My wife Carol gets a lot of clothing catalogs in the mail. One of them is title nine. The company is undoubtedly named after the legislation that gave girls and women parity in competitive sports programs with boys and men.
Title nine’s Web site seems to be missing the captions for the pictures of the women that are in the print catalog. Carol thinks the captions are very amusing, and she wonders how many of title nine’s prospective customers match this profile of athletic, professional super mom?
So let’s meet the self-actualized ladies of the title nine catalog! I bet that together these women have less body fat than a can of tuna.
Emma! Bear! Heidi! Isabel! Erin B! Erin not B! Penny!
There’s a woman named … Bear?? I saved Penny for last. She’s a PhD student with 13(!) siblings.
I share that fear of intimidation, by these SUPERwomen who seem to have caught the brass ring iin life, while the rest of us may reach for it, but just end up sitting on the ponies for the normal merry-go-round ride…
However, there is a saying which gives me comfort: “For everything you gain, you give something else up.” I think it is very wise. NOBODY can have it all, be it all, with excellence in life. To suggest otherwise is magazine hype designed to help sell publications, or clothes. (Subliminal message: “Hey! Buy these clothes, and maybe you can be a SUPERwoman too!!”)
A great career woman might be a neglectfull mother who cons herself that very limited “quality time” makes up for simply BEING there for the mundane, everyday support and security a kid needs. Or, she’s so consumed by her career, that she doesn’t even realize that her husband has taken a lover. I’m sure you can think up many more examples, touching on topics such as care of the home, personal financial planning, routine doctor check-ups, etc. that could be chronically overlooked.
I’m not down on women’s liberation at all, and I don’t think a woman’s role in life should automatically be assigned to being a wife, mother, dutiful daughter and daughter-in-law, and nothing else. I’m just saying that if women aim for excellence in ALL aspects of life, we’re doomed to disappointment. Aiming somewhere down the middle is a more reasonable, sane goal.
Also, look at it this way: do you think MEN try to have the best jobs with the most prestige at the highest salaries, while also being the best husbands, the best fathers, the best financial planners, the best handymen, the most wonderful lovers of their wives, have perfectly physically fit bodies, etc.?
I don’t think most healthy, mentally balanced men lay such a heavy burden on themselves. That’s setting the bar too high, they know it, and they don’t feel so guilty about not being excellent in every aspect of their lives.
One more thing, the one whose name I can’t read: “Childcare the way it SHOULD be.” EFF YOU, *****! Just who the HELL do you think YOU are? Forget Liz, I hate them all!!!
I can hear LIz (our SISTER Liz Gamber, in Sun City West, AZ) screaming: “I HATE THEM ALL!” and then throwing her head back and doing that great laugh of hers! And Boss (that’s one of my other sisters, Marianne, who lives near Doug), do these uber-chicks remind you of someone? Think “Thynne Sneery Hate-Her.” Doug, that was a nickname Marianne, our friend Sue, and I gave to the evil size micro-zero supermom fitness consultant to the starz on Sue’s monthly publication “Mom-to-Mom Connection.” I used to publish a lot of sartirical articles in there, but didn’t dare on LYNNE, who had a monthly article that usually said something annoying like “Yes, you TOO can breastfeed while teaching Pilates!” I exaggerate, of course, but not by much! The sad part? I can’t even remember her REAL name, past the Lynne part!