If you're close to my age then you know exactly who Mary Ann and Ginger are. My mother and my aunts were never the types of women who talked about what it is to be a woman. Their generation didn't seem to talk much about anything other than the day-in and day-out of life from what I recall. They worked, they kept homes and families - but I can't recall ever hearing any of them ever speak of dreams they had for themselves, of desires, of wanting or being able to be anything more or anything other than a homemaker and mom. I knew nothing more of my mom having a sex life than the fact that about once a month the bedroom door got locked. Sex wasn't a topic of discussion and I certainly never saw any of them get dolled up.
TV from my childhood didn't really help that either. Carol Brady - home and family; Mary Tyler Moore - career but no marriage, no kids; All in the Family, Happy Days, Little House on the Prairie - all home and family; Laverne & Shirley, Wonder Woman, Charlie's Angels - careers, troubled relationships, no kids. All of these shows seemed to say two things - 1. that a woman would have to choose between a successful career or a successful home life, and 2. that a woman couldn't be sexy and be taken seriously at a career and she couldn't be sexy and be married or a mom. Then there was Gilligan's Island with Mary Ann and Ginger the perfect example of splitting the "good" woman from the "bad" woman.
Every boy I knew in my small world went back and forth between who they liked better and every girl went back and forth between which they'd rather be. On the one hand you had Mary Ann - the wholesome girl next door, the sweetheart, the one the guys would take home to mom then marry. On the other hand you had Ginger - the bombshell, the sexy bad girl who used her womanly ways to her advantage, the one the guys swooned over, dreamed about. Somewhere along the way, our society decided being a sexual woman could only exist separately from the day to day person we're expected to be and that "idea" began to be branded into our psyches from the time of mass communication's dawning age in TV, magazines, etc.
The simple fact is that women are complex creatures. Unfortunately we're also easily influenced and swayed into sacrificing parts of ourselves to "fit in" with one of society's roles for us. Who says we have to give up any part of ourselves though? If we don't allow ourselves to be crammed into molds to keep other people happy then we can be anything and everything we want to be. Many times though, fear is that deciding factor in our decision making process. I know how powerful fear is, I lived with it long enough that I lost the ability to recognize it, it had become ingrained in my daily life - keeping me from making the best decisions for myself, keeping me from being myself. On top of that, as women we wear so many hats on any given day (chauffeur, chef, maid, mother, wife, employee, etc.) that we often sacrifice the most womanly parts of ourselves - the sexpot, the flirt, the lover (and we all have those sides to us even if we're scared to let them out.)
There's not a little girl out there who, at some point, doesn't dream of being beautiful, growing up to be a "woman" with curves and long hair who makes boys go crazy. And every one of them should be told that she's beautiful - not to the point of creating tiny divas, just so that they become accustomed to hearing it and knowing when it's being said sincerely and from the heart.
As we get older, competition and cattiness seems to set into a lot of women. All revolving around guys.....enter insecurities....enter crazy. I know women who snoop through their guy's things constantly - pockets, drawers, emails, phones. I know girls who do it to guy friends that they're not even dating!! I know guys have their own things that they worry about - but they don't (in general) obsess over things like how they look in their clothes - "is this too revealing, not revealing enough, does it make me look fat?" They don't worry about running into someone in a store when they're not looking their best. The don't gossip about who's with who, or any of the petty details that seem to become the focus of many women's conversations and sometimes lives. They don't see another guy with a girl and zero in on the guy the way women zero in on the woman. "Look at her, he's only interested in her because she's easy"," look at how she's dressed", "You know he's only interested in her body". Women will do that shit without even knowing either person in the scenario!!! You know it's true. Hell, I've even sat in church and overheard women whispering in the pews about such things. It's one thing to know someone personally, and I mean KNOW that person and make such a statement, but when I don't know the person/people myself, I try to remember that judgment is not my place and that unless you've been in someone's shoes you don't know what motivates them. Maybe women's focus goes to things like that because they've forgotten that they're capable of being exciting, of being a full on woman. Maybe they wish they had the body, the guts, the moxie, the "whatever" that another woman has. I sincerely do not know what motivates that behavior.
My husband and I were eating lunch with a male friend who made the comment that if he were a girl he wouldn't want for anything, that he wouldn't hesitate to use being female to his advantage and that it wouldn't matter how old the guy was. (This came about because he personally knows someone who has an 70+ year old wealthy "boyfriend" who's taking care of her.) Suddenly my "hamster" was wide awake and not just "turning the wheel" but running a marathon in it. I can say that I'm pretty sure I personally couldn't do that. I don't say I'm certain of it because desperation alters how people react to things. I just know that I prefer to have love in the relationship equation. I don't know the above mentioned gal so I can't say whether love is there or not, I just based this on how he stated he'd be if he was a woman.
I posed the question on our public race team Facebook page asking the guys "if you were a woman, would you use your feminine attributes to your advantage". The handful of guys who answered, did so with big "Hell yeah, I'd have a mattress sewn to my back". I asked to try to gain some insight as to whether it's men or women who are responsible for the misconceptions about and the labeling of women with big tits, the ones who dance for a living, the ones who model, etc. as loose or amoral or as sluts or whatever words get tossed out there to describe these women.
I remember high school well, and honey, you couldn't pay me to go back. I was at one end of the spectrum - one of the girls on the edges of things, never popular, never part of any clicks, never dating, but I knew girls who were at the opposite end of things as well - the ones with killer bodies and the reputations associated with them, who were constantly asked out. I can see now how it was most likely as difficult for some of them then as it was for me. Constantly having it assumed that they're easy and stories being told on Monday morning (and knowing teenage guys and using a little hindsight, I'm sure some of the stories, if not most of them, were blown out of proportion, or fabricated for fear of looking like they couldn't score with someone with a rep.)
I have high school classmates on our Facebook page who remember the "high school" me. But there's the catch. They have memories of me - we didn't hang out. They remember the quiet, awkward, painfully skinny me who was good at drawing and made good grades. They remember the me who had crawled into a social shell after years of rejection. If they knew me, they'd also know that my two closest friends from JH & HS were forbidden to speak to me or continue to hang out with me when their parents saw that I wasn't the type to put up with strict rules and told them they needed to stand up for themselves against their moms who screamed at them and hit them. Of course that didn't happen, I was cut loose. It hurt me a great deal but I understand, they weren't in positions where they could leave home.
If my classmates knew me, they'd know I possess a temper - which I keep strictly controlled - one that causes me to scream and break things. I control it mainly because I don't vent this temper on others, the damage it does is primarily to my things and myself. My temper is so well controlled that my son is sensitive to me even raising my voice. Maybe not the best thing since he doesn't seem to understand that it's OK to get angry or how to deal with feelings of anger in constructive ways. Luckily he doesn't seem to have inherited much of my temper.
Did anyone in HS know that I've always dreamed of being in Playboy? It has nothing to do with being promiscuous. I've looked at "porn" magazines for as long as I can remember being able to find my dad's and uncles' stashes. I think the human body is beautiful, possessing lines and movement that only God and nature can create. Would I do it even being a mom? Hell yeah I would, especially being a mom. Having a kid doesn't mean women have to stop being sexual or desirable. I think lots of marriages fail because one partner (or both) forget how to connect sexually, romantically, passionately. But that's another blog.
Did any of my classmates know that I dreamed of being a free-lance writer? Not just that, the whole scenario was that I'd be a free-lance writer, travelling the country and world, with lovers in different cities. I could see having a kid but I never saw being married. That's me though, (and I think, a lot of women) a walking bundle of conflicts. Decisions I made along the way are why I am where I am, as well as why I am who I am. Would I do some things differently if I could? Maybe a few things, but I wouldn't really want to alter who I am today. I'm learning to fit the conflicting pieces of me together into what's turning out to be a very challenging puzzle of a beautiful foreign landscape. But I digress...
High school seems to be a difficult thing for a lot of women to leave behind, some guys, but more women. Looking back, the girls I remember that were well endowed actually played down their large chests for the most part. I'm sure it was as problematic for some of them as being flat chested was for me. But back then we were all still girls, trying to figure out what being a woman meant. Not an easy thing to do with so many seemingly conflicting roles out there.
We allow guys to play a big part in that. When we're dating, guys are often looking for exciting, fun, sexy girls. When they decide to get married enter Suzy Homemaker. But even married, a guy's head will turn at the sight of a pretty girl showing off the fact that she's a girl. (You can't say Suzy Homemaker doesn't notice the Brad Pitts, Javier Bardems, or George Clooneys, either.) But Suzy will most likely get jealous, or insecure, or catty or any combination of the aforementioned descriptives......and off we go, completely forgetting that once upon a time that probably was her. And who's fault is that? The kids' because that's when you gained the weight? Sorry, not their problem to bear. The husband's fault because he never notices you? Maybe that's it in some cases, but do you give him reason to notice? Your fault? Couldn't be, you're busy working, taking care of the kids and the house, driving to ball games and pageants, planning yard sales, attending PTO meetings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera....
Yes, guys, as a whole, can definitely send out some mixed signals about what they want in a woman. But the ways in which we've learned as women to interact with men and that we would even treat "getting" a man like a competition, speak volumes for how far we haven't come. In the end I think the judgments, expectations, and criticisms that hold us back as women are ones we put on ourselves and other women. Most of us can figure out that a nice suit doesn't guarantee a nice guy, why can't we figure out that a woman who's comfortable with looking womanly and sexy isn't loose? Just because you've chosen to downplay certain aspects of being a woman, set aside one or more of the hats to wear others doesn't make you better or worse than another woman who chose different a different hat that day.
The funny thing for me - as someone who has been flat-chested and is now surgically well-endowed - is that I still dress the way I've always dressed. I didn't go out and get a whole new wardrobe when I got my implants - well, I did actually buy bikinis cause now I have something to put in them - my taste in clothes didn't change, it's just that I'm shaped differently now. Put a flat chested woman in a bikini and nothing is likely to be said about her character - put a curvy woman in a bikini and somehow it's a statement toward her character, a reason to question her motives for being seen. (There's nothing wrong with being flat-chested as long as it isn't bothering you to the point of interfering with your enjoyment of life. Like I've said, that was me not so long ago.) But a small bust in a bikini doesn't make that woman any more innocent than a big bust makes someone amoral.
There's nothing wrong with Mary Ann. I love to cook, I like evenings at home, I'm at my most comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt, bare-footed cooking a meal, singing along to the radio loudly and out of key. I'm honestly a lot more Mary Ann than Ginger. But personally I always wanted to be Ginger. Probably because I was never considered the pretty one - not in my family, not in school, not in social circles once I was grown. I was always awkward and quiet. I wanted to be beautiful, sexy, adored. I wanted the fancy dresses - although I usually just felt like a little girl playing dress up when the occasion would arise that I could wear one. I wanted to be looked at as beautiful, sexy, desirable. I just wasn't able to really see what was in my mirror - add in the rejection, being cheated on, always putting someone else's dreams and wants before my own and it made being the woman I really am a very difficult endeavor.
It's been a long hard lesson to learn, mainly because I had no one to tell me, but I'm getting there - I can be a good mom and still have an exciting sex life. I can be smart and still be sexy. I can be a great cook and I can do my grocery shopping in 4 inch heels if that's what I want to do. I can make my guy swoon then be the sweetheart that bandages his head from the fall. I can do anything I want to do - dream, explore, create my own life, change my mind, start over, love ferociously, be a cookie-baking mom, in other words, I can be a woman and EVERYTHING that "woman" encompasses. I don't have to pick between Mary Ann and Ginger. And I'm glad I figured that out before I ended up like Mrs. Howell!!!
I don't have any real girlfriends to hang out with, the ones who will hang out with me, well we're always busy and running on different schedules, or we just don't live anywhere near each other. If they're happy, I'm happy for them. A lot of women don't like me though, and I've run into that since I was a teenager, although I couldn't wrap my head around it then. I actually still have trouble understanding it and it makes me proceed with caution when meeting women, I just don't let it bother me now, that's the difference.
Would I ever want to be a guy? Not a chance in Hell. Why? Cause then I'd have to date a woman!! And although we may be wonderfully infuriating conglomerations of the best and worst that life offers,
it doesn't change the fact that we're....beautiful CRAZY....women...
