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ARE YOU A SUPERWOMAN In the 1970's, as a confused reaction to women’s new demands for autonomy and freedom of choice, there arose a new cult: Having It All. Every woman was supposed to want Everything: meaning job AND family AND children. Con ferences, magazines and seminars were devoted to the topic of how to be a superwoman. For therapists, assertiveness gurus, and career counselors, a new clientele was born. The trick, women were told, was to find the right formuli for making efficient use of the crucial years (from 20 to 35), and not making the same mistake your mother had made. She had given up her own dreams for the family who sapped her energy, and only too late had discovered her own potential. Your life would be different. You would become established in a career first. Then after 10 years or so, when you were self-confident and accom plished, you would get married. After there was enough money for live-in help, you would have children just before the biolo gical clock struck midnight. That was the plan for Having It All. But how realistic is the cult of the superwoman who can have Everything? Not very, women are finding. "Everything” is still defined within the context of a culture where men invent the feminine ideal and where women's needs are subordinated to men's economic and social conveniences. Men are never expected to do the same juggling act as women. They still escape an equal responsibility for children, home, and keeping up a relationship. For women, Having It All means adding roles, instead of changing or enriching those we already struggle to fulfill. It means measuring your stature and seriousness by the "mas culine" embellishments you accrue — like career dedication or aggressiveness or making money. If having It All were really a new human definition, we would see men rounding out the structure of their occu pational success with the "feminine" embellishments — like nurturing children, loving, kindness and staying home. STEP 1. SELF-KNOWLEDGE, ASCERTAINING WHAT AND WHO WE ARE. We know that merited self-approval is essential to success for living. We have to be able to accept our selves and feel worthwhile if we are to function at all and much more so if we are to affect the opinions of others which is the essence of all public relations whether it be on a one-to-one basis or in terms of numbers. One of the greatest aids to success is the concept of averageness. If we can get it through our heads that we are essentially average people, we can spare ourselves a great deal of frustration and disillusionment. To the un tutored eye, one daisy is like any other daisy. There are individual differences to be sure but in the main they are very much alike. Daisies share a common nature, they have the same physical makeup and range of capa bilities. This also holds true in general of human beings. We are all in that respect average members of mankind. Keep in mind that in all the things that matter you and I are no better and no worse, no more and no less capable that any other person. What they can do, we can do in varying degrees. I cannot stress this point enough. This concept of averageness is the basic foun dation of self-confidence without which, we are com- But no. The juggling act is gender-specific, geared only toward women. It is meant to occupy and silence the New Woman, that colossal complainer with her trouble-making Movement. And the New Man isn’t standing in her way. Let's give her what she wants. Let her do it all. Why not? As long as there are no tremors beneath the status quo; as long as men don’t have to give up their political supremacy, good jobs, hot dinners, casual fatherhood, sexual services, and birthright power. When a woman decides to have it all, nothing changes, except the woman’s expectations, her standards for herself, and her demands upon her already depleted energy. But the burden is on her. And institutions are undisturbed. Women who have tried Having It All have found for the most part that it is simply impossible. Without equal parenting and more societal respon sibility for child care, without equal responsibilities and in creased flexibility in the workplace and at home, there is virtu ally no person who can do it. That is why feminists are working for political change. We are calling for options: we want the right to choose one or two of the balls without feeling guilt or failure if we decide not to juggle more. As it is, a woman with a family, a career and out side activism feels driven and compulsive and inadequate to the Everything she is supposed to be enjoying. The single success ful career woman, on the other hand, feels that she is a one-ball juggler in a world that expects a three-ball circus act. In spite of unfavorable circumstances, women continue to want Everything, because it is distinctly human to strive for the unknown and because personal growth lies in the direction where we have never been. The solution is not to stop wanting, or to stop seeking a solution, but to refuse to substitute one generation’s imperatives with another’s — to invent our own individual ideal of The Full Life, and our own means of getting there. But first we need to ask ourselves some questions. Why do we need Everything? And are we asking change of anyone other than ourselves — like the men we live with and the insti- pletely impotent in the field of public relations. Unfor tunately, we sell ourselves short believing that we are not much good at anything. The battle o*f self-con fidence versus self-doubt is a very real one. The victory lies in learning to accept ourselves. Stop doubting your self. Accept the fact that you are better at something than others— that your judgment is as good as most people’s since it isn’t what you think, it isn’t what you feel, it's what you do that counts. At this point, we must give some attention to one of the paradoxes of the human personality. I have been emphasizing the points that you and I are exactly alike. But the truth is that at the same time, each of us is unique — a human being but not just any human being. In the history of mankind, there never has been nor will ever be, another person exactly like you. A word of warning: in determining who and what you are, defining your thoughts and feelings, never forget that our most common mistake is to believe our feelings and to act on them as reasoned judgments. Feelings are not facts. Just because you feel a thing is so, doesn’t make it so. Our emotions frequently run rampant. One cannot reason with feelings. They must be commanded and controlled — don't waste time arguing with them. Control them.
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