 Me and my summer horse, Califa. Feeling powerful! So what’s the deal with women and power? I know. This is not a new question. But it’s like I just woke up after a very, very long, Rip Van Winkle kind-of-nap and I realized, after six decades of being a female on this planet that I am still woefullly confused and astonishingly muddled about power, particularly feminine power. Like, what other so-called feminist argued against the Pussyhat Project of the Woman's March Washington on account of its likely “unintended consequences.”
My life experience has created on the one hand, a raging skeptic and, on the other, an enchanted fairy-like being to whom everything just falls magically into place. In other words, there have really been no observable causes and effects in my life when it comes to asserting my so-called power. I've either tried too hard and fallen flat or I've put down my shovel and struck gold. So there it is - I believe in Luck and Chance and a lovable Creator with a Mood Disorder. I'm still working on believing in my own power. So what does this have to do with horses and what do horses have to do with women and power? Some of you might recall Freud's stupendously stupid theory about girls and penis envy. He claimed that little girls’ were infatuated with horses because they unconsciously thought the horse was an extension of their absent phallus. But any blind person can see that just as many boys have a passion for horses as girls do (see Mohammed, Alexander the Great, King Richard III etc.). Freud's theory just confirms that, once again, that it was Freud’s obsession with the penis, and not the girls', that caused the envy. Horses: The Power Archetype Horses have been the symbol of power for both patriarchy and matriarchy for centuries. Remember the Amazons who rode astride their Greek steeds and shot terror into the hearts of any man who would cross them. Freud would have run for his life, shielding his "obsession." But somehow, when men got a hold of the saddle and turned it sideways, women were prohibited from riding because they were straitjacketed in corsets. Patriarchy took a giant pace forward. Notwithstanding lords and dukes pranced around on their ponies in tights. I wonder what Sigmund would have said to that. (It would be a fascinating study to trace the suffragette movement and male oppression in fashion and horses.) As for my endlessly fascinating struggle with my power, I'm still working on that Woman in the Mirror. Like Michael Jackson (God Rest His Soul) sang, I ask myself to change my ways and the one recurring response I get is to "Connect With the Divine Feminine" in me. In other words - make peace with my True Mother- Mother Earth- the one those Amazons worshipped and fought for and with. Of course, there is Power in Numbers, as unleashed in the Women's March in Washington, but what's come of it? Where did everybody go? Mother, Father: First Lessons of Power For me, as an individual woman, having power (or not) has been like having a soccer ball for a head and being kicked around a field by two opposing teams. To talk about the leaders of those two teams, I have to get really personal and talk about my biological mother, Captain, Team A. After all, the personal is the universal and she was the captain of one of those teams. She prided herself in being a feminist in Greenwich Village right after World War Two. She was a serious writer who had no time for dogma or convention, be it religious, political or social. She was a free-spirited, strong-minded, determined woman who smoked whatever she chose to, associated with whomever she wanted and to whatever degree of closeness she chose and kept her priorities squarely on the page. Then she met my Dad- a hard-drinking, drop-dead handsome officer fresh-back-from-the South Pacific who produced radio shows before the War and composed love songs for my mother on the piano. Within weeks, they were living together. Then after a few years, on a whim, they drove to Virginia Beach and eloped. Before long, my mother was sitting on a park bench in Washington Square Park reading Ezra Pound while her two little boys played on the swings. City-life seemed idyllic and suited my parents well. Until The Mistake. My mother graciously said that I was “the best mistake they ever made.” But Child #3 forced them out to the suburbs and my mother started looking longingly across the Hudson River back at Manhattan. Family lore has it that she almost jumped off the unfinished end of the Tappan Zee Bridge out of desperation. I’m glad she changed her mind. But it doesn’t surprise me that the memoir she wrote in her 80’s ended in the Village, before she met my father or had a family. Mommies' Convo Sparks Feminist Inspiration All was not lost in town where I was born. I happened to go to nursery school with Betty Freidan’s daughter. One day, while my mother and Betty were waiting for our nursery school to let out, my mother, (then, Marian Castleman), shared something she had discovered that morning in the library. On a hunch, my mother had compared popular women's magazine before and after the War and discovered, as she had suspected, that prior to the war, heroines were strong and independent like Rosie the Riveter. After the War, however, "Susie Homemaker" became the paragon of virtue for every American woman. According to my mother, Betty exclaimed that she had just been commissioned to write a book about depression among suburban women but she was casting about to find a way to prove it. My mother's tidbit of information gave her a direction. That brief conversation between two housewives on the steps of a nursery school helped launch one of the most important classics in the Women's Movement in The Feminine Mystique. (My mother, Marian Skedgell, is recognized for her contribution in the “Acknowledgements” of that same book.) To Be Continued......... © Copyright 2018 by Kristen Skedgell. All rights reserved. |
