the CHERRY tree: Integration of S.B.

So much has changed since 1979. For starters, I’m like twelve times heavier and three times as long! Not to mention the annihilation of the nuclear family, the disappearance of the modest girl as well as the search for something more than resources: i.e. food, clothing, shelter. Modern man finds himself in search of something he took for granted for most of his human existence: meaning.

And modern woman fights for the right to be equal to her male companion, to have her pronoun as the generic form of human, or at least to be recognized as part of the human race.

But what is it we really want? To be less than? To be something we are not? To leave behind the complications of being a woman and jump on Dick and Harry’s boat? To tell the guy’s what losers they are? They’ve been telling us since the beginning of time.

Women claim to have surpassed the status of their grandmothers. They see their predecessors as softies who never fought for their independence like modern girls. They fail to see how their fight for their families was in fact a fight for themselves. They fail to see how the current rebellion against everything and for nothing is a clumsy waste of resources, a mistake their grandmothers would not afford.

And in the irony of the tornado we find ourselves spinning in, women have in fact become their very own worst enemies, attacking themselves first and each other next. Practically forgetting about the boys altogether until he becomes the one who leaves one for another one.

Some might argue the world has changed too quickly in the last century, especially the last several decades, and that a book about women from three or four decades ago is too out of touch with modern women. I would argue, first and foremost, “Where IS Modern Woman?!?!?!?” and secondly, the complicities of modern times make it necessary to dig deeper to our roots, our core, our beginnings.

Fairytale

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was always my favorite movie. However, despite my love for Aurora and her funny fairy godmothers, the animated child’s film still managed to spook me, always at the same point in the movie, always under the same circumstance. I watched this movie so often several times I fell asleep mid-way only to be awoken by creepy music and jilted by the sight of Aurora climbing the tower under the dim green lights of sinister magic. And as I awoke from my peaceful nap I entered a new world, a world changed from the one I left. I no longer lay on the couch separated from the movie in the T.V, but instead found myself floating inside Aurora’s world, Aurora’s world closing in around me, and all along, Aurora asleep and out of control.

Dirt & Wine

The average American girl has changed so much since the 70s. Surely, feminist scholars of that era would have never foreseen the trajectory of the American women, which would land her in a world of so-called “sexual freedom,” of imaginary “independence,” basically a world where what you see is not at all what you get. Liberation is no longer something noble to fight for, but rather an expected feat that every girl claims to have mastered by the time they are 20, if not 16. Feminine attitude has changed from soft and submissive to hard and aggressive. But, that is only how it seems. The voices may have risen but when the heat rises, the rebels without a cause often settle into old scripts, old patterns, old positions.

While our child at heart knows we are equal to, if not surpassing, our male counterparts in potential, our grown ego isn’t sure where that potential lies. No one told little Sally about the tentacles of feminine biology that would overcome her when her time came. They failed to mention the irrational emotional rollercoaster that was waiting for us. They told us we were just as good as the boys, just as smart as the boys, just as capable as the boys, but they forgot to tell us we would have to be much more if we wanted to compete with the boys on their field. They forgot to tell us how impossible it would be to live up to the expectations they were planting in our young, malleable minds. Telling us would have been nothing more than motivation for every American girl to overthrow the powers that be, and never take no for an answer.

So, while many feminists of older generations look at us younger girls with scorn and distaste, disbelief at what we have done with all they have fought for, all they have given us, all we have that they never did, they forget to look at the bigger picture. They took their eye off the ball, the ball of fate and time and old woven webs, and assumed modern girls were simply not one of their kind. The current era is nothing more than an effect of an earlier era which caused our current conditions, as well as our current state of mind. Sleeping Beauty was awoken with a jolt and thousands of years of misogyny was put on the shoulders of children to turn it all around. And not all children, just female children. We’re sorry we didn’t see the tidal wave coming soon enough to, what, mmm… defeat it, but we were still trying to find our footing. Maybe next time tiger.