My Daughter Has Entered Her Grey Phase Of Growing Up

My daughter has entered her ‘grey phase.’ I went through the same phase when I was a student at university. It’s that period in a girl’s life when she suddenly realizes that her power doesn’t lie with her body and her looks, but with her personality, ideas and intellect.

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It’s similar to what I’m going through now, but sort of in reverse. I’m going through what is commonly acknowledged as the ‘invisible phase’ for middle-aged women; a phase where we can no longer trade on our looks and need to pull out the bigger guns of intellect and personality.

I quite like being invisible and my nerdy daughter relishes not having to worry about body image any more.

But I do feel kind of sad for her, too. I feel sad that she feels the need to cover up her beauty and her sexuality to be taken seriously, although NC was never the kid that pranced around in pink tutus, fairy wings and silver Osh Kosh shoes, but rather the tomboy who was inspired by Thomas The Tank Engine and Harry Potter and who was toughened up by playing rough and tumble with the local boys.

English: The during a Thomas the Tank Engine weekend. Thomas at Avon Riverside station. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To this day she gets more turned on by rocks and environmental change.

I was never that girly as a child, either, but I’ve tapped into my girly-side more as I’ve grown older and become a mother, mellowed and started liking myself more. I remember my own style at university was very similar to NC’s androgynous look now; the main components of my wardrobe being a range of over-sized ex-army shirts, vintage jumpers and baggy boyfriend jeans that hid the curves that I felt hinted at weakness and betrayed my gender.

NC did try to conform once, towards the end of high school when the formals that she had always cynically judged as popularity contests, began to loom perilously closer. Overnight, all her friends became interested in boys and began to post up images of hot men and their prom dresses on Facebook, rather than the memes of Harry Potter that NC still identified with.

And for a short period of time there, she conceded that it might be easier to try and fit in.

But she developed an ugly, embarrassing rash on the day of her year 12 formal, which coordinated perfectly with the red dress we’d hurriedly picked out for the event at the last moment.

To this day I believe that rash was caused by some inner turmoil created by not being authentic to herself, and since then, I’ve noticed that her washing pile has slowly taken on a much more muted, grey hue.

The pretty, summer dresses, crop tops and slinky skirts have long gone and now every piece of clothing is a variation of grey and at least a couple of sizes too big, so she doesn’t draw attention to her natural, physical beauty.
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I am secretly proud of my girl for her insistence on being herself. I’m ashamed that I don’t tell her that often enough. She always did have an iron will. I remember trying desperately to persuade her to wear pretty dresses when she was little, and contact lenses in place of her thick glasses when she was a teenager, so fearful was I that she would remain a wallflower. But she was always adamant about who she was. I can still remember the day she patiently explained to me that it didn’t matter what was on the outside.

She was about ten at the time.

When she turns it on my daughter is a siren and can stop both sexes in their tracks. My dad still loves to recount the story of when they were in Paris together a few years ago and he asked NC nervously if she would dress up that evening for some posh dinner they were attending. When she entered the bar that evening my father almost didn’t recognize his granddaughter and apparently the whole area went silent, such was the transformation. He describes it as a Pretty Woman moment.

NC has always been who NC wants to be. She allows the world to see the parts of her that she admires most about herself; that is, the thinking NC, the NC who is an intelligent young woman and whom I have no doubt will go on to represent those women who demand equal opportunities, rather than ask for them.

NC’s world is not grey, really. If anything she is black and white. Her world houses ambition, promise and a rainbow of vivid colours. The grey is a veneer. She reserves her colour for causes she is passionate about, the people she loves and those who love her.

Embracing the F Word in Middle Age

Forgive me, readers, for I am about to commit a cardinal blogging sin with a ‘rant’ post.

I don’t do these often because I know you read my blog for some non-cerebral, light relief, but I am fed up of being verbally constipated on this particular subject, out of fear of alienation.

I need to get this mother*cker out.

You see, this week, at the age of forty-seven, I finally realized that I am a feminist. I have finally embraced the F word in middle age.

Was that ‘About f*cking time’ I heard you say?

What can I say? I’m a late-developer. The great thing about life though, is it’s never too late to embrace new ideas, is it?

Of course Feminism is not exactly a new idea – I just never truly understood the underpinning implications of it before – for which I must humbly apologize and grovel to  Suffragettes and Bra-burners alike.

I have obviously always been a feminist, I just didn’t know it until now.

Unfortunately, I am not a literary wordsmith on the topic like Helen Razer or Anne Summers, but I do have opinions that matter, and I can and do identify with their beliefs. So indulge me, dear readers, and allow me to vent (in my own simplistic way) on my opinion of feminism in Australia today.

Firstly, how do I know that I’ve always been a feminist?

Simple. Because I’ve always believed in women having the same rights as men. In fact, the reason it took me so bloody long to realize that I was a closet Feminist, is because I naively assumed that women already had equal rights to men.

Derrrr!

The truth of it is, I may have actually been a teensy bit afraid of swearing my allegiance to feminists before, because I had this crazily warped stereotype in my head of what a feminist was – my most dangerous assumption being that they hated men. And I rather like men.

There are, in fact, many male feminists and many feminists that like men.

‘Feminism is not anti men. It’s anti-arseholes, misogynists, pricks, creeps, thugs and bigots.’ Catherine Deveny

But in any important movement, extremism can be a problem. There will always be radical, impassioned members at its core – we witnessed extreme Islam in Woolwich only last week. Often, the most militant members of a group are the ones that actually get anything done, and so unless they resort to violence to get their point across, I embrace and admire their fervency. However, occasionally that passion can become warped and turn to fanaticism, which comes at a price. Not only cost to life, but it can deter other, less confrontational followers from campaigning and supporting the group on its behalf. To remain powerful, a group needs members.

There have certainly been many times in my life where I have been a victim of sexism, have heard demeaning references to women, have witnessed the objectification of women in the media and seen their exploitation in pornography. Who can be unaware  of the levels of violence against women that still happen in Australia?

Six factors finally changed my perspective on feminism:

• Julia Guillard’s ‘misogyny speech’ and witnessing the way in which she has been treated since taking on the role as the first female prime-minister
• The increasing misrepresentation and objectification of women in the media
• The effect that objectifying women has on the developing minds and attitudes on boys towards women
• My increasing involvement in writing for women
• Getting older and wiser and intolerant to bigotry and finding my ‘voice’
• My daughter; who I am proud to say, is a staunch feminist at the age of eighteen

Last week I attended the ‘Women and Power’ debate at the Sydney Writers Festival, via the Griffith Review, and headed up by Anne Summers, Mary Delahunty, Chris Wallace, Yassmin Abdel-Magied and Julianne Schulz.

I don’t know what I was expecting from the debate, but I came away resolved in my  militancy. The impassioned debate ended in a call to arms for women to be more proactive in their challenge against inequality, because although there have been obvious successes in the battle for equal rights, there is still a lot of work to be done.

A lot of young women believe that equality in Australia is ‘done and dusted.’

Successes have obviously been celebrated in the previous waves of feminism in Australia, thanks to women such as Germaine Greer and Anne Summers, but these experts believe that a new wave of male supremacy is forming, due in part to the influence of the media (and particularly social media) and the continued lack of equality in the workplace.

Raising a teenage daughter, I have believed for a while now, that there is a distinct regression in the attitudes of some younger men towards women, and that misogynistic behavior is following suit. (Is Social Media Killing Teenage Relationships?)

We need to educate our sons to be respectful of women.

The apathy towards feminism by our younger generations of women (although it has recently regained some traction with the ‘Destroying The Joint’ debate led by Jane Caro) may be because they believe that they already have equal rights. Or maybe it is simply too hard? And of course the infrastructure to support women in the work place is still negligible.

So what can women do?

Women need to resume the fight and keep pushing back. They need to fight for quotas in the workplace to override the continuing sexism and hold of the old boy networks. There are still very few women in the top corporate tiers, and more and more women are choosing to opt out of corporate life altogether (due to the difficulty of climbing the corporate ladder) to take other options. Where will our voice be then?

Don’t be afraid to use the F word like I was.

Rally for Women’s health- National Mall by Amber Wilkie at http://www.flickr.com

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• “I’m not a feminist but…” (snufflepugfashionkisses.wordpress.com)
• Destroying the point (theage.com.au)