Girls Who Run the World

I find it fascinating that the role and experiences of working women have been such a part of the national conversation lately.  It has been hyped up by a few fancy-jobbed women writing books and making bold statements and a few research studies debating marrying younger vs. older.  Overall, if feels very Working Girl meets modern internet cynicism.  Clearly, Diane Keaton's work on this earth is not done (Come on - who wants a Working Girl/Baby Boom/Three Men and a Baby movie marathon?).

The latest contribution comes from Gabrielle Reece who gave one of the best definitions of submitting to her husband I've ever heard while on the Today Show this morning.  No, I don't have her quote here for you.  But basically, it was about how her choices to serve her husband and kids make her feel feminine and in return it makes her husband feel more like a man and it just makes them treat each other better - or something like that.  Basically, her focus was on humble service and she stressed that she was in a good, safe marriage and that she wasn't remotely promoting some of the negative stereotypes of submission.  And she finished by saying that no, she would not be reading any internet commentary on her statements - wisdom.

I found this fascinating for several reasons.  First of all, this woman is 6'3" and a professional athlete that could beat the snot out of most any male.  Trust me, we don't see a lot of tall women in media owning femininity or submission.  We see tall fashion models that are inexplicably a size 0 and often hollow eyed with a coke problem.  We also see female wrestlers (often with a steroid problem).  Oh, and we see WNBA lesbians.  We don't see many gorgeous, tall, ridiculously fit and simultaneously curvy working women in a pretty blouse and pencil skirt talking about lovingly serving her husband and kids and how that makes her feel like a woman.  Whether you agree with her or not, she's an otherwise missing voice.

It's also fascinating because it's more difficult to explain her thoughts away.  Society can explain away female CEOs as being too driven and cold and able to afford nannies. Society can discard the Duggar women as being undereducated, religious home-school fanatics.  But, what do you do with an educated world record holder/model/actress/media commentator/business person that isn't seeming to say any of this because of a recent religious conversion?

It will be interesting to what the next steps of this conversation look like.  It's never going away, though it will change as fewer women are having fewer children and fewer of these within a marriage,as our nation's poverty rates steadily rise, as our employment rates fluctuate, and as family and home structures vary.  There is one thing that women seem to agree on in these post-Gloria Steinem, post-Carrie Bradshaw years - you can't have it all.