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June and Jane stood on a grassy hilltop looking across a meadow of wildflowers.
"These will be beautiful for the dinner table," cooed June, tenderly admiring her freshly picked bouquet.
"So you come out here every day to pick?" Jane asked.
"Yes. Ward appreciates a dinner with an added touch of ambiance."
"Every day? Wow. I can't even remember the last time I've spent any length of time outside, just breathing the fresh air, letting it rejuvenate me," Jane sighed.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah. Just wish my life weren't so noisy...so complicated." Jane's Blackberry jangled. "See what I mean? This goes on all day." Jane grabbed the shiny device off her belt to silence it.
"I don't know...Seems like it'd be nice to feel important. When that phone rings I think, gee—Jane has power, she's recognized and depended on for her intelligence."
"But you have freedom."
"To an extent." June's apron billowed in the breeze.
"You're not happy?"
"What? Why would you think that?" June chuckled awkwardly and straightened her back. "I'm...I'd say I'm very blessed."
"I am too. But still, something's..."
"Missing?" June finished her friend's sentence with desperation, abruptly looking away as if ashamed to admit her own disconcertment with life.
"Yes, missing," Jane nodded.
The two women stood in silence for a few moments longer, taking in the serene landscape, fumbling to find that bit of insight into attaining a more complete, multi-dimensional purpose.
And that, ladies of 2010, is indeed where we come in. We've already run the gamut of extremes, from cinch-waisted homemaker whose sole legitimacy relies on the perfection of her curtains and casseroles to uber-focused career women with a Bluetooth piece blinking on her ear and running shoes peeping out from under wide-legged suit pants. In the 21st century, American women are slowly starting to carve a niche somewhere in the middle where the focus is widened to acknowledge aspects of tradition, simplicity, individuality and newfound freedoms afforded by technology. However, our culture continues to favor the faster pace, the newer, the better, the popular, the richer, the prettier, meaning that women, now more than ever, need to focus on what truly breeds inner peace, self-confidence and fulfillment. This year 2010 is the kick off of an era in which we‟re committed to harvesting our dreams and passions, freeing the entrepreneurial spirit, clinging to our loved ones, sharing our talents with others, demonstrating our uniqueness, and remembering that less is sometimes more and that what we have is often more than enough.
To experience this liberating sense of self, women first need to be liberated. “Women today need to be liberated from self- and outside-inscribed labeling. Remember that the cosmetic and diet industries would go out of business if women valued how they looked naturally,” says Dr. Jill Hampton, associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, where she teaches writing, literature and courses in the Women's Studies minor offered at the college. Hampton asserts that women also need to shake the guilt, the heaviness in our hearts that comes when we haven‟t met the expectation to fulfill the needs of others by performing exactly on point at the office, in the family or in the community. “Most of us do our best every hour, every day, yet we‟re repeatedly told by our culture that some other woman is doing it all. That‟s just not true.”
Emily C. Williams, who established and oversees the Los Angeles Fire Department‟s (LAFD) Workforce Excellence Unit, knows firsthand the importance of understanding that doing or having “it all” is not only unrealistic but also, to an extent, narcissistic given the harrowing unrest in the world today.
To the outsider observer of Williams' life, it seems as if this go-getter California girl has enjoyed the most satiating success. She began working with LAFD in 2005, when she was hand-picked by the mayor to create and manage the human relations training section, dedicated to the design, delivery and evaluation of non-tactical training in leadership, diversity, ethics, communication, and conflict management.
She is a former Los Angeles Police Department Instructor of the Year and a recipient of the Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Gang Task Force award for her role in collaborative peacekeeping efforts to reduce gang violence and hate crimes. The 2008 recipient of YWCA of the Harbor Area‟s Racial Justice Award, Williams is also a founding board member of A Better Los Angeles, USC football coach Pete Carroll‟s non-profit organization dedicated to uplifting and empowering low-income communities.
As impressive as Williams' philanthropic endeavors and career milestones are, she still tends to feel a void, a deep hole echoing with a nagging voice that taunts her into thinking she's not yet good enough. “I think I need to be liberated from my self-imposed pursuit of having it all,” says Williams. “I‟m reminded of the 1970s television commercial jingle for Enjoli perfume: "I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, never, ever let you forget you‟re a man. Cuz I‟m a woman.‟ I bought that bill of goods hook, line and sinker. I really believed that I was going to...have it all.” But, she continues, “There is no such thing as all. Until women everywhere are guaranteed basic human rights, the quest to have it all is a selfish and pointless pursuit.”
Williams' sentiments are reflected in Washington Times editor Josette S. Shiner's 2009 address “Role of Women in the 21st Century” given during WFWP (Women's Federation for World Peace International) conferences held in Korea, Japan, the U.S. and Europe. “I find [women] asking themselves whether their career achievements really add up to the sum of a successful life,” Shiner stated. “Our value will be in honoring our womanhood and femininity...”
In other words, it's not all about being the ladder climbing executive with the Blackberry always plastered up against the ear. It‟s not all about money, status, competing, proving oneself. The elixir of the 21st century is balance, a love and engagement of every part that makes us women, from our creativity and intellect to our brashness and crystalline refinement. “[I think a common desire among women of 2010 is] balance—between work and home life, beauty and brains, strength and vulnerability, realistic and creative pursuits, needs and wants,” says Williams.
In addition to dropping the yokes of guilt and labeling, women can also strike life balance by taming competiveness. Not the competiveness that keeps us trying our best at winning a sport or making good grades but rather the malicious drive that pushes us to “one up” each other, tip the scale in our favor and minimize someone who is essentially a teammate in this journey. “Too often, when a woman ascends the ladder of career success, she becomes part of the oppression that devalues women as mothers, wives and daughters,” says Hampton. “[Women] need to be liberated from a culture that values competition instead of community.”
Balance, freedom, confidence, persistence, opportunity, community—these are the buzzwords for women of 2010. It‟s a bit of the best from the worlds of June Cleaver and Jane Jetson, an organic combination that suggest more than being able to wear an apron and a business suit. It‟s a merger that celebrates a new kind of thinking that is both selfless and self-loving, grounded yet free.
