Diary of a natural-born feminist
Why I Keep on Following My Not Really Blogworthy Dreams
And why Barbie made me a Grinch mum
Dear ladies and others,
When I was little I dreamt of a life as an independent woman. A woman that would have it all. But why did I start to believe that “women could have it all”?
For me, it all started with Barbie.
As a child, I played with my dolls every day. They had a nice townhouse, a cabriolet, nice clothes, a top job, and experienced love stories or other great adventures. They went to parties, to the office, met their girlfriends for a coffee, acted like rock stars, or had dinner with their family. I had one Ken and he was married to all the ladies. Children didn’t necessarily play an important role as I found Skipper kind of uncool. One Barbie was a particular favorite of mine. She wore a versatile outfit, a pink leather costume for business occasions, that could be transformed into a fluffy skirt with a glitter body for the cocktail party after work. I saw this Barbie in a Barbie magazine accompanied by a story entitled “After work the party begins …” I wanted to have exactly that kind of life as an adult. Oh yeah. This sounded so promising and sparked my desire to get it all. So I never really said “No” and my universe got bigger and bigger. Now I have a career and a family and constantly fail in balancing the two of them. I wanted it all and got too much to handle. I’m an independent woman and for sure a feminist — but isn’t it funny that Barbie dolls that are majorly perceived as anti-feminist got me into this “trouble”?
When you grow up you quickly realize that building your “Barbie world” is not as easy. You need to find your Ken, you need to earn money to buy a great house, you need to actually give birth to kids and while changing diapers you should build your career. You get old and suddenly you also feel old because you experience changes in society and need to cope with that. The road is long and full of compromises for today’s woman who can “have it all” in theory. Even if as a kid you wanted it all you will encounter obstacles that will hold you back or will change your mind. Whether it is the husband who needs special attention or the kids or climbing the career ladder is too exhausting.
So, thank you, Barbie, for inspiring me to reach out for an almost unreachable lifestyle.
I decided to check with some friends what influenced them and what role models they had and have.
Barbara, mother of 2 and just now a desperate housewife, was sitting in front of her washing machine when I reached her on the phone.
“I’m hiding. I needed a break …. Well, I used to read mum blogs but could not really identify. Either they show you how to decorate the kid’s sandwiches — which intimidates me as I already feel proud if I can offer them almost fresh bread — or they belong to the ‘bad mum’s club’ and joke about what they did wrong when I do not even see what they did wrong …. It gets on my nerves that mothers constantly pat each other on the shoulders how great they are and that anyone without kids would have no clue. It seems that being a mother constitutes that you cannot be or have anything else. And if you have e.g. a job in parallel you still have to fulfill certain standards as a mother. But I’m far from being perfect and I simply do not want to put my kids first all the time.”
Barbara remembered her last baking session before Christmas when she tried to make chocolate truffles. She was stressed out from her job and her 2 little daughters were excitingly waiting for her to finish the truffles. The chocolate was too soft and she could not form it. She burst out in tears and was constantly yelling at her kids while trying to form the damn truffles. One even landed on the ceiling. She kept shouting that the kids should never ask for “that crap” again. Even though she proposed that, not them. The kids were shocked watching the little nervous breakdown of their mother and she knew that this would remain in their memories as a nightmare Christmas episode. Feeling amazingly guilty she started “Grinch” for them on the TV. If she was lucky they would see her as a kind of Grinch mother … (a trick that I found quite useful given that I also had my regular break-downs in front of my kids.)
“When I served my kids the truffles they just said to each other, “Swallow that crap!” Barbara says. “What blog tells you these episodes?”
I called Carmen, the niece of my best friend. She works in a consulting company and just moved together with her long-time boyfriend.
“I loved to read women’s lifestyle blogs. I got useful tips from those websites but found it annoying that the bloggers were always too good to be true. Beautiful, vegan, thin, and with glossy skin. They meditated, spent the day on the beach (with their kids), cooked, made a face mask. Even without kids I would not have time for all of that. When are they removing the litter and doing the laundry? And do they every wear old socks? So I quit following these bloggers thinking “Get a (real) life!”
Yes, real life is sometimes boring and tough but it is also funny when you look at how things come together in reality.
So why not talk more about the real stuff in life without a filter but with a smile on our face? I want all women to believe that they can have it all. But we should have a more honest exchange to better prepare ourselves for all kinds of experiences — good and bad.
Because in the end, it is better to live your dream — even if it is not blogworthy — than to follow the dream of others. And if reality hits too hard you can still have your little moments of self-denial …
I remember that in my Barbie world when I was little everything was perfect except for one thing. My Barbie had a lovely pink scale in her bathroom in her townhouse. Whenever Barbie stepped on it the scale always showed 110 pounds. That irritated me already back then and I buried the scale in a drawer full of Lego.
XXX, Venus Rebel
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