Earlier in my career, I had the sweet luck to travel to beautiful National Parks. One year, I travelled to Death Valley National Park in a bearable month, October. Never having been there, the landscape struck me with a sense of wonder. In the desert, gaining perspective can be challenging because of the lack of comparison. You gaze across endless seas of sand and your perspective is limited by what you can see, which is nothing but rolling sand in several directions. You realize how vast the landscape is and how minute you are in comparison. In subsequent years, I travelled through Death Valley during a bike race and found the terrain much different. Apparently, the desert landscape is not flat. I could see my prior vision had been narrow. Perspective follows that pattern. In the moment, you see narrowly what’s in front of you, but in hindsight, you see the entire landscape. The process of aging affords you perspective, and, I believe, the daring to act on the results.
Perspective in hindsight
As a girl growing up in the 70’s, the idea of feminism was radical to me. In my mind, feminism equaled: ‘bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan’ the hallmark of Enjoli perfume ads; hairy arm pits (no thank you for me); working women; and Ditto jeans…because you were sexier in Ditto’s. Feminism also meant Gloria Steinem who, as I heard her spoken of, was radical and hated men. Apart from my one pair of Ditto jeans, which I coveted, I was not about the feminist way of thinking. I stayed cloistered in my Holly Hobby world and tuned into Little House on the Prairie each Monday night. A skewed view of the world indeed.
But college…oh college, the first of many eye openers. People who saw the world differently, who broadened my perspective. A far cry from the quaint, conservative, church teachings in my hometown. I recall being in a church service while home for a holiday and the pastor spoke of women being submissive. I did a double take and wondered how I missed that in all the years I’d been attending. That idea rolled around in my head as I grappled with forming my own perspective about my role as a woman.
Undue influence
Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, ‘the church,’ is responsible for defining what ‘womanhood’ is for many women in the United States and around the world. Faith traditions usually include the role of women , and it has been further refined by a multitude of denominations. With rare exception, the refinements did not provide more agency and freedom to women. Instead, they neatly tucked women into a box of rules that defined when we spoke, what we said, how we served, and the degree to which (and how) we could express ourselves. From where I sit today, the faith perspective was also skewed.
But influential.
Because the powers that be within faith communities speak with authority, with certainty, about an array of topics, but most definitely about women. What’s been braided together over the years is a perspective that, to be a good (insert your faith here), you must also be XY and Z. And I guarantee you XY and Z do not have Gloria Steinem as a poster child. No, XY and Z has a quiet, supportive, submissive woman who does not make waves. Who does not speak her mind, who carries a load not understood by the opposite sex who defines how we are ‘supposed to’ act.
Shifting to a daring perspective
You know who should define women’s behavior? Women. Specifically, each individual woman. Because no playbook captures the myriad of our experiences. Does that make me a feminist? Ok. Maybe it’s because I’m in the second half of life and feeling daring, not caring as much about what others think, but we have permission for our behaviors to range to the same degree as anyone else. If we’re angry, we should get angry. Overwhelmed, we can show it. Sad, happy, excited, frustrated, perplexed? Yes, yes, and yes. When we don’t express our feelings and shove them inside, keeping ourselves buttoned up on the outside so that we don’t draw attention, those feelings, that energy, it goes somewhere. Where we see it manifest is in illness. Chronic illness from the long-term effects of stress.
A friend sent me this video yesterday sharing the perfect perspective. If you’re angry, be angry, truly experience your life. We’ve been conditioned to ‘not make a fuss,’ but if you want to make a fuss, make a fuss. Another person’s discomfort if we break a gender norm in our behavior is none of our business. It’s not. I don’t write that to be confrontational. It’s the truth. If we’re behaving respectfully, albeit forcefully, again…we’re allowed.
It’s a rip off that true perspective occurs in hindsight. Be that as it may, I have perspective now, 53 years in. Will it be different 10 years from now? I hope so. For today though, I’m fed up with the norms we’ve been given and ready to embrace a daring perspective. What that means, I’m not sure, but I’m confident I’ll gain perspective along the path. This is your journey, friends, what do you want it to be? Be brave. Lisa
It kept coming up in my Instagram feed, Abby Wambach’s book Wolfpack, so I put it on my reading list and powered through this week. It’s an easy quick read, targeted to women, reminding us of what we know but forget. And then I ran across the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt a couple days later, “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.” The combined wisdom triggered something inside me and has stuck around.