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My generation is known for being lazy, selfish, needy and good at talking the talk but not walking the walk. Though I suppose that's what happens when you grow up with the world literally at your fingertips. When you want to know something, the answer is there in a matter of seconds that is if the wifi hasn't suddenly gone out. I am of a generation of people who have been very, very lucky.
With that luck though comes the cost of forgetting what happened prior so as not to make the same mistakes over and over again. We don't want to relive history and we try to be anti-establishment and set our own pace because that's how most of us have been brought up. That we - male, female, black, white - can be whatever we want to be. For this particular generation we have never been told that we can do something based on a specific set of caveats and presets but instead hat we can do something based solely on our willpower and working hard. While idealistic and possibly naive, it's still how we were raised: If you want it, you can do it.
The way the triteness drips off that last statement is causing me physical pain and yet it's the truth. I was brought up as an black female with parents that never emphasized that I am a double minority. In fact it was rarely an issue. My parents - one from Birmingham circa the Civil Rights Movement, the other circa Queens in the 1960's - never started off a sentence with "Because you're a girl..." When I told them that I wanted to run for Congress and that I wanted to pack up and move to Washington, DC because I saw some other woman do it, they were all Go for it! And in Washington I encountered a slew of other young women just like me. The kind that were raised by parents - mothers specifically - who helped fuse the backbone of the Feminist and Civil Rights movements and so it was automatically ingrained in us that with that basis we can and should do what we want to do.
It was in Washington when the 'feminist' bug bit me. I wouldn't call myself a feminist necessarily and the definition of such is fluid but how my mother raised me has a lot to do with the woman that I am now. The woman who when she wants a job goes after that job and will negotiate the hell out of a salary. A woman with strong beliefs on birth practices. A woman who isn't necessarily ant-patriarchy but one that doesn't feel that marriage is a necessity for happiness and that if married couldn't be paid enough to change her last name. Obviously all of this could change but the beauty of being in your mid-20's is that you get to be a little credulous. And I was surrounded by other women my age with the same beliefs of what a woman can do (EVERYTHING) and that we should go forth and take over the world. We were all supported and inspired by our parents, peers and professors. For me college resembled this New York Times article by Hannah Seligson:
I WAS born in 1982 — about 20 years after the women’s rights movement
began. Growing up in what many have called a post-feminist culture, I
did not really experience institutional gender bias. “Girl power” was
celebrated, and I felt that all doors were open to me.When I was in college, the female students excelled academically,
sometimes running laps around their male counterparts. Women easily
ascended to school leadership positions and prestigious internships. In
my graduating class (more than half of which was female) there was a
feeling of camaraderie, a sense that we were helping each other succeed.
The above is one of the onslaught of articles that have popped up in recent weeks where women have to be reminded of their place and that while we've come so far we still have far to go. Perhaps they've always been there lurking but with the "equal pay for equal work" mantra during the Democratic National Convention and the Palin - Is She a Feminist or Isn't She - factor at the Republican National Convention it seems as if all that can be discussed is that there are cracks in the glass ceiling. 18 million cracks to be specific and we women need to fight and stand
