CHAPTER 1
Mile Marker One: Remember Who We Are
The foundation chapter for the book explains pressures on women to "forget" whowe are and suggests strategies for remembering the infinite possibilities opento us.
Mile Marker One: Remember Who We Are
All my life I've wanted to be somebody. But I see now I should have been morespecific.
—Jane Wagner, Lily Tomlin's collaborator
It's a challenge to create fully realized lives without road maps. What womenhave taken the road to power before us and how did they do it? We hardly know,since the few markers they left have been demolished or overtaken with weeds.During the last generation, we've unearthed some of the signs and learned toread symbols previously misunderstood—or erased. But these precious guides todiverse life scripts continue to be few. Growing up in "a man's world" hascreated voids that we fill with imagination, if we follow an impulse to escapethe one narrow route that is visible. We are constantly creating something (ourlives) from nothing.
Just like God did, but we don't get near the credit.
With no good map in hand, imagining that we are capable, that we make greatengineers or heads of state, is still unthinkable for most women. Our mental mapis dated; it comes from the old world and gives us an image of a universe inwhich we aren't the heads of anything. We're usually the hands—and the heart.
This outdated map is still being re-issued. For instance, when a would-besenator from California was recently found to have an undocumented nanny in hispast, his first comment was that his wife had made the decision but he, "as headof the family, should have vetoed it." (Uh oh, Father didn't know best.)
The reality is that women, as heads, have created a powerful global movement,opening many new roads. To continue traveling, we have to keep expanding ourpicture of what our lives could look like.
It's hard to remember our capabilities when we have so few accurate mirrors:powerful, public women whose presence reminds us, "I can do that too!" We'venever had a woman visibly and openly orchestrating national policy. When HillaryRodham Clinton tried to lead the national health plan, she was widely vilifiedas a power-monger only too eager to step in and make decisions abdicated by herhen-pecked husband. (All strong Presidential wives, like Rodham Clinton, NancyReagan or Eleanor Roosevelt, have been accused of usurping power.) We've learnedthat we can influence policy so long as we settle for the back seat, the "powerbehind the throne." Too often our brain is the stealth brain, remaining safelyunder cover, running no risk of igniting other female intellects. Thus we remaininvisible to each other, and even to ourselves. So we "forget," or never notice,how often we actually lead the organization, generate the strategy, or write thebooks, so pleased are we to have any role at all.
Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did itbackwards and in high heels.
—Ann Richards, former Texas governor
We still aren't used to seeing anyone other than men—usually tall white men—bein charge of the really big things. Even our money, that paper that makes theworld go round, is imprinted only with that one visage. Everyone else is seen asincompetent or, if too clearly capable to be so easily dismissed, overreaching.
With this kind of distorted road map, leading to constant dead-ends, how dowomen get an accurate sense of their capabilities?
We need new maps. And there are many ways to create them.
Some of us paper our walls with markers. When put together, they lead us in anew direction. In my study, for example, I look at a page torn from a newspaper,picturing all the women in Congress. I see a collage I made in a seminar,magazine headlines pasted on bright red paper:
THAT'S WHEN I DECIDED THAT MY NEXT HERO WOULD BE ME, AN ENGINE MOVING 79 MPH,THE FAST TRACK.
I have a poster entitled, "Sanctuary: The Spirit of Harriet Tubman." RememberingTubman, a woman who was definitely on the fast track—as she not only rode, butcreated an underground railroad to free enslaved African Americans before theCivil War—keeps me moving along on my own journey. On my study wall I also see a"Women and Physical Power" calendar, with its photo of a focused teen winding upfor a pitch, and am reminded that reclaiming physical power is part ofremembering ourselves. I see an envelope from my son addressed to Joan Lester,Author, sent when I first began to realize I was one. I have poems and notesfrom friends, letters from women I admire, publicity posters from my bookstorereadings.
We must hear the voices and have the dreams of those who came before us, and wemust keep them with us in a very real sense. This will keep us centered. Thiswill help us to maintain our understanding of the job we must do.
—Sonia Sanchez, essayist and poet
I also look at images of Aunt Jemima as even she has changed. Seeing the shiftfrom plantation cook to professional woman reminds me that our work has made adifference—and that we're only halfway there, for she's still somebody's aunt,with no last name. (Can we envision a CEO called Aunt Jemima?)
Over my printer I've posted a collage of old women, mounted on neon pink papershowered with sparkling stars. A drawing shows one gray-haired woman with armsthrown back, standing tall beneath the words "I Survived 5000 Years ofPatriarchy." There are newspaper photos of several blooming hundred year olds.One, Audrey Stubbart, is a full-time columnist. And there's a radiant hiker,seventy-five-year-old Cecilia Hurwich.
My walls give me constant, subliminal support. They become the bread crumbsshowing me the way.
Some women personalize computer screen savers, putting on variants of I AM THEGREATEST to remind them of who they are. Others post notes in their cars,bathrooms, or on refrigerators: I AM SMART. I AM STRONG. Stitched in blankets,on pillows or wall hangings—we have found endless ways to affirm ourselves withpositive statements.
At first the reclamations may feel fake. But stating our capacities—to think,play sports, make money—is simply a reminder of abilities in eclipse. They arethere; we only need to make them visible.
Many women find sustenance in stories about those who preceded us, women whosurvived and, sometimes, thrived. We look to biographies or autobiographies ofhistorical women who took transformative journeys, or to contemporaries andpeers. We watch these women, looking for clues. How did each of them find thestrength to become leaders in difficult circumstances? What decisions did theymake that might help us?
I could not help noticing the great role women played in Pueblo society. Womenowned the houses and actually built them. Children often got their mother's lastname ... It made me a little jealous. Of course, the Pueblos were lucky. Unlike uspoor Sioux who were driven into fenced-in reservations, they still live in theirancient villages, which had already been old when the Spaniards came.
—Mary Crow Dog, activist, author
We need this outer reflection of our possibilities because our self-esteem hastypically been so eroded. (Research in the last twenty years shows girls'confidence as high as boys' until the pre-teen years, when it begins todramatically decrease—if not collapse altogether.) Some female actors seek outstrong roles to provide those reflections. As Geena Davis says in a Voguearticle—whose title, "The Brainy Bombshell," reflects our dilemma and ourparameters—" It's my responsibility as a human being, a woman and an actor," tochoose roles that "women can appreciate and relate to," or that "at least don'tdenigrate women and make you feel cheapened and sickened for having watched themovie." Some women, like Barbra Streisand, Julie Dash, Penny Marshall, MariaMaggenti, and Jodie Foster, become directors and producers to make sure suchroles exist. And fortunately, we have at least a few women out there writingthem. Callie Khouri, the screenwriter for Thelma and Louise, said, "I just gotfed up with the passive role of women. They were never driving the story becausethey were never driving the car."
When we do see women driving the story—and the car—we are riveted. According toGeena Davis, Thelma and Louise were never meant to be role models. "No one wassaying, 'Go hold up liquor stores and drive off a cliff.' They were onlyexamples of women who, for better or worse, took control. I think that's whywomen liked that movie so much," Davis says. "We fucked up a lot, we made somereally bad choices, but the exhilarating thing was that we were in charge of ourown destiny."
Some women find current real-life women for inspiration, women leading the kindof lives we'd like to construct. We watch the power and self-assurance of MayaAngelou as she speaks, we find role models in the few public women in office. Weobserved Enid Greene Waldholtz from Utah—before she was brought down by aclassic "he done me wrong" scenario. She was only the second House ofRepresentatives member ever to be pregnant, and the first in two decades. Thetransformation of the House culture (with a membership still nearly 90 percentmale) is slow but, as Waldholtz said, "It won't be another twenty years beforewe have the next pregnant member."
In the work world, we are beginning to get a critical mass of women mixingpregnancy and power, thanks to the many bold women not scuttling out of sight tohide their expanding bodies. "It's kind of a humanizing element when I'm meetingwith other representatives on the Rules Committee," Waldholtz told a SanFrancisco Chronicle interviewer. "I just use it as a way to get into discussionsabout other issues."
Apparently the pregnancy hasn't affected her brain. "You'd never know she waspregnant except from looking at her," said Rules Committee Chairman GeraldSolomon, in a comment he intended as a compliment.
Anchor Katie Couric is another woman who used her visibility as a pregnant womanto model someone using her uterus and her brain simultaneously. Couric alsofeatures family/work issues, showcasing working mothers.
Some women, not seeing around them real-life images representing futures theywant, look to fiction. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, the Peabody award-winningjournalist (and a role model herself as the first African American womanadmitted to the University of Georgia) discovered a possible future in anunlikely place: a comic-strip. Brenda Starr was a fictional character, but shewas the only female journalist Hunter-Gault saw when she was growing up.
"Brenda Starr, a beautiful white woman with red hair and blue eyes, was myfantasy role model," she recalls. "I loved this life of hers and thought it wasvery exciting. If I had not been given to fantasy, I never could have imaginedmyself doing something like that because there were roles set up for us, womenlike me, we knew 'our place.' That's where the title of my book comes from: InMy Place. Our place was teaching or nursing—nothing wrong with that; it justwasn't what I wanted to do. Fantasizing enabled me to see beyond the limits ofJim Crow, and, while I didn't know how I was going to get there, I felt that Icould get there and I fantasized about getting there, and the way was made. Ipartly made it, but it got made."
For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growingour true spirit rises.
—Audre Lorde (1934-1992), New York state poet laureate
For some women, the best device for understanding our true capabilities isturning inward to filter out the world's "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts," the world'sdescription of our "places," through meditation or journal-writing. Writing andsketching myself in my journal is a device I stumbled on years ago, a fail-proofmethod for bringing me back to myself when I've lost my center. As soon as I'vewritten a page or two, or drawn a sketch of who I am today—oh, that's me!—Ibreathe more deeply, confusion evaporates, and I begin to smile.
Your instrument of remembrance can also be an Appreciation Book to write in whenpeople express admiration for something you have done. Like pennies for a rainyday, such a book is there to shine out who we are when we most need it.
Another mechanism for remembering ourselves can be words that spur us on.Mercedes, a friend who is a politician, uses Eleanor Roosevelt's advice to womenin politics: "Every political woman needs to develop skin as tough as rhinoceroshide!" Each time Mercedes reads this statement, which she has posted on herwall, she remembers that being attacked doesn't necessarily mean she is doinganything wrong. She just looks at the quote, adds another layer of skin, andpulls herself up again to go on out there. She relies on the saying, also framedon her wall, "It isn't the water under a boat which sinks it. It's the water aboat takes in." She vows to keep on floating, no matter who's trying to pourwater on her career.
It also helps to have strong role models for inspiration. One of mine is acolleague and mentor whose progress down the road to power looks effortless,although I know it isn't. Like every other woman, Barbara has had plenty ofreasons to give up and take a back seat. She is a solo working mother whocontributes heavily to the expenses—college included—of many people in herextended family. And she is a dark-skinned woman in a country where "fair" meansboth light-complexioned and beautiful.
Power is the ability to get things done, to mobilize resources, to get and usewhatever it is that a person needs for the goals she is attempting to meet.
—Rosabeth Moss Kanter, professor, Harvard Business School
But Barbara never ceases to expand her vision of what is possible. Even whendisaster hits. A few years ago her house burned to the ground while she was onone of her periodic business trips to South Africa. Everything she had gatheredin her forty-four years was gone: gifts from friends all over the world, theonly copy of computer disks holding her half-finished book, thousands of books,journals, notes for courses she teaches, never-to-be-replaced photos of hercherished niece who has passed on, and other irreplaceable objects representingan unusually full life.
After the first shock, and many tears, Barbara laughed, "I wanted a new houseanyway. Been saying it for years." Then she focused on an outpouring ofcommunity love that surprised and delighted her, and on designing her dreamhouse. Now, three years later, she is living in that house, high on a hill. It'sa house with a view, brand-new, full of light, built exactly to her design. Theold house was too dark, she always said, shaded in a pine grove.
How did she do it? Barbara found her way by setting up mini-support groups.Since she travels frequently, they are all over the world. Wherever she goes,she has someone to call for a few minutes, with whom she can be open about herfears—or her anger, so often prohibited to women. (Men got anger. We gotcrying.) Remembering our full selves means we get to do it all: scream and cry.And after rage or sorrow, surprisingly, there is often laughter.
In these support groups, Barbara gets reminders of who she is from people whounderstand that her feelings are just that. When she lapses into believing she"can't" or she "isn't," they understand that is sexism—or racism—talking. "Oh,that's just I.S.—internalized sexism," they say. "That's worse than P.M.S. Letit go."
And she does.
Another mode of self-remembrance was demonstrated to me this year by a newfriend, Sam, a white woman in her early thirties who had never left Oklahomauntil a few days before I met her in California. In fact, she hadn't left hercounty until the day she got in her car with her three daughters and drove toCalifornia.
I think if women would indulge more freely in vituperation, they would enjoy tentimes the health they do.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), suffragist leader
For sixteen years, Sam had been a battered wife trying unsuccessfully to getlaw-enforcement help. It never came, so one day she simply drove away—from herhusband, her parents, and the town where she had lived all her life.
When I met Sam, shortly after her arrival in California, and she told me alittle of her story, I asked her how she had gotten the inspiration to finallyleave. She thought for a few minutes and then said, "One day, I just looked inthe mirror and saw who I was. God didn't want me to settle for this awful life.I had to get out. I didn't deserve this torture."
