While a Supreme Court Justice can’t define “what” a woman is, our country can’t seem to figure out “who” a woman should be, and this dizzying pendulum swing of mixed messages always seems to land on the outermost edge of the extremes — telling our daughters they have to exist in the margins.
We’ve swung so far from June Cleaver, the original trad wife of the 1950s and 60s, to unhinged pink genitalia hat-wearing feminists marching for women’s “rights” just a few years ago.
Today, we’re forced to endure the cringy, cosplay, trad wife 2.0 charade. Think June Cleaver gets an “update” and she’s trending on social media — with likes, clicks and sourdough starters.
Pile on an outspoken younger generation of well-meaning, pro-family conservative men — with a few women thrown in — overly eager to course correct the feminist rot that’s plagued our country over the last several decades. However well-intentioned their efforts, in their haste they have severely overshot the target.
Their feminine decree goes something like this: Get married young, have as many babies as you can while you’re at peak fertility and thou shalt not work outside the home. Some going so far as to use broad brush assumptions to paint all working women as power hungry, glass ceiling chasers.
The problem is things are rarely so black and white. Just as men and women are uniquely created, as individuals women are also uniquely created with our own strengths, abilities and life circumstances. We are not carbon copies of each other and, as such, we don’t all fit in the same neat little box.
That woman who’s 32 might be single because she chose not to marry the wrong guy at 22. That married woman without kids outwardly fixated on her career — she may have fertility struggles she never talks about. That working mom leaving her babies every morning — maybe she wants to be home with her kids, if only bill collectors took Monopoly money.
We need to think twice before speaking into someone else’s life we know nothing about when we haven’t earned that right.
Before I get branded as “team feminist,” the pink genitalia hat wearing, hands-off-my-uterus chanting, “oppressed” man haters are most definitely not my people.
I’ve been married for more than two decades, and I willingly chose to stay at home with my kids. Marriage is good, children are a blessing — five stars and two thumbs up on both counts.
I chose this course even though I was already on a successful professional career track. But it was my decision.
This message of choosing marriage early — with no regard for the importance of also choosing wisely — is dangerous. I’ve witnessed it play itself out, and it’s led to some very unhealthy and heartbreaking outcomes.
While I may be a cheerleader for marriage and children, I would never tell my daughters to get married young and end the sentence without a disclaimer. It is far more important to me they make the right choice at the right time than the wrong choice on someone else’s made up timeline.
Settling for less works fine when you’re picking a movie or a restaurant — not so much when you’re choosing a life partner.
There has got to be a better message for our daughters.
And no, telling them they’re astronauts if they put on a sexy flight suit like the all-female, all-famous, Blue Origin crew and get beamed into space for less time than it takes me to find where I left my coffee isn’t the message either.
Apparently that’s what we’re calling one giant leap for womankind? Maybe not. Also, my coffee was most likely in the microwave — and cold again.
This ping-pong pendulum of confusion has left both sides overplaying their cards — and desperately in need of a bigger deck.
On International Women’s Day in 2019, Melinda Gates said, “…When women and girls are equal, everyone is greater.”
Let me interrupt this quote for a disclaimer. This is likely the first and last time I ever quote a feminist on gender equality. And I do so only to make a point.
“Equal” may be how it started, but that’s certainly not how it’s going.
Early feminism sought to put women on a level playing field with things like the right to vote. However, over the years, like with so many other groups, we’ve seen it weaponized and spiral from equal opportunities to extra opportunities.
One recent fight in Congress, wasting taxpayer time, money and oxygen is from women who want to vote by proxy because they’re moms — and life is hard.
Spearheaded by Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen (D-CO) who threw out phrases like “anti-family” and “anti-women,” if you dare disagree with her.
She just might be believable if she hadn’t voted against giving life-saving treatment to babies born alive after botched abortions. Or, if she had used even one camera to say anything about protecting girls’ and women’s sports or the senseless murder of Laken Riley.
Nobody wants to hear a member of Congress whine about her plight, while getting taxpayer subsidized daycare (you’re welcome) and making $174K a year. Meanwhile, the median household income in Colorado as of 2023 was just over $92,000.
Make no mistake, this fight is about being special. If you want equal you show up for work or quit and leave the whining to the newborn. You don’t take a job and then renegotiate the job because it’s inconvenient.
Women are special to the extent that they are unique individuals. We need to flip the script on the narrative that they have to exist in the extremes and stop indulging the lie that they’re entitled to special privileges and can have it all on their terms.
We must also strongly reject benchmarks that measure “who” a woman is supposed to be, as dictated by some man-made standard.
Life doesn’t always happen in the margins. We need to make sure that’s the message our daughters are hearing.
Lauren DeBellis Appell, a former lobbyist and communications aide on Capitol Hill, is a writer based in Fairfax, Virginia. Follow her on X/Twitter: @LDAppell.
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