of her career and her finances, will never win awards for her homemaking skills, isn’t going to be able to have the perfect kids or any kids at all, sometimes has to cancel things last minute because of her health problems, maybe we should cut her a break. It starts with you and me. Let yourself be great at the things you are great at, and let everything else go. Then we can stop judging each other for falling short of perfection and having to make hard choices, too.