The other night I had a friend over and we were talking about our mutual career angst. We are not at all on the same professional tracks, though I’d venture to say I am more often jealous of hers than she of mine, hers being a life of the mind and mine being a life of the… stacks of paper, I guess you might say. At any rate, here we were, two smart women, young but feeling adrift, and it makes me cry to think about how actually and utterly convinced we both seem to be that the future holds nothing but failure for both of us.
Some of my angst is, of course, of my own making. Icarus’s problem was that he flew too close to the sun, but I keep lingering in the shade, myself. I don’t apply for things I assume I won’t get. I don’t write things I think about because I assume that I will express them inadequately and awkwardly. I double-up on the self-flagellation around these things because then, since I am rapidly approaching a Landmark Birthday By Which One Is Supposed To Have Certain Things Settled, I want to complain that I don’t have any of the things I was too afraid to ask or work for in the first place.
As I always do when I feel like I am about to throw myself under the bus, I’ve been trying to think about what this life of mine means in feminist terms. (I may be the only person in the universe whose breaking heart can be soothed by a good abstract feminist debate.) And, well… I think I might be a big old feminist failure too, flunking on my own terms of what it means to be a woman in my particular time and place, with my particular advantages.
Let me back up. A few weeks ago I happened to see Naomi Wolf speak, and although my impression was mixed, one thing she said that has stuck in my craw ever since was that women needed “to take up the space that the world gives them.” When she spoke those words, it dawned on me that I hardly knew how to do that, and that my lack of knowledge in this regard was, in fact, a Pretty Fucking Big Feminist Problem.
I want to be clear: in a room full of people I love, I am an interrupter and a pedant and a shouter and a comic and I’m sure altogether infuriating. In these small particular spaces, which are, by choice and habit of association, usually filled with sympathetic ears, I do not lack for self-confidence or self-respect.
It’s when I get out in the wider world that I get into trouble. It’s there that I lose my assurance that I matter, that I have something to say that people want to hear. It’s there that I smart at being overlooked but do nothing in particular about it, there that I smile dumbly when someone tells a joke I don’t like, there that I assume I will not get anything I deserve.
And I don’t kid myself that this is not a gendered thing. I know that I was not raised with any expectation of being able to do something extraordinary. But everywhere I look I see dudes who see the world as their oyster without the vaguest sense of self-awareness. Last year I was dating a man who, despite having done very little with his life other than receiving an undergraduate degree in film from NYU, was absolutely, one hundred percent certain that it was his destiny to make a film about “women’s stories.” (No, I do not know why I did not dump him immediately either.) I have worked with a hundred and ten male actors convinced their degrees from the American Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts would lead them to the position of the next Daniel Day-Lewis. Every guy I know at work thinks he’s going to be President, on the Supreme Court, the Dean of Harvard Law School, the biggest M&A lawyer in New York.
And meanwhile, I try to be content, as Edith Wharton once urged, to be interested in big things and happy in small ways. Which, as a coping strategy, may be the best advice there is. But it will not get any of us the big things, a shelf full of books one has written and others have read, the Presidency, a mention in the history books read by children, will it? I don’t mean to be hubristic and suggest that I am entitled to those things, but isn’t it sad that for most women, most of the time, they aren’t even things one envisions in the realm of possibility?
And here I am, late at night, with a pot of tea and these thoughts rolling in my head and all the lazy time I spend pondering these things is more time gone that I shan’t be getting back and that I can’t use for anyone at all, let alone myself. And I don’t know what the answer is, whether I ought to be, as a feminist, taking up my space. I don’t know whether it’s feminist to be ambitious in a world that doesn’t give anyone what they deserve to have.
What do you think?
I’ve been struggling with the same thing lately. I have just gone through a change in bosses, the boss that left told me I need to work on my self-confidence and getting more out there. And that i do well with my small group of coworkers but not so much out side of that small group.
One of my good friends/coworker just left the company he was one of those guys who saw the world as thier oyester and I have spent so much time analyzing how to be that way without actually making an attempt at it because I don’t think it will work for me.
And one other thing, the rss feed isn’t working.
Hmmm I have the opposite problem. My life has grown outsized to my ambitions. I just want to quit and drop out and live in a tent on the beach somewhere under an assumed name.
P.Soul, this is great. I can relate to a lot of this. As my friends all know, I rarely shut up. But even in that comfortable setting it’s really to mask some really crippling self-loathing and insecurities. I would love to take up the space given to me (I like that way of thinking about it) but I have a massive fear of failure, so much so that I usually screw myself over and withdraw from life because it’s easier to do nothing than to fail at something. Even posting anything here is scary to me because I fully expect it to be laughed at.
And I do have literary ambitions, not grand literary I’m-going-to-be-the-next-Austen-Bronte-Wharton-Rowling-etc. ambitions, but ambitions nonetheless. I would like to be published someday, beyond my school literary magazine. But I fear I will never follow through on it.
My parents always set me up to be this special snowflake prodigy, which was ridiculous, and it’s made failure my all-too-easy rebellion against them. But then I constantly compare myself to where they were at my age: mom was a mother (something that is also a key part of what I want), dad was a professor at Columbia. I’m muddling through my BA and just left my paying job and have no children.
I wonder how much of it would have been different or if it would have been different at all if I had been a boy. Because my family certainly thought they were setting me up and giving me the tools to be some world-famous whatever. But reality kept getting in the way.
Tersa, it should be working now. I think.
JD, another friend of mine and I discuss becoming surf bums in Hawaii all the time. That would require learning to surf, of course.
I think you’re much too hard on yourself. There’s no timeline for when/how things need to be accomplished. Many great artists/authors/agents of change didn’t get their start until late in life, and one could make the argument that they actually COULDN’T have done what they did until they’d had the transformative experiences they’d had along the way. Everything you’re doing now will prepare you for the things you want to do, including writing this and having these doubts and fears.
As someone who has faced down 30 recently (thats the age your referring to correct?)I must tell you with all well-meaning sympathy, relax. You sound like your working things out and deciding what makes you happy. I really don’t think there should be a time line for that. At the stroke of 30 was I exactly where I wanted to be/thought I would be etc..no. But honestly who is? I think people are just way to hard on themselves to be “great” by the time they are X age. I don’t think that time spent pondering is wasted time, you’re just doing what you can do in the here and now and maybe down the road you will act and all the pondering will be leading up to that.
i feel you 1000%. my ambition was always to just be a working actor, and that ambition fell flat on it’s ambitious face when i realized i was thirtysomething, had no health insurance or 401K saved up and my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness. oh, and i wasn’t married or even boyfriended at the time and i have and still have no kids.
this may sound really backward, but i always felt that my life would be better if i either had a burgeoning and blossoming career that i was passionate about or i was married with children, but what do you do when you have neither? what do you do when your dreams don’t come true? i’m not afraid to dream different dreams, but i’d like to have a job i love that pays me enough to not fret every month about bills while still enjoying some modicum of a lifestyle and meet the right man to settle down and have kids with. other people have found that. what’s wrong with me that i can’t seem to get there?
these things, along with “i need some chocolate” are the thoughts that go through my head nowadays.
Yay it’s working. Thanks.
I would have to second what BeckySharper said too, being too hard on yourself is definitely one of those things that keeps people from speaking up.
If you ever figure out how to stop being hard on yourself let me know, cause I’d like a few lessons in that as well.
My problem is that up until about a year ago, I have doing my damndest, really, to take up a fuckload of space, and have realized (beginning about that same time) that that’s still no guarantee of success as I define it for myself. Was I not taking up enough space? Was I taking up too much, and this is my cosmic punishment? Does it make any difference at all?
Mai eksistenshul crysiss. Let me sho u it.
I picked up the Susan Sontag diaries last week for just this reason — I published a novel 10 years ago, to pretty good reviews, but got a “real” job (to pay off the student loans from the Phd I got in order to have time to write the book), and here I am, 10 years later, wondering why I don’t feel entitled to my own voice (and I’m staring down an older milestone birthday than you are).
I like that Naomi Wolf quote — I think it’ll go on my wall ..
This was so interesting, thank you for sharing.
I don’t know if it is such a bad thing to work on being content. I don’t think it precludes achieving great things at all, you can be content but also be working towards certain goals. A lot of people are ‘successful’ but unhappy because it is never enough, they can never appreciate where they are right now.
But I think part of this has less to do with gender than economics. Studies have shown young people (under 30) are increasingly worried about their futures, girls more than boys, but boys are increasingly affected, too. It’s just damn hard to make it nowadays, employment is ever-more precarious, especially in ‘creative’ fields…and since girls are often lacking in confidence, they just feel it first and more keenly.
I love this, PSoul. And I just want to chime in to say that taking up space sometimes comes gradually, after realizations about what kind of space you need and want. It’s a journey. Cut yourself some slack.
I have the opposite trouble (kinda like JDReg). I have Lofty Goals and know how much space I want to take up, am ready to take it. I expect Big Things and do not want a 9-5 life. The trouble is, these delusions of grandeur (first-born syndrome, perhaps?) have left me disillusioned about how easy this journey would be. Cause it hasn’t been. I was very ill-suited to corporate life, which is why I’m a struggling freelancer. Nothing is where I thought it would be. I’m still trying to reach the same goals, but there’s a chink in the confidence armor now.
Anyway, I have no answers, just sympathy.
Becky gets props for being an excellent cheerleader. And I know, bluebears, I’m just an overthinker generally. (And yeah, thirty. A little under 3 months from now.)
I hear you, Endora, though I think that more often
Charlotte, I am not from the U.S. originally, but the amount of student debt it leaves people with, with little ability to pay it off, is an additional burden I think about all the time, esp. as it relates to “creatives.”
This is all being accelerated at the moment by the fact that I happen to work somewhere that will feel the after effects of all this banking nonsense very, very strongly. And that it will kick me back to a country where my business/artistic contacts are fading.
Hmm, I think you might have deleted half a sentence in your last sentence, Pilgrim Soul?
Let me know if you need help setting up a green card marriage.
Oops, hit send too soon – Endora, I think that more often women are circumscribed by being groomed for lower expectations. Even before they decide if they will have children, most women are vaguely aware that that will get in the way. Not so for the men.
Haha JD: I always tell everyone that if Jake Gyllenhaal and I could just get it together this problem would be solved. (HE’S STRAIGHT DAMMIT.)
and I wasn’t saying relax in a you’re overreacting way. just to clarify. I am an overthinker as well and I know how hard it is to get that shit out of your head once it goes on a permanent loop. I just think everyone in general needs to give themselves a break, in some sense we can be our own worst enemies at times.
Not all dudes feel that sense of entitlement to which you allude. I received nothing but encouragement from my parents growing up, was told that I could do anything I wanted, and yet did not end up feeling that the world owes me something, or that I’m destined for success, or fame, or money, or anything at all.
It’s likely that there are some aspects of this attitude related to gender, yet I can’t help but feel that there are many of us in the margins and footnotes who don’t fit your experience with the dudes of the world because we know enough to keep our mouths shut and listen rather then prattle on about how great we are to cover up how great we aren’t.
@Pilgrim Soul: I see what you mean, I think it is, generally, slightly more difficult for girls, but as LippyMcSidewalk pointed out, I think there are sooo many other factors that fit into this question: the overall economic and political situation, as I mentioned, how successful your parents were, what your acquaintances from school and university are doing, etc.
I’m currently trying to decide whether or not to pursue a Ph.D. in a field I love (clinical psych). Part of me feels the expectations of the whole “special snowflake/prodigy” syndrome that Sarah mentioned. Another big part of me likes my easy, well-paid (if somewhat uninspiring) job and thinks I should just stick with it. Who cares if I get an advanced degree as long as I’m happy? (Except that, deep down, I care. But do I really care, or was I just taught to care because of all the smart-kid expectations I’ve been internalizing for 25 years?!) And now I should consider the fact that staying away from Ph.D.-land could mean that I’m not taking up the space that was given to me in this world.
‘Tis a dilemma, that’s for sure.
I empathize completely, although I kind of came to where I am from the other direction. I, kind of like sarah.of.a, was brought up to think I could do great things, be anything I wanted to be, etc. Which I just kind of assumed would fall into my lap with no effort on my part whatsoever. In fact, it took until my last semester of undergrad to realize that not only did I have no idea what I wanted to do upon graduation, I hadn’t even thought about it. Once I noticed that, it made me realize that I don’t have the ambition to be Great, not really. I just want to have a good life and contribute to society. The problem now is that I still have not a clue about what I want to do with my life…
The thing I really took away from ‘Women Don’t Ask’ by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever* (which I strongly recommend, if only for debunking ‘mummy track’ salary myths) is that you’re doing the world as well yourself a disservice by not going after the things you really want. The person who decides e.g. if you’re suitable for an interview is the person reading your application, not you. If you apply for a job and don’t get an interview, you haven’t lost anything.
At the age of (almost) 29, I just about feel I now understand what I’m good at and what I should be aiming for, at least in the short-term. (‘Where would you like to be in 5 years time?’ is a bullshit question for most people with the exception of doctors, lawyers etc.) I think the biggest difference has been learning (because I’ve been trying for at least 5 years!) to ditch ‘all or nothing’ thinking and the unrealistic expectations, fear-induced apathy/procrastination and self-flagellation (sp?) that (for me) come with it. I think this might come under ‘relaxing’ and ‘not being too hard on myself’ which my sister had to say to me all the time for several years.
Today a Jezebel described herself as ‘not very clever’ on the ‘nerd vs. geek’ thread. She’s previously posted that she’s currently writing a PhD. It breaks my heart when women don’t value their skills and talents because God knows unless your best friend is hiring, no one else is going to.
*They’ve just published another book called ‘Ask for it’, also about negotiation for women. http://www.askforit.org
Thanks Plum-Pie, I’ll look for it, always looking for new material for Fem Food for Thought.
This discussion is really striking me. I think there are all kinds of factors contributing to or modifying my current state of ambitionlessness. I’m a woman, and the women in my life have tended to be more ambitious and accomplished than the men. The effect on myself is to make me feel… I don’t know, like a bad sister for being so unambitious.
I’m staring my 29th birthday in the face, and in the first year of what will be my 4th university degree. My debt is growing slowly but steadily. The happiest I’ve ever been was a few years ago when I worked in a really fantastic little coffee shop as a baker and barista. If I could get by on what that paid, I would gladly do it.
My female acquaintance includes published novelists, successful small business owners, corporate ladder-climbers, and university professors. I think I’ve gotten to a point where I recognize that there are downsides to my life (in terms of money and prestige) and downsides to the lives of the ambitious women I know (they have less free time, often less license to be creative in their work).
At this point in my life, in this economy, I want to be independently financially secure. That’s the height and depth of my ambitions. I’m aware that, to a certain extent, worrying that I’m not ambitious enough is a bit of a luxury. I don’t know if it’s a luxury I’ll be able to afford in the future.
Wonderful discussion all – especially PS’s starting essay.
I’m very much in Unpossible’s frame of mind. When I was younger I was good at everything but never felt GREAT at one thing and that has led me to drift along for my 20s and early 30s. And now I feel as I OUGHT to be doing more, something for the greater good, but I can’t figure out what that means to me and how to go about it.
“this may sound really backward, but i always felt that my life would be better if i either had a burgeoning and blossoming career that i was passionate about or i was married with children, but what do you do when you have neither? what do you do when your dreams don’t come true?”
I have this problem that I never really thought through what my dreams were. I decided in high school that I wanted to be a psych professor… and I will eventually be a professor of something, probably. That’s a little vague for someone who is finishing her PhD in the next 6 months though. (Don’t worry kids, postdoc is coming.) I have always wanted kids, never envisioned exactly what I wanted in a husband, and still can’t decide if I want to be one of those “famous” (amongst our field) profs or just chill and be passable. Being completely shattered by my former advisor really screwed that decision up for me… mostly, I want to hide for the rest of my life and get paid to work in some musty basement office of an academic building in peace. (Destroyed self-confidence FTW!)
So, um, what I forgot to mention is that I appear to be trying to take up as little space as possible, which is probably not the best idea ever.
This hits home. I always expected to take up a certain amount of space in the world (another special prodigy snowflake child)–to work hard and accomplish great things. I graduated from college and lost all direction, and several years later I’m still in the job that was supposed to be temporary while I figured out what to do with my life. My feminism only amplifies my feelings. It seems like all my girlfriends are in doctorate programs while I got married and settled down. I was supposed to be the take-no-prisoners achiever, and instead I’m a wife. I feel very lucky to have figured out this part of my life, but I feel bad, even embarrassed, that all I’ve accomplished is marriage–and terrified that’s all I will accomplish.