Do more, wear less

This commentary started with a quote that caught my attention:

“We don’t want so much to see a female Einstein become an assistant professor.  We want a woman schlemiel to get promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.”   ~Bella Abzug

I sat on it for a while.  How often can you work “schlemiel” into your writing, right?  It was funny.  Then it wasn’t.  National political drama shifted.  And, the way some of the world looks at women just started to piss me off.  Again.  Having grown up with so many mixed messages and expectations because I am female just welled up in a slow burning rage.

Yeah, here’s that “irrational female” rant.

The next trigger was a well-intentioned reminder of checking our ego at the door.  It was Indra Nooyi’s account of just being named president of PepsiCo and returning home very late that night.  Encountering her mother, anxious to share her news, she was cut off and told to go pick up milk.  Her mother had hesitated to ask Indra’s husband to do so because he came home looking so tired many hours before.  Returning very angry, finally announcing her accomplishment, her mother stated, “Listen to me.  You may be the president or whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place. “So you leave that crown in the garage.”  Good message, wrong time.  Talk about a floodgate of bad motherly advice from the past coming back to haunt me.

Then, watching the Olympics (Go, USA!), I could not help but notice, in some events, how males might have well been wearing burkas as compared to females in their respective events.  Granted, I have never experienced body positivity in my life, so maybe I’m just a little biased, but there are enough memes and commentaries out there to prove I’m not the only one noticing women athletes with less of clothing.  Maybe women are leading the way to returning to the good old days when the original male Olympians competed nude?  (Would that have helped that French pole vaulter?)

Women are expected to do more to get ahead and, even then, it’s not enough in many cases.  We get the job done and, many times, nobody gives a shit because that is what we’ve been programmed to do.  And, unfortunately, we continue keep brainwashing girls to do the same.