The Problem That Has No Name

"Breathe" by Anna Nalick

...yeah, we walk through the door / so accusing their eyes / like they have any right at all to criticize...

I read this article about the evolution of the conversation about the plight of the housewife. The bigger theme of the article is how gender roles can stifle and suffocate people. I thought it was interesting because it identified one of my biggest fears: to be bored with my life.

I am afraid that after I have done all that I am "supposed" to do, as is defined by the culture I live in, it won't be enough. I'll wake up and forget I am alive and do all that I do out of complete robotic routine.

I won't feel anything, hear anything, smell anything, see anyting, say anything, think anything that is real. It will all just be the same thing I had done the day before and for several days before that for years.

That's like death: a complete cessation of a life. It is really not death nor is it as permanent, but to the active, dramatic, brilliant, energetic production that I am, it is like death.

So after I get this degree, I get married, I have babies, I buy a house, I buy a gunmetal colored Range Rover Sport, will I be fine? They say the chase is better than the actual thing. If I get the life I am chasing, will I be complete stationary, not having to run anymore?

I'd like to imagine that I'll at least have to walk some in order to maintain the life I have chased all my life. But asking a sprinter to walk in the race is unfair, and stupid.

I just don't want to be bored. I fear marriage because men bore me. The nicest, sweetest men eventually lose my interest through no real fault of their own, most of the time.

Will being a mother become bothersome? I don't want anything in the world quite like I want to be a mother and so it has been my whole, whole, whole life. But will I take my children for granted and be bored with the miracle that I think children are?

The article diagnosed this problem for me: "The Problem That Has No Name" by Betty Friedan. I don't want to have this problem. I read it and I love it and I wrote a little 'essay' about it. It isn't a real essay in the stringent manner I am used to writing them for class, but it's awesome nonetheless:

The problem with no name addresses the incongruency between the cultural expectations for a woman's life and happiness and the personal expectations of a woman's life and happiness.

As is explained in Betty Friedan's article, "The Problem That Has No Name", girls are socialized to want to marry and have children and understand that their service in family life should be the source of their happiness. Pleasing a husband, rearing respectable children, and participating in a larger community of other "Stepford" households becomes the criteria for a woman's happiness and sense of fulfillment.

But the article explains that with educated women, there exists a disconnect between the "happy" lives they are living (by getting and keeping a husband, having children) and the actual happiness they feel. These women have invested their whole lives in the promise of bliss once they are wives and mothers. Magically, changing sheets, doing laundry, cooking dinners, transporting children, attending PTA meetings and the ilk are supposed to complete these women as human beings; their femininity (as defined by Western culture) shall define their happiness.

Unfortunately, the life investment into this perfect life does not make an adequate return to the woman investor. She has waited her life to be a wife and mother and once in the position, is waiting, hand-and-foot, on people who overlook her existence as a human being and request her only when they need something.

Consequently, a universal moment of pause follows in which they ask themselves, "Is this all?" Interestingly, the woman internalize the feeling of emptiness as a feeling of inadequacy. She feels as if she has the things she needs to be happy and the fact that she is not, demonstrates that she lacks something.

The strangest part of the problem is the silence. Many women, living in the same communities and taking their children to the same schools, have these feelings of emptiness and inadequacy but do not speak about them to each other. Each woman suffers her shame in silence. The silence was eventually broken and has now birthed popular sociological conversations about gender roles and a woman's "place" in society.