Fussbucket

by Stacey

Before I begin let me say sorry for the lapse in posts last week. Life has gotten hectic since I decided to go back to work. I’ve completely lost my routine in which I put my younger son Sascha down for a nap and happily sit down at the computer to ponder the latest in parenting. Instead, I’m running around trying to get every last thing done that I can think of while also enjoying my last days of freedom. Hopefully I’ll find a new groove very soon.

Anyhoo. This Sunday’s NY Times Magazine ran an interesting essay about the difficult lessons for mothers with daughters of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The writer, Peggy Orenstein ( author of the memoir “Waiting for Daisy”) has a four-year old daughter who when she was two, claimed she wanted to be a fireman. Her mother couldn’t have been more proud.

Staring down the sightline of my daughter’s index finger, [pointing to a bumper sticker with Clinton’s face on it] I wondered what to tell her — not only at this moment, but in years to come — about Hillary and about herself. Will the senator be my example of how far we’ve come as women or how far we have to go? Is she proof to my daughter that “you can do anything” or of the hell that will rain down on you if you try? Voting against Clinton does not make a person sexist — there are other reasons to reject her. But contemplating the “Life’s a Bitch, Don’t Vote for One” T-shirts, the stainless-steel-thighed Hillary nutcrackers, the comparison to the bunny-boiling Alex Forrest of “Fatal Attraction,” I struggle over how, when — even whether — to talk to girls truthfully about women and power.

As proud as we may have been (yes, I am speaking in the past tense) to contemplate a woman becoming president of the United States, the truth Orenstein says, is that we still have a long way to go. Among the Fortune 500 companies there are only 12 women at the helm. And while close to 50 percent of the nation’s lawyers are female, only 18 percent of those women are partners at major firms.

Right now, my daughter doesn’t know about the obstacles she may face someday, and I’m not sure of the wisdom of girding her in advance. Even the supposedly “girl positive” picture books, designed to address this very issue, pose a dilemma. Take “Elenita,” a magical-realist tale, given to my daughter by a family friend, about a girl who wants to be a glass blower. Her father says she can’t do it: she’s too little, and besides, the trade is forbidden to women. The lesson, naturally, is that with a little ingenuity girls can be glass blowers or stevedores or [fill in the blank]. Nice. Still, I found myself hesitating over the “girls can’t” section. My daughter has never heard that “girls can’t be” or “girls can’t do.” Why should I plant the idea in her head only to knock it down?

Orenstein says the same is true for older girls who excel at sports and are comfortable being leaders in their schools.

We have assured them the world is theirs, and they have no reason to disbelieve us. Like Clinton, our daughters are no victims. And yet, all is not quite well. Not when achieving C.E.O., M.D. or Ph.D. status can still come appended with a second alphabet of b- and c-words. Not when a woman who runs for office is accused of harboring a “testicle lockbox.” Clinton, whatever else she may be, has become a reflection, a freeze frame of the complications and contradictions of female success. Her bid for the White House has embodied both the possibilities we never imagined for our daughters — shattering not just the glass ceiling but the glass stratosphere — and the vitriol that attaining them can provoke. Both are real; so Godspeed, girls.

It has been difficult for me to see the misogyny directed at Clinton and not feel like I should support her. I do like Obama and I think he’ll be a great candidate for the Democratic party. But as the Clinton campaigns fades from view, my guess is the freeze frame that Orenstein speaks of will become more blurry and we will lose the opportunity we might have had to confront the biases against women that very much exist in our culture today.

One final thought on this, I do like the guy and he’s worlds better than McCain in my book, but Obama’s “Hold on one second there, sweetie,” comment to a CNN reporter last week, isn’t comforting. He did apologize later to the reporter, but still. Grrrr…