Come On, Maureen
Are there sorrows Women can't express,
The things Husbands do that depress?
Is it more complex.
Even beyond Sex?
Having more fun, enjoying it less?
--Larry Eisenberg, commenting on Maureen Dowd’s “Blue Is the New Black” column, Sept. 20, 2009
In her most recent New York Times column, “Blue Is the New Black,” Maureen Dowd hypothesizes—stop the presses!—that women are unhappier than men.
I say: is this news? Or is it the unspoken, seed-of-doubt truth that women have always known? If no one disputes that men enjoy more career success than women, that women still shoulder the brunt of the family-rearing burden, and that women generally suffer more acute discrimination on the basis of sex, how could anyone dispute that women are unhappier?
Before we get to that, though, I feel compelled to point out the fallaciousness of a happy versus unhappy binary. First of all, women, particularly American women, happily or unhappily ensconced in their roles as caretakers and nurturers, as healers of skinned knees and hurt feelings, are allowed more cultural space than men are to assess their own emotions, and how their nuances correspond to this false dichotomy. Second, affluent American women, particularly Dowd’s audience, enjoy the luxury of prioritizing relative happiness over mere survival: “happiness” is a modern construct, no doubt, and one consumerism invented.
But back to the task at hand. I found the comments on Dowd’s article to be as telling as the article itself. “Happiness is about meeting expectations,” commented one NYT reader whose name appeared to be male. “Women since the ‘60s have had changing expectations without clear, defined thoughts of how they perceived their lives could be fulfilling.” The same commenter went on to maintain that the “feminine revolution…probably wasn’t meant for the vast majority of women.”
Though I find this guy’s (I’m assuming he’s a guy; call me biased) rhetoric abhorrent (has anyone ever actually called it the “feminine revolution”?), I’m inclined to agree with him, except for the idea that feminism isn’t for most women. Gender is an expectations game, and for women, the goalposts might as well be on wheels. And for better or for worse, feminism has complicated, or multiplied them; maybe we are, in the immortal words of Larry Eisenberg, having more fun and enjoying it less.
“When women stepped into male-dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves,” Dowd argues. “If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.”
Dowd cites several sources to substantiate this claim of female unhappiness, among them the General Social Survey and a book by Marcus Buckingham called Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently.
Another commenter writes, much to my “Touché!” delight: “The fact that Arianna at Huffington Post has hired a guy to write about why we women are unhappy could be one of the reasons.”
Yes, I say. The expectations are shifting—but isn’t the point, really, examining who is the Arbiter of Expectations? According to OnlineWomenInPolitics.org, only 1% of the world’s assets are in women’s names, there are exactly 5 women chief executives in the Fortune 500 companies (that’s also 1%, by the by), and in Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s backyard, for every 100 shares of stock options owned by a man, exactly one is owned by a woman. Again, that magic number: 1%.
Thus, we might recklessly conclude, at least 99% of the world’s economic decisions, the decisions that affect everything from our homes to our bank accounts to our jobs to every single thing we buy or are urged to buy, are made by men.
But those are the facts that are easy to study, to measure and substantiate. What about the discontent that lies beneath the surface?
Recently, AlterNet excerpted a section of what appears to be an excellent and timely book, Rachel Simmons’ How We Sabotage Young Girls. “Our culture is teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential,” Simmons writes. “In particular, the pressure to be “Good”—unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless—diminishes girls’ authenticity and personal authority.”
To support this thesis, Simmons references lists made by female students in her Girls Leadership Institute, who were asked “to describe how society expected a Good Girl to look and act.” A sampling of the responses:
Blue eyes
Little girl
Always busy
Quiet
Polite
Organized
Perfect
Enthusiastic
Flirtatious
Skinny
Good grades
Kind
Boyfriend
Follows the rules
No opinions on things
Intelligent
Doesn’t get mad
Follower
Average
Façade never cracks
High expectations
Honest
People pleaser
I have one response to that list, and it is this: OMG. No wonder so many young women in America suffer from eating disorders, if this is all the weight they’re carrying around. Nothing illustrates the impossible standards we set for our sisters and daughters more than this list: how can a girl be both “No opinions on things” and “Honest”? Why should she have to be both “Flirtatious” and a “Little girl”? If we’ve asked her to be “Intelligent”, why do we ask her to be a “Follower”? And, most importantly, how do we measure the conflict in a young woman between “High expectations” and “Façade never cracks”?
And that’s without diving into the labyrinthine polemics of “Skinny”, “Blue eyes”, “Boyfriend”, and the real kicker, “Perfect.”
Again, the comments on the article are telling. One commenter reflects on the romantic toll her professional choices have taken. “undrgrndgirl” *rolls eyes*. And another “Good Girl” writes, “Raised to be respectful and nice, I really suffered after moving to Chicago as an adult. I was never taught how to protect myself and was taken advantage of by every homeless creep on the bus. When a smelly, bug-infested old man sat next to me and looked up my skirt, I didn't move because I thought it would be rude. I let bosses sexually harass me because I thought that was part of working. It took years to get over the "good girl" upbringing.”
I’d like to take a pause on that: this “nice” woman felt that it would be “rude” to deny a stranger visual access to her genitalia, to interrupt the entitled male gaze by adjusting her skirt on the bus. Yes, Maureen Dowd, this is perhaps an indicator of unhappiness.
But Dowd doesn’t examine where this feminine depression—perhaps the real “feminine revolution”, in which our femininity revolves around what others expect of us—finds its roots, where it starts. The girls who made the Good Girl list were in middle school. Dowd’s concern is middle-aged women with careers and children, or middle-aged women who have had to decide between careers and children. They are not young women, and not usually elder women, not usually poor, not usually black or brown. We all write what we know, but I begrudge the fact that in Dowd’s case, writing what everyone already knew, and writing it within a heavily exclusive framework, becomes Most-Emailed-Story revelatory.
In my own life, a close cohort of my feminist friends discussed the Simmons excerpt. One, whom I would describe as one of the most brilliant and empowered women I’ve ever known, wrote the following:
"Did I have any passions? Did I do things for myself? I don’t think so. I remember feeling that I was locked into a path I couldn’t alter, good grades, newspaper, “prestigious” college. And then? Where did I think I was going, and why did it never occur to me to cultivate something deeper, something more important in myself? There’s no reason why grades should have meant so much to me. Somehow I never transitioned out of doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I suppose that was always the easiest thing – make parents happy, make teachers happy. I stood out in school because the stick we happened to be measured by was one that flattered my height. But it didn’t mean anything."
Here is the real proof that we are shackling our best and our brightest, holding her hostage in a cell set apart from her authenticity, her power. Two of eleven New York Times columnists are female, and whenever one of them opens her mouth, we’re supposed to rally behind her, even if she doesn’t speak for us. No, Maureen Dowd, women are not satisfied. We resent you telling us that, as if we needed to be told.
I agreed wholeheartedly with exactly one line in your article: “Women are much harder on themselves than men.”
But as for the rest of it? Come on, Maureen. You can be elitist, smug, or obvious, but it’s vexing when you’re all three at once.
The things Husbands do that depress?
Is it more complex.
Even beyond Sex?
Having more fun, enjoying it less?
--Larry Eisenberg, commenting on Maureen Dowd’s “Blue Is the New Black” column, Sept. 20, 2009
In her most recent New York Times column, “Blue Is the New Black,” Maureen Dowd hypothesizes—stop the presses!—that women are unhappier than men.
I say: is this news? Or is it the unspoken, seed-of-doubt truth that women have always known? If no one disputes that men enjoy more career success than women, that women still shoulder the brunt of the family-rearing burden, and that women generally suffer more acute discrimination on the basis of sex, how could anyone dispute that women are unhappier?
Before we get to that, though, I feel compelled to point out the fallaciousness of a happy versus unhappy binary. First of all, women, particularly American women, happily or unhappily ensconced in their roles as caretakers and nurturers, as healers of skinned knees and hurt feelings, are allowed more cultural space than men are to assess their own emotions, and how their nuances correspond to this false dichotomy. Second, affluent American women, particularly Dowd’s audience, enjoy the luxury of prioritizing relative happiness over mere survival: “happiness” is a modern construct, no doubt, and one consumerism invented.
But back to the task at hand. I found the comments on Dowd’s article to be as telling as the article itself. “Happiness is about meeting expectations,” commented one NYT reader whose name appeared to be male. “Women since the ‘60s have had changing expectations without clear, defined thoughts of how they perceived their lives could be fulfilling.” The same commenter went on to maintain that the “feminine revolution…probably wasn’t meant for the vast majority of women.”
Though I find this guy’s (I’m assuming he’s a guy; call me biased) rhetoric abhorrent (has anyone ever actually called it the “feminine revolution”?), I’m inclined to agree with him, except for the idea that feminism isn’t for most women. Gender is an expectations game, and for women, the goalposts might as well be on wheels. And for better or for worse, feminism has complicated, or multiplied them; maybe we are, in the immortal words of Larry Eisenberg, having more fun and enjoying it less.
“When women stepped into male-dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves,” Dowd argues. “If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.”
Dowd cites several sources to substantiate this claim of female unhappiness, among them the General Social Survey and a book by Marcus Buckingham called Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently.
Another commenter writes, much to my “Touché!” delight: “The fact that Arianna at Huffington Post has hired a guy to write about why we women are unhappy could be one of the reasons.”
Yes, I say. The expectations are shifting—but isn’t the point, really, examining who is the Arbiter of Expectations? According to OnlineWomenInPolitics.org, only 1% of the world’s assets are in women’s names, there are exactly 5 women chief executives in the Fortune 500 companies (that’s also 1%, by the by), and in Silicon Valley, San Francisco’s backyard, for every 100 shares of stock options owned by a man, exactly one is owned by a woman. Again, that magic number: 1%.
Thus, we might recklessly conclude, at least 99% of the world’s economic decisions, the decisions that affect everything from our homes to our bank accounts to our jobs to every single thing we buy or are urged to buy, are made by men.
But those are the facts that are easy to study, to measure and substantiate. What about the discontent that lies beneath the surface?
Recently, AlterNet excerpted a section of what appears to be an excellent and timely book, Rachel Simmons’ How We Sabotage Young Girls. “Our culture is teaching girls to embrace a version of selfhood that sharply curtails their power and potential,” Simmons writes. “In particular, the pressure to be “Good”—unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless—diminishes girls’ authenticity and personal authority.”
To support this thesis, Simmons references lists made by female students in her Girls Leadership Institute, who were asked “to describe how society expected a Good Girl to look and act.” A sampling of the responses:
Blue eyes
Little girl
Always busy
Quiet
Polite
Organized
Perfect
Enthusiastic
Flirtatious
Skinny
Good grades
Kind
Boyfriend
Follows the rules
No opinions on things
Intelligent
Doesn’t get mad
Follower
Average
Façade never cracks
High expectations
Honest
People pleaser
I have one response to that list, and it is this: OMG. No wonder so many young women in America suffer from eating disorders, if this is all the weight they’re carrying around. Nothing illustrates the impossible standards we set for our sisters and daughters more than this list: how can a girl be both “No opinions on things” and “Honest”? Why should she have to be both “Flirtatious” and a “Little girl”? If we’ve asked her to be “Intelligent”, why do we ask her to be a “Follower”? And, most importantly, how do we measure the conflict in a young woman between “High expectations” and “Façade never cracks”?
And that’s without diving into the labyrinthine polemics of “Skinny”, “Blue eyes”, “Boyfriend”, and the real kicker, “Perfect.”
Again, the comments on the article are telling. One commenter reflects on the romantic toll her professional choices have taken. “undrgrndgirl” *rolls eyes*. And another “Good Girl” writes, “Raised to be respectful and nice, I really suffered after moving to Chicago as an adult. I was never taught how to protect myself and was taken advantage of by every homeless creep on the bus. When a smelly, bug-infested old man sat next to me and looked up my skirt, I didn't move because I thought it would be rude. I let bosses sexually harass me because I thought that was part of working. It took years to get over the "good girl" upbringing.”
I’d like to take a pause on that: this “nice” woman felt that it would be “rude” to deny a stranger visual access to her genitalia, to interrupt the entitled male gaze by adjusting her skirt on the bus. Yes, Maureen Dowd, this is perhaps an indicator of unhappiness.
But Dowd doesn’t examine where this feminine depression—perhaps the real “feminine revolution”, in which our femininity revolves around what others expect of us—finds its roots, where it starts. The girls who made the Good Girl list were in middle school. Dowd’s concern is middle-aged women with careers and children, or middle-aged women who have had to decide between careers and children. They are not young women, and not usually elder women, not usually poor, not usually black or brown. We all write what we know, but I begrudge the fact that in Dowd’s case, writing what everyone already knew, and writing it within a heavily exclusive framework, becomes Most-Emailed-Story revelatory.
In my own life, a close cohort of my feminist friends discussed the Simmons excerpt. One, whom I would describe as one of the most brilliant and empowered women I’ve ever known, wrote the following:
"Did I have any passions? Did I do things for myself? I don’t think so. I remember feeling that I was locked into a path I couldn’t alter, good grades, newspaper, “prestigious” college. And then? Where did I think I was going, and why did it never occur to me to cultivate something deeper, something more important in myself? There’s no reason why grades should have meant so much to me. Somehow I never transitioned out of doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I suppose that was always the easiest thing – make parents happy, make teachers happy. I stood out in school because the stick we happened to be measured by was one that flattered my height. But it didn’t mean anything."
Here is the real proof that we are shackling our best and our brightest, holding her hostage in a cell set apart from her authenticity, her power. Two of eleven New York Times columnists are female, and whenever one of them opens her mouth, we’re supposed to rally behind her, even if she doesn’t speak for us. No, Maureen Dowd, women are not satisfied. We resent you telling us that, as if we needed to be told.
I agreed wholeheartedly with exactly one line in your article: “Women are much harder on themselves than men.”
But as for the rest of it? Come on, Maureen. You can be elitist, smug, or obvious, but it’s vexing when you’re all three at once.
egr2008
Sep 25 2009Laura -
I think this is a fantastic piece and very well written and researched. I especially like your parsing of the target demographic and the way you dig beneath, discussing the way women are taught to behave from the beginning.
However, one thing I take issue with is your statement that " 'happiness' is a modern construct, no doubt, and one consumerism invented. " Can not a women with no material good to speak still be happy if she is surrounded by people who love her? Can one not rejoice in good health and a loving family and/or set of friends? And does that idea of happiness not transcend gender, race, culture, class, religion and everything else?
Certainly we can point to the almost-too-many-to-name ways that our consumer culture has targeted women to believe that material goods buy happiness, which no doubt is the point you were making here. However, I simply say that perhaps you were too caught up in that mode of thinking and took too narrow a focus? On the other hand, you could simply have been working within the constructs of Maureen Dowd's definition happiness.
But like I said - a fantastic piece - and I thank you for unpacking her argument into something truly intellectual and turning it into something worth reading.