i am not a secretary. i'm not saying it's a bad thing. executive assistants, office managers, paralegals...they are what make offices work really. they are the ones who remember what needs to get done and keep things moving. they are usually under appreciated especially given how much they truly do and how much they seem to know about what's going on in an office. the component of my job that is this assistant part doesn't usually bother me. what i'm talking about it is when i feel like i'm being treated like a secretary. like a 1950s secretary. objectified because i'm not smart enough to do something real but have need enough or don't have a husband and thus need to get out of the house and find a real job. every time i draft an email for my boss, every time i am instructed to look something up that she could google herself, a small part of me dies. it gets under my skin and chips away a little bit more at something inside me. it makes me absolutely crazy. mostly because it is completely unappreciated. perhaps i overestimate her ability but i think that if you are working in an office in the 21st century, it's not an absurd expectation that you can work basic functions of computers. by that i mean, print your own documents, basic understanding of microsoft excel and word and how to work google. it's not rocket science. in fact, screw needing these skills to work in an office, i don't know how you can live in the 21st century world with smart phones and genius children without knowing how to do these basic tasks. unrelated tangent, there really is something that is annoying when i have to stop what i'm doing to google something for my boss. it's like she thinks it's magic that i can find anything on the internet. shakes my head. if it is the magic she treats it as, at the very least, she could act as though she is impressed by my magical abilities.
that's not really my point, it almost never is, is it? i've been thinking a lot about gender inequity lately and feel like i should write something about it. before i get started, allow me to say that i am a pretty terrible feminist. i am one, don't get me wrong, i'm just not the best at it. bras are expensive to burn and i'm not a man hater. anyway let's get on with it then.
there was a movie out recently called "Missrepresentation" that was on the OWN network. i didn't watch it because it disrupts my sensibilities to watch anything on that network. i wasn't into Oprah when she just had a show, i'm for sure not getting on board now that she bought a network. however, at least a dozen of my facebook friends posted the link to this trailer last week and finally curiosity got the best of me and i watched it. this movie talks about the way women are portrayed in the media and how that image still continues to foster the unequal footing that women stand on in this country and what are we going to do about it. the trailer sites that women make up 51% of the US population but only make up 17% of the US Congress. one of the women in the trailer also talks about how at age seven, girls and boys are equally as likely to say that they want to be the president of the united states. when asked again at age fifteen, there is a greater disparity along gender lines.
aside from this movie, i've been noticing an increased amount of things in the news about gender inequality. dave and i were sharing articles a couple weeks ago basically about the end of men. apparently now women are succeeding more, we are finishing college at a greater rate than men and this has, not surprisingly, caused some conflicting opinions. we read an article about the end of men and how awful it is, how basically men need to stop playing video games, get to work and get women back where they belong then another article that was basically yeah, women are taking over, we don't even need men.
so all of this has been floating around in my head and has made me fairly frustrated. is it horrible that the media consistently displays women in a light that holds us to a high level of scrutiny that is unrealistic? absolutely. but we are the ones who have decided to take that message seriously. we are the majority of the population. why is it that we let them dictate what we should think about ourselves? there will always be women that exist who are like barbie or snooki, vapid, foolish and will never amount to anything. but the majority of women will do something because of their intelligence. the majority of women aren't in the entertainment industry.
there is a tool greater than the media and it's hardly revolutionary. ready for it? it's human interaction. children, both genders, need role models. they need someone to look up to. when i was a little girl, my pediatrician was a woman. i had family friends that were women and engineers and lawyers. to me, setting my sites on any of those careers weren't ruled out because of my gender and i think that is what kids need to see. we should be encouraging little girls to think they can be members of congress or their state legislature or their county commission. we should tell little girls they can be governors, senators and presidents. we should tell them they can be doctors, lawyers and engineers. we should tell them they can be anything they work hard enough to be. because they can. on the other hand, we should be encouraging little boys to get into traditionally female dominated fields because why should we only send girls into an other wise man's world if we aren't going to let boys in? we should tell little boys they can be teachers or nurses and that by entering either field it's not emasculating or something like that. children need role models and people who believe in them. if that happens, the media loses its strangle hold on telling everyone else what's right and what's wrong.
of course, the media is going to keep telling us women aren't pretty enough, that we aren't smart enough, that we need to lose 10 pounds, get botox in our foreheads and replace our wardrobe every season. it's going to tell men that if you aren't the marbollo man then you aren't a real man, you need to butch up, watch football and drink beer or you aren't a real man. the media can be a dangerous monster but it's really up to us. let it just be noise, i say. i know that it's not that easy. it would be outstanding if it was. but if people wake up and start to consider they don't have to think about something just because that's the way society or the media says to think about it, things can really change. just putting it out there.
i could go on and on because yeah there is a lot to say but i'm done for today. time to get back to some work and this delicious tea that i made two hours ago that is now cold.
from the girl who wanted to be a figure skater at seven years old (and now works an office job).
until next time...
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