The Career of Being... Woman

Funny business a woman’s career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster, you forget you’ll need the again when you get back to being a woman… That’s one career all females have in common whether we like it or not – Being a woman. Sooner or later we got to work at it no matter how many other careers we had or wanted. (Bette Davis as Margot Channing – All About Eve)

From the moment we first learn how to walk, talk and think, little girls are groomed to be…Woman. We put on our frilly little dresses, wearing our mother’s makeup and pearls; have tea parties with our friends and stuffed animals pretending to be grown women. Then when we actually reach adulthood, reality sets in that those tea parties among other things were just a figment of our imaginations. So in response we shed our conditioned identity shucking all the etiquette of prim and properness for equality: Equal Work, Equal Pay, Equal Opportunity, Equal Law.

We step to the occupational ladder climbing the rung of “healthy competition” one sometimes two steps at a time. Due to the time consuming challenges which cultivate the art of woman, we toss those tools of winks, wiggles, passiveness, corsets and sometimes exotic hair and makeup for the external work environment. We decide it is beneficial to put aside those character traits, often viewed as character flaws in order to enter the jungles of survival of the fittest. When we do climb the ladder of success and reach the top we are called out our names (you know the one I am referring to for rap artists have made it a woman’s tag) the female counterpart of man who is referred to as a dog. Once we reached the top loneliness sets in and we discover it is no longer fun.

Then after hours, days, months and years of self-discovery we understand that the race to the top was really not a competition against man. After all he is not any smarter, better or more equipped then woman What we actually find out is the man is running an entirely different race that does not even include woman. So we wonder, at the top, do we climb down and return to the fields among the commoners and engage in the art of war between the sexes once more or do we remain in the shadow of “equality.”

Perhaps oftentimes woman is afraid to return because of those “things you drop on your way up the ladder” not knowing if those tools still exist within. I say no matter what a woman is indeed, always Woman. No matter how much she tries, she will walk, talk, think, act, look...Woman and that is a career that no one can ever decide nor take.

Peace, Love, Bliss

Angelah