This Princess Doesn't Need Saving

 

This week on the podcast, Amber, Christen, and I discussed Disney princesses – more specifically, which Disney princess we might be. I have never considered myself a princess. In fact, my upbringing was far from it. And despite the childhood references to my likeness to Snow White or my name (Cindy) being reminiscent of Cinderella, I really didn’t have that much in common with them. For one, I was not an orphan, nor did I have a wicked stepmother or ugly stepsisters. And there wasn’t a chance in hell that some prince would ever stumble across my path and sweep me off my feet to live happily ever after. Even so, like most young girls of my time, it was something I definitely wished for.

I grew up in rural West Texas, sometimes living in neighboring small towns, but always dirt poor and inherently unhappy. My parents worked, picked favorites among their children (not me), and wasted what little they earned on their own entertainment and comforts. My sister and I didn’t just have chores, we were the housekeeper, the cook, the maid, the babysitter, and the lawn service because my mother was terrible at it and she worked. So heck yeah, I dreamed of a day that I would meet some nice guy who would get me out of there. And guess what? I married the first guy who asked…at the ripe old age of 18.

Needless to say, my rescuer wasn’t exactly a prince, and it wasn’t long before I grew up enough to know he didn’t really save me from anything. It’s taken me the better part of 40 years to figure out I had a lot of things wrong, and that being a princess doesn’t mean you are weak or that you need saving. I’ve learned that a princess can take care of herself and that sometimes she is the one who does the saving.

I think most women have grown up with some concept of the handsome, young prince…the knight in shining armor, coming to save her from a life of drudgery or peril just in the nick of time. The one whose mere kiss can make us swoon or break an evil curse. Our fathers tell us we are a princess, a most valuable prize, and our mothers tell us that the “right one” will make our lives perfect. We are indoctrinated in this idea from birth, and I think, in some ways, our parents still believe that fairytale themselves.

Women aren’t the only victims. While we are waiting and watching, often quite impatiently, for Mr. Perfect, men have grown up with the mistaken belief that they have to do the rescuing. They’ve been brainwashed with the notion that men are the breadwinners, the head of the household, and the main providers for their families. The conditioning is so strong that men often become severely depressed and even suicidal when they lose their job or their careers are upended.

We can’t blame it on Disney, though. Those stories have been told for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Women have always been considered the “weaker sex”...a treasure that requires protecting. And maybe, once upon a time, when man first started gathering in small communities, we were. To early man, a woman was treasure…something rare and necessary for the continuation of the tribe. Communities fought, and even killed, over them. Families traded them to other tribes for essential commodities. Powerful men collected them in harems as a display of their wealth and importance. A man who could support a large family and a harem of concubines was important and in control.

Somewhere along the way, that narrative has begun to change. We talked about it a lot on the podcast this past spring…how girls of my generation have gradually learned that we are just as strong as men, that we can do the same jobs as men, and that we really don’t need a man to make us happy. We are learning to be in charge of our own destiny. We happily turn away the misguided knight who offers to save us. We are forging our own armor and blazing our own paths. We know that happiness comes from inside us, not from our value to another person. We are powerful, and because we are standing up to take responsibility for our own safety, men can be free to relax and let their guards down, too. In some ways, it’s even more magical than the fairytales.

I hope that someday this change will mean that gender roles are a thing of the past – an idea reserved for 100-year-old movies and dusty old books. I think Disney is finally starting to get the picture. No more are the heroines just a pretty face. Neither are the princes some clueless dude who can’t remember the girl he danced with or some weirdo who kisses sleeping (or dead) girls. The heroines are smart, skilled, intelligent, and resourceful. And many of the princes are now thoughtful, respectful, and a true partner to the talented lady who sometimes winds up rescuing him. And that’s the way it should be.

So I say, don’t worry about which Disney princess you are or which prince might come to save you. Get out of that ridiculous ballgown and go save yourself!  I guarantee that someone much better than the prince will see how strong and beautiful you really are and will be more than happy to share a wonderful life with you – a life from which you won’t need saving.

Did I Have Feminism All Wrong?

I hope you joined us on the podcast this week as we celebrated women in STEM and discussed the changing landscape of women in the workplace. Watching “Hidden Figures” with Amber and Christen really brought home for me how much things have changed from the time when I was a little girl watching men land on the moon. We’ve passed from the days where the dress code for women at NASA was a skirt, high heels, and pearls, through the transitional period where the idea of  “Mr. Mom” was a humorous outlier, right through to many parents sharing equal duties while working from home. I find it fascinating that we’ve come so far, but I’m bothered that in many ways we still have a long, long way to go.

When I was younger, I balked at the word “feminist”. The whole “Equal Rights” movement of the 70s left a bitter taste in my mouth for years as many feminists seemed to oppose anything that was…well, feminine. While I agreed that women should receive equal pay for the same work, I was not at all interested in being in military combat, being drafted, or being treated like a man. I was a girl. Period. End of sentence. Let’s face it, most women are not equal to men when it comes to physical strength, and I like sitting back while the guys do the heavy lifting. I like being girly, having long hair, wearing dresses, and putting on make-up when I want. My stance on the ERA was that we should be fair, but don’t make me genderless, or even worse, masculine.

As I grew older and had more life experience, I came face to face with gender bias in school, in the workplace, and even in my home life. It was profoundly unfair when the manager at a local pizza parlor refused to hire me as a driver making $6/hour plus tips because I was a girl, stating, “It’s not safe for girls to deliver pizza.” Instead, I was offered a position as a cashier for $4.35/hour. I was a single mom and needed that driver's pay, but the manager (who was female) hired only male drivers and cooks. Girls were cashiers. Years later, it was my pregnancy that was the excuse when my boss refused to give me my annual raise. He told me point-blank that he didn’t want to give me the raise because I would be going out on maternity leave soon and he didn’t think it was fair to give me more money while I was gone for 6 weeks. He was the same boss who routinely asked women in the office to make coffee, get his mail, and send his faxes, even when it wasn’t their job to do so.

Sexual harassment was a real problem, too, even though I had no clue that was what it was. Dirty jokes, sexual innuendos, pinching, and touching…these were things that happened at my high school on a daily basis. One boy even presented me with a dildo as a mocking sort of Christmas gift one year. I remember being so flattered that he had bought something for me, and then utterly crushed and humiliated when I opened the gift and saw what it was. In college, some years later, I was hit on so often by my mostly-male classmates that I had to make up an imaginary boyfriend to get them to leave me alone. Studying in a male-dominated field like audio engineering left me wide open to just about every kind of harassment because, as the #metoo movement has demonstrated, any female in the entertainment industry is fair game.

In recent years, I’ve come to a different point of view when it comes to feminism, and for many reasons. For one, modern feminists are not the same male wannabes that were the most vocal supporters of equal rights in my youth. Today’s feminists are women…real women who still want to be women, but expect to be treated fairly and to enjoy the same rights and privileges as men. We are proud to be women; we recognize and celebrate our differences. The equality we are demanding is to be treated fairly based on our abilities, not our gender, and to live in a world free from predatory sexual harassment. A twenty-first-century feminist is a person (male or female) who is concerned with and supports the rights and issues of women. They believe in reproductive freedom, whatever that entails, and recognize the rights of women to make choices about their own bodies. They support causes and issues that are unique to or faced primarily by women. They encourage and empower other women to live their best life – much like we do here at Modern Musings.

As the Crone of Modern Musings, I am often the one with old-fashioned views and one foot firmly planted in the past. Sometimes that makes me resistant to change and slow to embrace a new idea. But I think most of us agree that enough is enough. It’s time to change the way we treat one another. To treat each other fairly. Not just women, but everyone – men, women, children, the elderly…not despite race, color, creed, or religion but because of it. Because we really have so much to learn from one another. It’s time to really listen to what people have to say. To worry less about defending our intentions and realize that everything we say and do has an impact on others and that our actions can hurt even if that’s not what we intend. In order to move another step forward, we cannot just stop doing what’s wrong – we have to actually step up and do what’s right. When we can do that, we will turn being feminist into being humanist.