Sugar and Spice and Occasionally Nice
The other day I overheard my four year-old daughter chanting a few lines from a familiar nursery rhyme: “sugar and spice and everything nice; that’s what little girls are made of.” I must have heard that line hundreds of times throughout my childhood, as I’m sure most English-speaking people have. What kind of an impression does this leave on us and our understanding of what it means to be female?
Photo by Amy Treasure
It’s no wonder women are constantly faced with the feeling that we have to be perfect all the time. We’re expected to be highly skilled super-achievers in the workplace AND loving and nurturing mothers AND flawless homemakers, hostesses, and wives. It’s exhausting, and very few, if any, of us can do all of it well all of the time.
I have moments of rage against the machine that put this expectation of perfection upon my gender. But, I do have to ask myself: why do we accept it? Who said we have to accept what is handed to us in nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and glossy magazines? Who is prodding us to do more, sleep less, feel guilty, and compare ourselves to impossible standards? We are; that’s who. We accept these standards, and we allow ourselves to get sucked into the idea that we should be perfect. In doing so, we perpetuate these unreasonable and unrealistic expectations that society seems to have of us. Sometimes we can be our own worst enemy.
What if we were to just reject perfection? Reject the attempt to live up to impossible standards? Reject the iconography of the high-powered boss lady, the endlessly patient and nurturing mother, the immaculate homemaker, the hot-but-not-too-hot wife?
Here’s a confession: I have never liked the work/life balance conversation, and if it were up to me I would avoid it at all costs. It just makes me mad, really. It’s one more thing women are expected to add to our ever-growing checklist of things we should excel at — one more thing that sets us up for failure.
But, of course, I can’t avoid this conversation; it’s everywhere, especially when you have a job like mine. Turns out that’s a good thing because Tide Risers UnstickHer sessions that have been focused on the work/life balance conversation have taught me quite a lot. Here’s a few things I’ve learned from these sessions:
1. There’s no such thing as work/life balance.
Gerry Laybourne, a woman I admire greatly, spoke with us about the search for passion, not perfection. She told us that there are only two types of professionals who should be concerned with the search for balance: ballerinas and yogis. It was such a relief for me to hear someone with the amount of remarkable achievements under her belt as well as loving and close family life that Gerry has. I resolved at that moment to release myself from the search for balance, and instead focus on the things I’m passionate about. That has meant that I sometimes work too much and see my kids too little, and sometimes my work product isn’t as good as I’d like because I’m caught up in family life. So be it: work/life balance is another impossible standard in and of itself.
2. Things usually only look perfect.
I feel like I can say this with real confidence, as I believe I may be someone who knows how to make things look well-balanced and under control. I know this because quite often people, mostly women, ask me how I do it ‘all.’ So I’m going to tell you a few things you won’t find on my highly-curated Instagram page: my house is a mess right now. There’s dust everywhere from some work we’re having done, the kids’ toys are cluttering the corners of my office, I can’t remember the last time I did laundry, and I can’t find one single pair of matching socks. Sometimes I forget which city my husband is in. I’m pretty sure I’ve been blowing off a good friend for some time now, and I just have not figured out when to get a phone call out to her. Have my kids eaten vegetables this week? I’m really not sure. But you won't see any of this in my social media. It won't show up when I’m leading a workshop or giving a talk. I’m quite skilled, as many of you probably are, at hiding all of that mess. This skill, however, is one way we ourselves fuel the impossible standards.
3. We can overcome this.
Two weeks ago our New York City UnstickHer session focused on this conversation, as well as an exploration of well-being and self-care. The session featured a fascinating panel discussion with Tide Risers Wendy Lee, Miranda Magagnini, and Stephanie Johnson. They each spoke eloquently and from the heart about their journeys to find balance in their lives and they shared with us some really difficult times when balance was nowhere to be found. These three fantastically talented, exceptionally hard-working, tremendously accomplished women have all fought their battles with the pressures of perfection, and have come out of those battles victorious and stronger than before.
I’m not saying I have won the battle to reject the perfection — the sugar and spice and everything nice — that is imposed upon women. I’m still very much engaged in talking myself out of living up to impossible standards. What gives me strength, however, is having conversations with other Tide Risers about this and knowing they are dealing with the same thing. What gives me hope is seeing women of glamour and prestige stand up without makeup and uplift other women with whom they are supposed to be in competition. What gives me motivation is working to build a future for my daughters that enables them to be more into snips and snails and puppy dog tails if they want to be.