Interesting quote

"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist." -George Carlin   

I somewhat agree with this. 

Ok, that's all. 

I'm going to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight! :D   

Edit: here's Mike's response to this post.

How not to be a woman:

Lately I've been thinking about femininity and what it means to be a woman.

20 is an awkward age. People start referring to you as a woman (provided that you are female, I guess). But for me at least, the title always sounds weird.

Part of the oddity in being called a woman is that I'm not exactly sure what it means to be a woman. I was thinking about this the other day. Then when I arrived at my voice lesson, my voice teacher and her accompanist were talking about a friend who majored in Women's Studies at UC Santa Cruz. My voice teacher, who is around 80 years old, thought the whole idea of Women's Studies was ridiculous. She said something like, "In my day nobody had to teach you how to be a woman. These things were common knowledge." (I thought this was a funny comment. :) Then her accompanist, who is rather conservative, chimed in, "No, Women's Studies is really the opposite. It's basically learning how not to be a woman."

Though I value Women's Studies and don't completely agree with her statement, it made me think. In a certain sense, she's right. Modern ideology teaches women "how not to be women," in that it questions the standardized schema for the female sex which society had originally constructed. (Yet in certain ways women are still objectified...) Don't get me wrong, I'm all for empowerment and equality. I think that it's healthy to question societal norms, because having to mold yourself to fit any kind of "role" can be crippling. But in the case of femininity, what is the cost of questioning the status quo? Does too much empowerment and not enough "femininity" cause marriages and relationships to fail (or never even begin in the first place)?

How can a woman be empowered and still be feminine?

I'm not the kind of person who cheapens myself, dumbs myself down, or pretends to operate on surface-level. But most guys are intimidated by intelligence and confidence, even if it's understated. And honestly, most choose to date girls who are simple and surfacey. Though I do recognize that not every guy is looking for the same thing in a relationship and that this is not always the case, it seems to be the trend. And as a female, it's almost like you're left with the choice of either being the smart girl who ends up lonely, or the surfacey girl who everyone loves. And if you're not satisfied with either choice, you find yourself trying to be everything: empowered yet passive, vocal yet submissive, equality-minded yet role-conscious, contemplative yet carefree. And in my case at least, you over-analyze your behavior so much that you end up silent most of the time. I don't want to pretend to be something I'm not, so I don't dumb myself down. But at the same time I don't want to steamroll over people. So a lot of the time, I say nothing. (This doesn't happen all the time. But it's gotten worse since I started going to Westmont.) Silence obviously isn't the answer though. In the overly-quoted, yet still insightful words of Marianne Williamson:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

This seems to be a more constructive mindset. And it's a welcome reminder. I'm personally sick of watering myself down, trying to play two parts, and worrying about how I come across to people. I think maybe the key in this whole gender issue is to not dwell on it so much. Because sometimes when you dwell on difference and prejudice, you end up highlighting the difference and alienating people from one another so that they learn to expect the prejudice.

Thoughts?