American Woman

The Modern Myth of Everything

Definition: female
Synonyms: Mrs., babe, bird, bride, broad, chick, chicken, companion, dame, debutante, doll, gal, gentlewoman, girl, girlfriend, inamorata, kitten, lady, lass, love, lover, maid, maiden, mama, mate, matron, miss, mistress, moll, nymph, old lady, paramour, partner, pigeon, rib, she, skirt, spinster, spouse, squaw, sweetheart, tomato, tootsie, virgin, wife

This morning, as the rain spits against my window, and I see myself reflected, fuzzy and bleary eyed in the streaked panes, I think that today might be the day that I stop caring. That today it won't matter what the ads say, what everyone else is wearing, doing, eating. I can't possibly be interested in what it means to be "feminine" in the eyes of strangers. I am awake. I am chronically pawing through my closets in search of something that will better express my inner self. Something that will hide the curves and show off my personality. This is not what I care to think of at the moment. Instead, I pick up the cat. Soft and red against my chest, she doesn't care what I look like, doesn't care if I wear the right perfume, the newest in sling back heels. The idea of the judgeless animal companion is an old one, but I'm using it anyway since I like my cat so much. I am making coffee, I will have one of those morning moments I see perfectly put together women having in their perfectly put together kitchens. The best part of waking up right? The cat sits, content I think, purring, burrowed into my lap, and I sit, staring at the computer screen. Argument of definition. Title page. Black against white and what does it mean to be and I don't know, I'm not thinking clearly. To answer this question might take more than I have; because I have been asking what does it mean to be a woman and I don't know yet.

I hear that to be a woman I need to be sugary sweet, hard as a rock, a mother, a go getter, a seeker of sales, a knower of all things domestic. The portrait of the American woman painted across the public imagination leads me to believe that if we are successful it is because we managed to balance all of these identities at once; that we have managed somehow to be the perfect mother, perfect employee, perfect shoulder to cry on.

I hear what I need is to have a bustling social life and the newest gadgets to keep me connected. I am sitting here in front of my computer, my brand new Hewlett Packard. My cell phone is

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