I saw a blog post from the irresistible Tara Hunt and almost hit the roof when reading it… (Don’t worry there’s plenty more roof hitting in the next few blog posts)
The punch was the tweet which came from Jolie O’Dell, who seems to be someone a lot of people know and follow (although to be fair I’d never really heard of her before). Her tweet said…
Or if you disabled images for what ever reason, it reads “Women: Stop making startups about fasion, shopping & babies. At least for the next few years. You’re embarrassing me.”
As some one commented on Tara’s Flickr, Can’t wait to see your response to this one! and [gets popcorn]. I won’t even touch on the tweets and general outrage only because Tara’s done a great job summing it up.
So what can I bring to the discussion almost 3 weeks later? Not that much but I do find it interesting reading Tara’s post and her post analysis.
I kind of wish I could just pull together my thoughts while reading on the tram into work recently (need to tie together ifttt with storyify… But I was surprised by Tara’s sobering conclusion.
When I moved to San Francisco in 2005, it took me about 6 months to deny myself my femininity. It wasn’t fashionable to be fashionable. I moved to SF with a closet full of designer dresses, suits and shoes and within 6 months all I was wearing were jeans and t-shirts. I am ecstatic to see photos of events filled with women in dress clothes and high heels. My only embarrassment lies in that I didn’t have the *erm* balls to be the woman I am back then.
Instead of embarrassed that there are so many women doing startups involving fashion/shopping/babies, I’m proud. I’m proud of a truly inclusive tech scene where women can women, men can men, women can men, men can women and all sorts of other genderific combinations thereof. And I, for one, welcome the pink ghettoization of the tech startup scene – at least for the time being – because it means women are making a grand entrance. And what an entrance it is!
Tara’s quite a lady and its a real shame she felt she had to adopt her style, lifestyle and personality to favour a male dominated world just to fit in with the perceived or otherwise differences.
This all somewhat hap-hazardly spills into my thinking about woman of today.
Someone, can’t remember who pointed me at this New York Times piece titled… Whats a modern girl to do?
Once again I had it saved in my readitlater list and was slowly digesting parts of it on my kindle while almost throwing my kindle out the window in almost total disgust.
For example…
[1] Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death. “The H-bomb,” they dubbed it. “As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that’s the end of the conversation,” Ani Vartanian said. “As soon as the guys say, ‘Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,’ all the girls start falling into them.”
[2] Women in their 20’s think old-school feminists looked for equality in all the wrong places, that instead of fighting battles about whether women should pay for dinner or wear padded bras they should have focused only on big economic issues. After Googling and Bikramming to get ready for a first dinner date, a modern girl will end the evening with the Offering, an insincere bid to help pay the check. “They make like they are heading into their bag after a meal, but it is a dodge,” Marc Santora, a 30-year-old Metro reporter for The Times, says. “They know you will stop them before a credit card can be drawn. If you don’t, they hold it against you.”
My mom gave me three essential books on the subject of men. The first, when I was 13, was “On Becoming a Woman.” The second, when I was 21, was “365 Ways to Cook Hamburger.” The third, when I was 25, was “How to Catch and Hold a Man,” by Yvonne Antelle. (“Keep thinking of yourself as a soft, mysterious cat.. . .Men are fascinated by bright, shiny objects, by lots of curls, lots of hair on the head . . . by bows, ribbons, ruffles and bright colors.. . .Sarcasm is dangerous. Avoid it altogether.”)
Its a long piece but its well worth reading because there’s so much interesting stuff in there.
Honestly I don’t know what to say but it seems like I might be out of touch with the ultra modern woman (it may seem).
The modern woman seems to have rejected all the feminism ideals of the past few decades. She sees that whole movement as backwards, counter productive and somewhat old fashioned. But as the post concludes at the end, there’s certain amount of boomeranging which is going to happen.
Having boomeranged once, will women do it again in a couple of decades? If we flash forward to 2030, will we see all those young women who thought trying to Have It All was a pointless slog, now middle-aged and stranded in suburbia, popping Ativan, struggling with rebellious teenagers, deserted by husbands for younger babes, unable to get back into a work force they never tried to be part of?
It’s easy to picture a surreally familiar scene when women realize they bought into a raw deal and old trap. With no power or money or independence, they’ll be mere domestic robots, lasering their legs and waxing their floors – or vice versa – and desperately seeking a new Betty Friedan.
