I'm quite certain many women found this week's front page of the Washington Post Opinion page story to be offensive. I knew the minute I read it that women around the area would be steaming in their morning coffee. However, I found this editorial to be quite humorous and even a bit true.
Women are silly. We do sometimes read silly books. We eat up drama of who in Hollywood had a new baby. We gossip about our friends and what we saw on TV. It's nothing new. I realized this last night as I was watching Pride and Prejudice, one of my all-time favorite movies and a perfect example of silly women giggling trying to get men to marry them. We are silly.
Women do silly things. Yes some of us read funny chick lit, some of us enjoy shopping just as a hobby, some of us swoon at politicos (I'm convinced that's how Bill Clinton was elected in 1992), some of us find Target to be the only store in the world to shop, some of us don't miss episodes of Grey's Anatomy. So what? We're silly and it's who we are. We're even so silly as to find offense to an article--in the opinion section--about silliness.
The purpose of the article some might wonder? What's the purpose of many of the articles in the paper--to inform, persuade, to make you think, make you angry, make to you take action or just make you laugh. It was a silly story, some form of satire, that made me think, yes, we women are silly at time. It was silly of Hillary to cry to get votes. She's a woman and she can work that angle. Hell, I cried to get out of traffic ticket.
Thank God I am a woman who can raise children, keep a household, write a book, keep up with a blog, work if I wanted to, laugh with my girlfriends, read a good chicky novel, watch Oprah and still finish off the day with a great political discussion and a glass of wine. Women really do have it all.
We are the yin for the yang of the world. I don't believe women should be just like men (yang) because men, quite honestly, are boring sometimes and not nearly silly enough.
3.02.2008
The World Needs Us Silly Women
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2 comments:
I'm afraid that I will have to respectfully disagree with some of what you said, although I agree that women can be silly (just like men can). Where I disagree is what you define as silly. To me, women's obsession with Hollywood starlets and who's doing what with whom, especially around babies and relationships, reflects our very real interest in relationships, a strong female trait. When it comes to anything having to do with relationships even little girls' ears perk up. My daughter is only 3 and I can already see the relationship skills and interests developing in her. Unfortunately, as with many female strengths, our natural interest in relationships, no matter how it may "show up," is seen as "silly." We happen to live in a world where we can get our information about others' lives via TV, magazines, and Internet, so women's propensity for "staying involved" in relationships evolved to include these forums.
I could go on and on (ask anyone who knows me...) but I will just make one more point. The woman who fainted at the Obama rally may have been overheated and dehydrated being in the large crowd (I know I start to feel like I'm suffocating when I'm in a huge crowd), she may have been pregnant and fainted, she may have been starving from trying to stay thin, I mean, who really knows? But, like I said above, if a woman doesn't "act like a man" and has interests outside of the mainstream view of what's cool, she's seen as being silly.
And finally, it's perfectly okay to be silly now and then. It shows you're human. the problem with the opinion piece is when you try to lump ALL WOMEN into the silly category just because you happen to act silly now and then.
Well, that's my "silly" rant. :)
OK, I'm afraid I have to disagree too. I know the article was meant as satire to an extent. However, the current way to get press (like Linda Hirshman) seems to be to take a grain of truth (isn't that what a stereotype is?) and take it to extremes to try and make a point and piss people off.
I'm not silly. The women I know aren't silly. At least not any more so than the men I know. I know advanced math. I'm better at analysis than personal relationships or "homemaking." I care deeply about politics but it's the issues NOT the personalities that drive my decisions.
I love Jane Austen, but her writing really isn't about silly women. She's so enduring because she writes about PEOPLE and relationships and society in a witty and sarcastic manner. She makes fun of silly women, she doesn't glorify them.
I don't fit Ms. Allen's stereotypes and frankly, neither do most of the women I know. Ms. Allen seems awfully proud of being silly. Good for her, but I believe most women are made of more substance.
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