Never heard of Liz Lemoning? Me either til I read Why High-Achieving Women Pretend Their Lives Are A Mess

Did you ever watch “I Don’t Know How She Does It?” from 2011 starring Sarah Jessica Parker? I did. I wanted to like it. I didn’t like it.

My movie review: https://workingmom.guru/2015/07/i-dont-know-how-she-does-it-movie-review/

When I read this article recently, it helped to identify some of my frustration.

In short: Liz Lemon was a Hot Mess. Her Hot Mess Syndrome — the affliction of so many successful women everywhere — was precisely the point. Whether or not you think she’s a revolutionary figure, the Hot Mess has a lot to tell us about our contradictory expectations of high-achieving women under late-capitalist patriarchy.

Why do successful women insist on pretending they aren’t? Maybe because we’re trying to apologize for being successful?

On account of her smarts and circumstances, the Hot Mess gets that her success needs to look a little bit like an accident in order not to garner resentment. Her messiness is equal parts internalized misogyny and compensatory measure.

Do we even know we are doing it?

Fey’s not really a mess. But it’s telling that her fictional analogue is. We can learn a lot about ourselves by what we find funny and what we decide to show others.

So hard to see the multiple headlines echoing the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on women.

Some recent headlines highlighting the issues:

This pandemic threatens to undo what generations of feminists have fought for

Pandemic Makes Evident ‘Grotesque’ Gender Inequality In Household Work

The coronavirus pandemic is creating a ‘double double shift’ for women. Employers must help

A few snippets from these articles that resonate.

“The old model of our education system where everyone sits in a classroom is not going to work in the new normal,” Cuomo argued. What he did not mention is that remote schooling still requires children to be supervised. The result is that parents – overwhelmingly, mothers – will effectively be deputized as teachers, without training or pay, and required to stay home with their kids. Cuomo’s decision is premised on the sexist assumption that women are perpetually available for more and more unpaid domestic work. In fact, it elevates that attitude from a cultural and marital injustice to a pillar of public policy.

I realize no parent signed up for this. Sure, some have always home schooled, and kudos to them! The rest of us were wholly unprepared to teach our kids.

The state is retreating from its obligation to provide an education for children, and the childcare that that education represents. Women are inevitably tasked with compensating for the state’s failures. With the state rolling back services, private companies making few concessions to women workers’ domestic needs, and men not picking up the slack, the post-pandemic world could mean smaller, more claustrophobic and more constrained lives for women.

I don’t know that women are inevitably tasked, but certainly women are inequitably tasked with compensating for the absence of state provided education. And it absolutely disproportionately impacts women’s lives.

On why she advises against picking up the slack on housework that a partner does sloppily Through the years, we would have these agreements — you do this and I do this — and then typically [my husband] would always just slack off and wouldn’t do it, and then I would always pick it up. And then that would just increase my sense of anger, because it would feel so unfair. And that’s actually a phenomenon. It’s called “learned helplessness.” …

Valuable insight.

On how women often assume the responsibility for “invisible work,” such as maintaining schedules and maintaining family ties There’s a whole body of research around what’s called “the mental load.” It’s something that women also disproportionately bear. … It’s all of the stuff that you have to keep in your mind. It’s just an explosion of details and logistics and planning and organizing and making appointments and remembering the appointments and getting people to the appointments, remembering birthdays, doing the “kinwork” … keeping the ties, the family and bonds of friends, keeping those strong. …

I personally like to make a list, and show off what I have done. Quantifies it and ensures I talk about it so it doesn’t go unrecognized.

This is the time for managers to become leaders by giving their teams much-needed emotional support. Fewer than a third of employees—and fewer than a quarter of essential workers—say someone from their company checks in on their well-being these days. If employees are homeschooling kids or worrying about a parent in the hospital, their managers should know that and adjust work plans accordingly.

This is great advice. If you are in a leadership position, please do this. Support your teams, both by checking in, and by adjusting expectations.

We need to come out of this pandemic stronger, and the best way to do this, don’t give up progress, yes, nurture and love your families, but expect that everyone in your family will also nurture and love you.

I’ve been watching the FX show Mrs. America on Hulu. It is a Docudrama about the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). In January, I marched in the Women’s March here in Salt Lake City (much less participation than in my former home of Seattle), and many, myself included were wearing ERA buttons.

Maybe you don’t know this history – if not, lots of websites and books out there to familiarize yourself, or you could watch this docudrama. My abbreviated history. The ERA is a constitutional amendment. Do you know constitutional law? How about how many amendments have been made to the constitution? Ok, go read about that too.

Anyway, the ERA was introduced in 1923. That’s not a typo. Almost 100 years ago, women were fighting for equality. Wait, I thought women got the right to vote in 1928, you say? Then you really DO need to go read about the ERA. It is about equality! Not just women’s equality, but HUMAN equality.

The ERA passed the House and Senate in 1972, and then needed to be ratified by 38 states. That goal was also achieved just 48 years later in 2020 when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify. However the deadline for ratification had lapsed. The House then approved a resolution to remove the deadline, and it is waiting for Senate agreement.

I recall watching West Wing years ago, and hearing Republican Ainsley Hayes rail against the ERA. Her key point being she IS equal. I agree with this key premise. Where the argument falls apart is in understanding that is NOT what the ERA is about. It is to defend that equality in practice. To enforce for those that might not agree to at least act as if.

So many women fought for and spent their lives pursuing this equality. So many years passed. Mrs. America taught me more about why we still do not have an equal right under the law.

Was it old white men getting in the way? Kind of. But the truly insidious were the WOMEN who fought AGAINST their own equality. Why? No, seriously, why?