Raw Drip

While talking down a female colleague the other day who was ready to jump out her office window after her latest run-in with a male colleague who miraculously manages to make himself look like an indispensably ingenious ”decider” while churning out mess after mess for the rest of us to clean up, she made an exasperated observation about the state of male/female roles – “Nothing’s ever going to change. Men build and women maintain.” 

That’s a pretty sweeping statement, don’t you think?  Could it be true?  Are women relegated to the role of maintenance worker for the literal and metaphorical buildings of men?  I’m not one to believe in absolutes or conspiracy theories, but the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced she might be on to something…

When you think of the word “building” from a literal perspective, it’s mostly men that come to mind; admittedly two extremes - the handsome architect (think Mike Brady) or the ubiquitous crass & filthy construction worker hurling pathetic pick-up lines and wolf whistles at female passersby. 

But when you take the concept of building to the metaphorical level, you think of the male status quo.  Politics – mostly men.  Corporate America – mostly men.  And we’ve all read decades worth of gritty “Glamour” and “Cosmo” magazine exposés about injustices against women in the workforce.  From everything we’ve read, heard, seen and experienced, it’s no big surprise that 40 years after the women’s liberation movement began employment statistics still reflect a dramatic lack of female executive leadership in Corporate America.  Indisputably, it seems men and women see building as a man’s world.

But I think my colleague’s comments were meant to address something even deeper than how we think the world perceives the role of women or how we perceive the world.  I think she may have touched on the big, pink elephant in the corner of the room that none of us wants to talk about – how we perceive ourselves.  

Like most of us, I tend to designate my husband as the literal and metaphorical “builder” on our team.  I’m happy to take the second banana role most of the time.  And, to expose my own big, pink elephant for your reading pleasure, I’ll admit that I do this in part because if he screws something up, I want to maintain a safe distance by being in the superior position of standing outside the wreckage with my finger pointed squarely at him and a stern ”I told you so” glare on my face.  Of course, if Dicks’ building holds firm and performs as designed, I also want to take team credit, because darn it – he’s a better builder for having ME on his team! 

Want to hear some more truth?  I assume my support status knowing that I’ll resent my own decision to do so later.  In an ultimate hypocritical act, I’ll paint my maintenance worker status as a burden rather than a choice (especially to my female friends who all do the same thing and will surely sympathize with me) and, thus, directly perpetuate all of the stereotypes I claim to so despise.  Why?

One thing I know for certain here is that the answers are numerous and complicated.  Partly (and maybe this is too easy), I think we’ve all bought into the marketing messages that tell women as consumers, that maintenance is in our own best interest.  Marketing vehicles paint a picture of the successful woman who builds and maintains a life worth coveting, but they only ever sell you on the maintenance angle.  Some examples:

• Need a trip to the Plastic Surgeon for some Botox injections?  Well, that’s just routine maintenance, right? 
• Your highlights are beginning to show roots? ”Well, you have to be prepared to maintain them?” your stylist says. 
• A household that’s anything but clean or orderly? Try to get into the habit of doing a few chores every day to avoid an avalanche of household maintenance on the weekends.
• Your husband or partner isn’t staying in touch with family so they all reach out to you?  That’s a clear-cut case of woman in the role of maintaining good familial relationships. 
• Is your sex life on the skids?  Well, you better do something to maintain the passion and keep his interest, lest a better maintained woman come along and snatch your builder from you. 

Are you tired yet?  I know I’m exhausted.  With all the maintenance work we women are told to we need to do, who has the time or energy to go around building anything?   In fact, with maintenance being so much effort and affording so much female commiseration, it’s easy to see how we allow ourselves to be satisfied or even fooled into believing it’s the more powerful and glorious of the two options.  In fact, women who throw off maintenance role conventions are often trash-talked by other women - referred to as ”bitches” for embracing their ambition.  See?  It’s complicated.  It’s no wonder we relegate ourselves to the maintenance worker class.   It seems like the much smarter and less risky thing to do, doesn’t it? 

I’m sure there are many women who aren’t fooled by the media messages and who aren’t disparaged publicly or privately for their ability to build and maintain.  I know there are men who are much happier maintaining than they are building and will happily take the heat for all the innuendo about their manliness.  But imagine what we could all do if we could find a way to cast aside the myths and the fears?  Maybe we could build and maintain a future where building and maintaining were appreciated equally and weren’t implicit gender identifiers.   Maybe together we can kick the big, pink elephant out of one corner of the room so we can focus on all the other nooks and crannies where darker issues lurk.

As I was walking into a stunningly filthy restaurant bathroom with my children several weeks ago, between the fellow patron who hogged the only working sink to floss her teeth while a line formed behind her and the woman who had her cell phone set to “speaker phone” so we could all hear every little detail of her personal life, it occurred to me that we women may need Emily Post, or some other mannerly maven to go public with all of the other, lesser known rules of restroom etiquette. Rules such as:

• Never use the handicap stall unless you’re disabled or have small children. I cannot stress this enough! Often, these are the only stalls with diapering tables and more importantly, they are the only stalls large enough to accomodate one mom and two active preschoolers for whom going potty is still a really new & exciting adventure.
• If there are multiple stalls available, try to leave an empty stall between you and your neighbor. I don’t need to have a Sen. Larry Craig restroom moment with you. Respect my personal space, please.
• Don’t take the last piece of TP and then not tell the next woman entering the stall after you that she’s high & dry. That’s just rude.
• Wipe around the sink area with a towel when you’re done, please. No one wants to drop their handbag into a gooey, soapy cesspool.
• Don’t chat on your cell phone while going to the bathroom. I don’t care how quiet, efficient, cute or funny you think you’re being – it’s just tacky. If you’re going to do that, please keep the speaker phone setting off. And, by all means, don’t jokingly reveal what you’re doing to the poor sucker who’s trapped on the phone with you and must now go about their business with a mental image of you doing your business. Some things are just sacred, people – have some dignity & self-respect!
• Always flush. A public restroom is not the time for you to adhere to the “if it’s brown flush it down/if it’s yellow, let it mellow” rule. I don’t care if it’s #1 or #2, it’s gotta go before I do.
• Sadly, public restroom visits may be my only zen moment of the day as a working mother. It’s not a time when I want friendly strangers to strike up a conversation with me. In any other setting, I’m quite sociable, but carrying on a conversation while I’m trying to make is just a little weird.
• Refrain from vocalizing comments such as, “Crap. Aunt Flow’s here. Guess I won’t be getting laid tonight…”, or “Whoa! That’s it. No more bean burritos for me.” Ew. T-M-I, people…

We women like to think of ourselves as exemplifying good manners since, as care takers, we’re so often teaching them to others. But our dirty little secret is that, behind closed doors, we could all use a reminder that the occasional courtesy flush doesn’t give us the right to flush courtesy down the crapper.

I hate to jump onto an already crowded bandwagon here – and I know that I’m breaking my no politics policy yet again – but WTF is going on with the media coverage of last night’s VP debate?

In watching the post-debate coverage, I couldn’t get over how analyst after analyst kept giving Gov. Palin credit for her “spunk” and her “tenacity” in the face of Joe Biden. Shockingly to me, most of these analysts called the debate a “draw”. A draw? Did I miss something? I thought Biden was eloquent and on point, and Palin was scripted, disjointed and rambling. In fact, she rarely directly responded to questions, instead going to her comfort zone remarks of, “John McCain and I are mavericks…” or, “How about energy? As Governor of Alaska, I took on the big oil companies…”.

With regards to her stance on foreign policy – which consisted mostly of NOT addressing the failed Bush Doctrine – I even heard one pundit on the BBC World News say that, “Palin couldn’t be expected to know anything about foreign policy so the fact that this was her weakest area in the debate is no big surprise.”

Excuse me? Is is just me, or doesn’t that remark smack of old fashioned “Good job, honey! (pat on the fanny)” male condecension? If a male candidate had given such an amatuerish, trite, phony folksy, scripted performance during the debate, wouldn’t he have been eviscerated by the media rather than congratulated for making a good show of it? Is it more patronizing to heap praise on an unqualified woman’s delivery than it is to question her lack of substance?