Enough about Me (eBook)

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The Siren Call of Self

I am nearing my fortieth birthday. In just a couple weeks my friends and family will gather to celebrate, and I’m looking forward to it. Forty. It’s a much-anticipated age.

Did you know that starting in 1970 Jennifer was the most popular name in North America for fourteen years in a row? One news article called it the Jennifer Juggernaut because there has never been another name phenomenon like it.1

There’s an entire generation of us. Just about every third girl in all of my classes from kindergarten through college was named Jennifer, Jen, or Jennie (Or is it spelled Jenny? My grade school worksheets reveal that I never could figure that out.). We are everywhere.

We Jennifers were born when America’s favorite films were Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Star Wars, and The Pink Panther. Pretty groovy. Bell-bottoms and leisure suits marked the fashion scene. In my birth pictures, my dad is rocking a butterfly collar. My mom’s hair is cut in the then-popular pageboy style. With my parents’ on-point fashion sense, you know I had to be a Jennifer. Just another sign of the times.

Some of my earliest memories from the 1980s include fashions that I see again now when I go shopping with my daughters: high-waisted jeans and crop tops, shoulder pads, jean jackets, and fanny packs. I’m in favor of the jeans—last year we called them “mom jeans,” but my daughters swear that high-waisted jeans are different and immeasurably superior to mom jeans. Whatever the case, this almost-forty mom is happy to say sayonara to low-rise denim. But do we have to be so quick to welcome back fanny packs and shoulder pads?

If you can identify any of these popular fashion items, then you might be part of Generation X, of which I am just barely a member—the cutoff is 1981. The millennials mark the children born right after me, in the 1980s and 1990s. Some social scientists call us forty-year-olds “Xennials” because we’re so close to the line. So if you are a millennial, let’s just say we’re peers. Anyway, in my heart I feel like I just left college.

A Generation of Pioneering Problems

We whose ages currently span the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties have more than the return of shoulder pads to lament. We’re still working through the hard stuff that accompanied us as we came of age. We’re dubbed the divorce generation because broken marriages peaked in 1980.2 This divorce spree coincided with the sexual revolution.3 As our parents liberated themselves from their marriages, they also found liberty in the new norms of casual relationships and alternative expressions of sexuality.

As the first latchkey generation, we found ourselves home alone, trying to figure out what was what and who was who. We grew up in uncertain times for sure.

A Generation of Pioneering Promise

But the times were exciting too. In the United States we welcomed Title IX, a civil rights law that says no one can be excluded from any education program on the basis of gender. My girlfriends and I felt the effects of Title IX primarily in the sports world. Girls’ sports began receiving more attention and funding, and we all found ourselves on the soccer field every afternoon, keeping up with the boys. Our coaches’ and teachers’ common refrain was, “Anything the boys can do, you can do better.” My high school even had some hopeful female kickers for the boys’ football team.

Sure, we were limping a little from our turbulent home lives. But our school days and social circles were full of possibility. “Be anything you want to be,” people told us. Our only limit was our imaginations.

I was the editor in chief of my high school’s newspaper during those potential-packed days. I recently found an old paper with an editorial written by yours truly. It was composed with no small amount of sass. The gist was this: the girls are filling the honors and AP (advanced placement) classrooms, but where are the boys? It was a celebration of Title IX. We girls really were advancing, beyond the boys even. At least in my context, we were gobbling up all the awards and scholarships and heading off to promising futures at the best colleges.

The world was cheering for us. We could feel it. “Girl power” was propelling us beyond where our mothers and grandmothers had ever been. We were determined to take the glass ceiling by storm—our sights were set on becoming CEOs, entrepreneurs, engineers, professors, lawyers, doctors, or, in my case, television broadcasters. Our predecessors were thrilled for us, and we didn’t know any better.

With great confidence we set out into the women’s world.

You Can Do It!

The optimism of our mothers and the can-do spirit that washed over us girls shot us into adulthood. Some of us got degrees. Started careers. Found husbands. Had children. Filled important roles in our communities, in politics, and in churches.

You can have it all, they told us then and they keep telling us now. And we are certainly trying. Most of the women I know work (part time or full time or from home) or own their own businesses, volunteer, raise kids, participate in local sports and clubs, serve in their churches, work out, endeavor to put healthy food on the table, maintain active social lives, think global, shop local—and the list goes on. We are juggling laundry, promotions, car pools, and Sunday school. Girl power.

The cultural air we breathe fills us with optimism. And so we take deep breaths, and we keep running for the goal. Create your own destiny. You be you. Reach for the stars. You can be a self-made woman. You are in charge of your own happiness. You get what you give. Never let them see you sweat. Follow your dreams. Make it happen. You are enough.

We’re all reaching for that elusive gold star: becoming the women society says we can be. We keep pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, guzzling our coffee, and looking in the mirror to remind ourselves, “You got this, sister. Go get ’em.”

But then.

Then.

Almost without exception and as if on cue, we reach the end of ourselves. The coffee cup is empty. The self-talk grows quiet. We collapse on the couch. We are tired. This isn’t working. Someone send help.

We Did It! So Why Are We So Sad?

The feminist movement did indeed deliver better pay, equal rights, and more respect for us in many spheres of society. Today’s women are indebted to the sisters who went before us. I am grateful for much of the fruit borne by women’s liberation. Without those who came before me, I likely wouldn’t be a student of culture and theology and writing this book.

But even as I celebrate the strong women of the past and present, I also wonder what’s really going on. We Xennial women who shot out of the gates into adulthood with much promise and anticipation are not rejoicing the way I think our foremothers imagined we would.

It’s not going according to plan. Being self-made women is wearing us out.

Researchers have found that “although women’s life circumstances have improved greatly over the past few decades by most objective measures, their happiness has declined—both in absolute terms and relative to men’s.”4

In the United States, female mental and emotional health is in crisis. A Centers for Disease Control study reveals that in the last almost two decades, suicide rates among women have increased by 50 percent, and among girls ages ten to fourteen they have tripled.5 We have to ask ourselves, if things are supposed to be increasingly hopeful, why are we increasingly hopeless?

Social scientists are divided on why women and girls are struggling. Some point to the fact that men still populate the highest paying jobs and the highest levels of elected office, and garner the most respect. Some blame sexual misconduct, as displayed so graphically in the #metoo movement. Many point out that while opportunities have been vastly opened outside the home for women, we still take care of everything inside the home; it’s called the second shift, and it’s primarily staffed by women. Some say it’s just that we’re too busy and nothing is getting the attention it deserves. Many believe social media plays a role.

How Did We Get Here?

We have a map on our dining room table that our family loves to linger over after meals. Three-fourths of my daughters were born in Asia. After their childhoods there, we moved to Europe. We ended up back in the United States in time for their teen and young adult years. When we look at the map, we remember our favorite places in Japan and Thailand. We focus on the Czech Republic and remember our road trips through Europe.

We trace our fingers over three continents and remember how we got here, to Colorado. Each country plays an important role in who my daughters are right now. Those places are why fried rice and ramen are their comfort foods. They’re why they love sushi and why Japanese curry and Czech goulash are treats in our home. The points on the journey reveal why they speak a second language and why they’re still bewildered by American football and grocery stores and school supplies. Looking at that map and our shared history reminds us why we are who we are today and how we got here.

And so it is with this moment in global women’s history. If we...