What does it mean to be a woman in the 21st century?  

Be assertive, yet feminine.  Be bold, yet obsequious. Climb the ladder of success – albeit unobtrusively.  Then you can be as dictatorial and crazy as Caligula.

Here’s what you are expected to do.

Work full-time, preferably at a job that is traditionally male. If you don’t make partner at your law firm, or get the promotion at Edward Jones, you’re not working hard enough.  Sacrifice your weekends!  Drop out of your yoga class! YOU ARE YOUR WORK. 

In the 20th century, and now the 21st century, women have striven to make the Hall of Mirrors (not the Hall of Fame).  Be anorexic! Have breast implants!  Hollow cheek bones, no butt – this look doesn’t come for free.  After a hard day of doing neurosurgery, work out for two hours and, please, eat nothing. You may faint at work, but you’ll look good. N.B. You can also, theoretically, be overweight, because body-shaming is now frowned upon. And don’t let them tell you thinness is a matter of health: it’s not. It’s a matter of how they want you to look.

Pursue the American dream.  You have the right to buy a big house in the ex-urbs, with a three-car garage.  And you should give birth to 2.5 perfect children. What? You can’t afford it? Nobody told you it was just a dream? Radicalize yourself.  Sit down with some classics of the ’60s:  The Whole Earth Catalogue, Fred Herbert’s Dune, Our Bodies Ourselves, The Population Bomb, Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Alix Kate Shulman’s feminist novel, Burning Questions. 

It’s not a women’s world. The U.S. has never had a woman president. In 2016, I argued with an Australian who said, “America has the worst political system in the world.” He slammed Obama “for doing nothing,” so I explained the political system, how much Obama had accomplished in his first term, and why he was blocked in his second. And I swore that Hillary Clinton would win the election. In that case, I was not psychic.

Here’s what we’ve learned:  female politicians need to embrace their last names for the sake of dignity.  Kamala had the disadvantage of being a Black woman running for president at the last possible minute. (The Democrats should have made the decision much earlier.) Here’s a thought: perhaps Kamala and Hillary would have won if they’d used first and last names on their signs: Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton. Much more dignified. (But I think Clinton did win the popular vote.)

The truth is: my mom was devastated that there wasn’t a woman president in her lifetime. She idolized Hillary Clinton, and gave me a copy of her autobiography because she thought it was “important.” Mom was political, and in her eighties went to a Hillary Clinton rally.

I’m more vested in community now. You know, community gardens and all that. But it is not all flowers in the city government, either. I seem to have voted for the wrong person…

But I suppose we must continue to vote.