Don't Think Like an Elephant

Recently I was at the SeeJaneDo conference where I heard this story. I was so moved by it that I immediately had to include it in my forthcoming book about women's relationship with power--No Excuses, to be published in October--despite having already having turned in what were supposed to be the last changes.

It’s said that when a baby elephant is being trained, she is tied to a post almost immediately after birth. During the first few weeks of life, she attempts to break free of her restraints, but she’s not strong enough. So she comes to believe she can’t get away from what is holding her back even after she has grown large and plenty powerful to uproot the post entirely. As a consequence, even as an adult, she remains tied to the post due to an internally motivated behavior that is no longer rooted in external reality.

Wow, that just perfectly describes so many of the women in my generation, including myself. If women want to embrace our power we must reject baby elephant thinking and throw off the shackles of learned behavior that no longer serves us. And when older women talk with younger ones, they might have no reference point for the barriers we older ones are all too familiar with. No wonder there can be strains on communication across generations!

One of the most heartening differences I have found among the generations is that the younger women are, the less likely they are to hold such false restraints in their minds. But the older women are, the more likely they are to have a sense of engagement with the women's movement that has fought for the very advances that created the amazing possibilities women today have to do or be whatever they choose. Without a movement, it is easy to start going backward. History is replete with advances that turned into retreats because people didn't know how they got there.

All of this is why I feel the conversation engendered by WomenGirlsLadies is so important, and I invite you to participate in it here on our blog or in person if we are so fortunate as to be invited to your university or organization.

Bea Arthur: How One Powered Women Spoke Up

[Note: I'm sharing this article I wrote about Bea Arthur's passing here because the character she played on "Maude" was such a classic depiction of the generation of feminists during the 1970's. Of course, those sophisticated women like Maude in New York were way ahead of me and my peers out in West Texas. Still, the fundamental human stories have always been the same across time and generations. You can see additional video and photos here.]

4/25/09 Actress Bea Arthur died today at age 86.

She was a Tony-winning stage actress when Norman Lear saw her and tapped her for a guest role in his famous "All in the Family" series, where she played Edith Bunker's mouthy liberal cousin Maude who was always at odds with Edith's conservative husband Archie. "Maude" soon became a sitcom of its own, and Arthur's character continued taking on the significant social and political issues of the day--speaking up about all those subjects we were warned against bringing up in polite company, from sex and infidelity to politics and activism to death and depression.

It was the mid-1970's at the height of second wave feminism, and if ever there were proof that feminists have a sense of humor, it was in Maude's way of playing even the most serious of subjects for laughs.

In this classic exchange between Maude her husband Walter, who arrives home to find Maude distraught, the show dealt with abortion--a first on a major sitcom to do so forthrightly.


Walter: Maude, did you wreck the car again?

Maude: Did you hear that, everybody? DID YOU HEAR THAT? Not "Maude, are you sick?" Or "Maude, are you unhappy?" Or even, "Maude, are you pregnant?" No, "Maude, did you wreck the car again?"

Walter: You're right, darling. You're absolutely right. I'm sorry. So tell me, are you sick?

Maude: No.

Walter: Are you unhappy?

Maude: No.

Walter: Are you pregnant?

Maude: Yes.

They go through all aspects of the decision process. Maude, already a grandmother in her late 40's, decides she should not go through with the pregnancy and has an abortion. Watch the video to see how her daughter speaks of abortion as it should be.

It was a little slice of realism rarely seen today, when the option of abortion is so often pushed again into the virtual back room and rarely mentioned in pop culture; the movie "Knocked Up", for example, uses the euphemism "rhymes with smashmortion" rather than mention this--the most common women's surgical procedure--by name. And soap operas are famous for those well-timed miscarriages that avoid the sticky subject of real women making reproductive choices, while leaving the full drama of mistimed pregnancies available to their script lines.

After "Maude", Arthur had a chance to open up for public discussion yet one more previously off-limits topic: aging, especially the issues women face aging in a youth-oriented culture. She played Dorothy on "The Golden Girls," the NBC comedy hit that ran from 1985-92. The show explored the lives of three older women sharing a household in Miami with Dorothy's widowed mother, Sophia (played by Estelle Getty). Besides Arthur's character, there was Betty White playing the ditsy Rose and Rue McClanahan as the sexy senior, Blanche.

Arthur won Emmys for both "Maude" and "Golden Girls". She was inducted into Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 2008, an honor well-deserved for her lifetime of extraordinary work.

But personally, I am most grateful to Bea Arthur, (and of course to Norman Lear and everyone associated with "Maude") for bringing the reality of unintended pregnancy and abortion out of the back room and into the real human story where it belongs. May she rest in peace and her memory be a blessing to us all.



http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/powered-women

Language Arts

I'm excited and delighted to be part of this panel.

In case anyone is wondering where we got our name, it was inspired by the line from the Country and Western song by Ed Bruce (who also wrote such other classics as "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies to Grow up to Be Cowboys") that goes like this, "There's girls, and there's women and there's ladies. There's yeses, there's no's and there's maybes." It makes me laugh every time I hear it. Here's the whole song; it's a good example of the C and W storytelling that endears itself to my Texas-born heart in spite of my feminist soul:

There was only me and her and him
The bar was giving last call so I thought I'd move on in
And I was slick and feeling like a man so I took the stool between 'em
And ordered one more round for me and her and him
I placed my arms across the back of her barstool
And I don't remember what I said but at the time it sounded cool
She pushed her drink away and never looked at me
She just paid her tab tipped the man and left me sittin' there alone with him
And he said there's girls and there's women and there's ladies
There's yes'es and there's no's and there's maybe's
There's teasin' and pleasin' they start learnin' when they're babies
There's girls and there's women and there's ladies
Well he pushed his old straw hat back and he grinned
And he said ain't they all a mystery ha ha sonny it's a sin
They're all sittin' on the world they're tryin' to win
Ah but you know I love a mystery
So let's drink another round to you and me and them
He said there's girls...There's girls and there's women...He said there's girls...

Language usage is one of the most important elements of any conversation about women in the world today. When Hillary Clinton recently said about herself, "I'm your girl", she stirred up a little dust. I tend to think we women have simply matured past the need to rail against the word once we had made it our own little joke and/or sign of mutual affection. We took its power back from men who in the past used it as a way to demean and infantilize us. I don't know whether Hillary's use of "girl" was contrived, but it strikes me as a bit of self-deprecating humor of the sort that candidates need to use from time to time to show they are human.

What do others think?