ff

*disclaimer. i promise, very soon, to start properly editing my posts... this one feels particularly rambly and lacking in clarity. sorry. i'm too tired, today, to really clean it up. but i do feel that i must start that. bless you for sticking with me!!*

there are a million articles these days about 'this generation' and whether or not we have it better or worse, are too entitled and so on. versus the oldendays. versus our parent's time. here in this first world of ours.

(i suspect this is probably the sort of debate that is constant. i'm sure my parents' parents dealt with the same comparisons to my parents' parents' parents. blah blah and so on. anyways.)

and i am both interested in and tired of these conversations. i'm tired of being told that we - people my age (which actually can mean anything from 20 to 37 as far as i can tell) are lazy and entitled. but then again. a lot of us - the upper or middle class types - are. but it should also be considered that we are that way for a reason, and that reason might have something to do with the way we were raised and our parents and the affluence that that generation found or had or WHATEVER. and also. a lot of us aren't spoiled or lazy and do have it hard. i'm getting completely off track. this isn't what i meant to be going on about. basically: talking about generational differences and the way that the world changes for each is interesting and good. sweeping generalizations are dumb. okay. moving on.

hi! what i want to talk about is. one of the hardships i see for women of this time. the having it all problem. because what comes with the possibility of 'having it all' that first wave feminism gave us? the modern idea that we, therefore, should have it all. like. literally. allllll. and if we don't? well. then we're failing. here's a list of things!

you should be independent and fierce and not give a damn, and you should have a loving partner, and you should have a great job that you loooovvvvee, and you should have a family but not stay home but also not let them be raised by strangers, and you should have traveled a ton on your own before you settled down, and you should be incredibly educated, and you should be pretty and skinny (cause duh), and you should not care if you're pretty and skinny, and you should not diet and love yourself, and you should have all the best clothes, and you should not care about having the best clothes, and you should be political and active and passionate, and you should not be loud or inconveniently opinionated, and you should not be a wallflower, and you should have an amazing home and an amazing nightlife, and you should be athletic, and you should be girly, and you should be tough, and you should be a big boss because you're so tough and girly and strong...

and and and. and i am lucky enough to have pretty good access to most of those things. good ol' privilege. and i still feel, generally, completely overwhelmed and underachieving. it is amazing that more people aren't walking around with exploded heads. (men, too, by the way. the conforming and the being and having it all. but. you know. this is about me, particularly, and the 'free feminist' idea. also, i think this started way before 'my time', but that maybe we're at a point where it is coming to a head. maybe? i will always always think of mom reading 'running on empty', and how that made no sense to little-me, but how very much i came to understand that concept as i became an adult.)

QUOTES!

 

...

  {laurie penny}

and here's the full article for you to read, because as usual i went on longer than i meant to and wasn't as concise and convincing as i hoped to be:

* feminine artifice as power

and if you read all the way down here, you get a prize! SOME MUSICAL THEATRE!