I am finally on a path I likely should have followed a long time ago. The reasons for my diversions are complex. I talked myself out of pursuing a degree in a field where I might have a career. I have this internal monologue loop that stems from a slew of youthful experiences and mixed messages in my upbringing.
After researching for two years to determine a "path" for my career, which I desperately want and need, I realize why I continue to find particular paths "impossible." They are impossible partly because they are not the path I want. I feel like I might have wasted time in a certain way and yet I also know the experiences I've had, especially in higher education, have changed me for the better. My worldview has been altered and I can see the past, present and look toward the future with new eyes (See Mills and his "Sociological Imagination" for what I'm talking about here). As a result, I knew I needed to go back for another degree. Because of all it took for my husband and I to get me through my bachelor's and first master's degree, I was afraid of my husband's reaction. He is incredibly supportive and wants only for my happiness. Of course, he supports any endeavor I want to pursue. He just wants it to work for me.
So, I'm taking an elective course because you can take an elective before being accepted into the program formally. After signing up for the course, getting passionate about career possibilities and my future being exactly what I want, I had a little bit of a hiccup. I let the mean girls from my childhood and Archie Bunker speak. He must have held the door to let them in and then followed behind. Archie Bunker is the amalgamation of my grandmother and my parents unspoken and subtle sexism.
First, the mean girls tried to tell me I'm not really good enough. Even if I succeed, it's not real. This stems from when I was in junior high and my mom let me enter a local modeling contest. I had had a tough time at school from when we moved from a city to small town. When I entered this contest, I was feeling pretty down about myself. I was not a cheerleader with a blonde pony tail. I've never actually wanted to be blonde (Snow White was my girl over Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Ariel over Cinderella) and I really liked short hair. When you're a kid, what you really want is friends and to be treated well. I was a social pariah in that school system. So, as "typical" as a modeling contest might seem, my mother thought it might boost my self-esteem to participate. The prizes included finishing school classes (imagine!) that were aimed mostly toward building self-confidence and helping young women present themselves professionally, and (of course) fashionably. Another prize was a professional photo shoot, which my mother thought would help me see my beauty even when ugliness was thrown at me verbally and physically at school.
I entered the contest and on the day of it, I examined the other contestants with a keen eye. I picked the girl who I knew would win and then tried to see if I might be able to get second place. No, that wouldn't happen. This other girl I saw there was definitely going to take that spot. I continued to look at my fellow contestants to see how (if) I measured up. I thought I possibly had a shot at third place. I knew I was enthusiastic and carried myself well as I'd been told that my entire life. I let the self-confidence I was raised with shine through versus putting up the protective shield I wore to school every day. I "acted" on the runway for each clothing change I needed to make to show my versatility.
The contest ended and third place was announced. I was not called. I was a little heartbroken. Of course, there was still a chance for second place, right? Just seconds later, my hopes were dashed as the girl who I picked for second place took that trophy. I clapped and held back tears of disappointment. Why couldn't I have gotten third place instead of that other girl? I waited for them to announce the absolutely beautiful girl as the winner, the one with the Breck shampoo of the seventies hair and more womanly body. Then, they called my name. I sat there a minute, unable to believe my ears, waiting for someone else to stand and walk toward the stage so that I knew I just heard wrong and didn't embarrass myself any further. I finally stood and the tears came, just like in the Miss America pageant. It was silly, but I was also in shock. I was proud of myself, and considering the beating I took most days of school, I wasn't sure I believed that a group of judges had seen the happy, smart, caring, motivated, hardworking, girl I was in my gangly adolescent body with my short hair.
I went to school that Monday with my sash and tiara in a white cardboard box to protect it. I didn't necessarily care about showing my classmates. I wanted to show my favorite teacher. I figured she'd appreciate my accomplishment. My teacher's reaction was not quite what I expected. She was mildly interested and did not praise me in the way I had hoped. Of course, the other kids found out about it and (of course) they claimed things like "the judges must have been on drugs," or "the judges were obviously blind." Even if I won a beauty pageant, I was still not beautiful. I wasn't even acceptable in appearance, never mind possibly even just pretty. As a kid, you don't really quite get the absurdity of it all. No matter how many times my mother told me I was beautiful, capable, kind, smart, mature, caring, etc., none of it mattered when five days a week for six hours a day I was told I was anything but any of these things. Sure, I was always the "better" person and never retaliated angrily in words or action. However, inside, it hurt terribly.
So, when I "do well" in life, I still sometimes hear those awful girls telling me that it doesn't matter what I "win," I'm still nothing. Like last night, when I was over-tired and should have just gone to bed, I let them speak and say those things to me. In the light...well, gray rain...of this morning, they're all back in junior high where they belong. However, it's those little moments when they can come raging back.
Archie Bunker is bit more insidious than the mean girls. He's kind of an unspoken threat, like in a movie about the mafia when a witness is on the stand in court and just the presence of a person in the court room causes him or her to change his or her testimony. Partly, this is because Archie is the voice of family, which is the foundation of who we are. Archie Bunker, is, of course, sexist. He wants "Edith to bring him a beer," which she can't do if she's off in graduate school, or working and teaching. The reason my Archie is "worse" than the real one is because he's that mafia figure in the court room. He doesn't actually "say" anything, just conveys it in sentences that seem complete and stop, yet have unspoken clauses at the end. Archie was the hidden or subliminal messages conveyed to me. I grew up with 70s second wave rhetoric about being "anything I wanted to be" and with Helen Ready on vinyl and Our Bodies, Ourselves on the coffee table. However, I also grew up with a father who once put dishes in the bathtub when my mother was away on a business trip because while he did feed us, he was not doing the dishes for her. Of course, upon her return, she realized this also meant we hadn't had a bath in a couple of days since we couldn't bathe in the tub with the dishes. She was supposed to be home, not traveling for work. Her work was only to be inside the home. I saw them fight and her leave a radiology program that might have saved their financial fate because he wouldn't help out so she could study. Still, today, at sixty-four, my mother makes my father's lunch at night while he watches television. I was told I could "be anything" but also witnessed and heard in other conversations what the rest of that sentence was, which is "wife and mother are the most valuable things you can be."
As a result of this kind of upbringing, while I had all these ambitions, none of them could be realized until I was ensconced as someone's wife and then mother to his children. I was not a real woman unless I was a wife and mother. Until those things were in place, nothing else mattered. Yes, trying to become something or to pursue a career while being married with young children is incredibly difficult. You fall into that trap of "just wait" until the kids do "whatever." Wait until they're in school, in high school, in college, oh, heck, just wait until they're grown. In the meantime, as a child of the seventies and witness to the eighties and nineties, you see women choose sixty hours of daycare to have careers and ask, "Why did you even have a child?" You see women leave careers to stay home, but also lucrative careers that can be done part-time or on a consultant basis and become envious that they had the support to attend college first and to establish careers first so that they had these options available to them. So that you're not "out" of the workforce entirely, you volunteer for non-profits, the PTO, you run small businesses, attempt direct selling (in all kinds of product categories) and take part-time paraprofessional type jobs like paralegal or pharmacy technician. You attend nurse's aid training. You finish your college degree. Despite your grandmother telling you that your husband will leave you if you aren't the one cooking dinner and caring for the kids instead of working and going to school, you hold down two jobs and graduate with an M.A. and a 4.0 GPA.
So, as I finally let my inner voice, the real-me-voice, speak and say, "Damn it, go for it!" about my further education and career, I find in tired moments that Archie and the Mean Girls (good band name?) can still squeeze in the door and attempt to wreak havoc with me. Maybe looking at "them" as a band will be helpful. He'll be the lead singer, with his whiny voice and penchant for beer served by a woman, and they're just back up to the drone of unmelodious songs with tired lyrics. I can choose to change the radio station, to walk out of the club and just not listen.
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