COSMIC GIRL

The modern history of women can be summed up in three sentences:

Women demand equality.

Girls just want to have fun.

Ladies want to loll about.

Hillary Rodman Clinton remains a go-getter, clambering up the ladder, seeking gender equity, trying to shed the title she scorns.

But others are celebrating the lady-chic, indulging in the old fashioned dress and lanquid behavior that predated the hard-charging feminism.

Women want to be rescued.

Women want to flirt.

Women want to shop til they drop.

Women want to get married, stay home and be taken care of..

The new female role model celebrated in women's magazines are socialites and debutantes, Palm Beach matrons and Park Avenue Princesses.

Thiry five years of striving have tuckered women out. "You go girl!" has been downshifted to "you go lie down, girl!"

What an arc: from powder puffs to empowerment to powder puffs.

Women who used to abhor the Mommy track now pray for it.

If twenty somethings are tired, think about how forty-somethings are dragging.

Five years ago, I would often hear women say they fantasize about having a wife: somebody to do the shopping, cooking, carpooling, so they could focus on work.

Now the fantasy is more retro: they just want to be the wife.

Many women I know now, who once disdained their mothers' lifestyles, no longer see their lives as boring and indulgent. Now they look back with a tad of longing.

The other night, I was watching the dvd series of SEX IN THE CITY, and the ladies were discussing the appeal of firemen.

"It's because women really just want to be rescued", says Charlotte. I'm sorry, but I've been dating since I was fifteen. I'm exhausted. Where is he?"

There it was the sentence independent single women in their thirties are never supposed to think, let alone speak.

So, ladies, there you have it: Shop. Eat shrimp cocktail. Flirt. Get rescued. The new definition of Having It All.

Excuse me....while I burn my Cosmopolitan...And Puke!!!!!!!!!!!!

MS.KOOLTHANG

Why did I never get married? It's a question that occupies a permanent space in my mind. I have never been married which often surprises people I meet. I consider myself a somewhat educated woman, I'm cosmopolitian, responsible and self sufficient. I consider myself a pretty well rounded grounded woman who grew up in a loving home.

So why didn't it ever happen for me? I don't know. ..I've never been anti marriage..contrary to poplular belief I've always privately seen myself with a husband and maybe even a child..It's always floated around in my head just not at the forfront of it..With some reflection over the past few months..I guess it's a combination of high expectations or maybe just plain bad luck...that's a family trait I suppose.

I was never and will never be willing to "settle". I wanted a husband who is my equal, whom I'm compatiable with, and whom I can love and respect with all-my whole heart. As I would expect him to do with me...I never thought this a impossible task..Many women find their MR. RIGHT...don't mistake me...Not MISTER RIGHT!! but the guy they can live with and maybe be Satisfied-enough with to make a family.

But it never happened for me. Not with the men I've met.

Now the problem: Most of the time I find contentment with myself..who I believe I am and who maybe I was meant to be. And I'm fine with it. Maybe even proud of it. But there are those times as I grow older, particulary when I'm around family situations. That I look at the future and it seems empty and desolute. And the sadness can run very deep for me. I sometimes feel the need to withdraw and isolate myself from friends and family who have families. Because I can feel like the odd one out, the pitied one.

There are days where I feel kinda like the train has left the station and I'm still on the platform. Feeling adrift, purposeless and like my life is already finished. When it has barely even started. But then I'm reminded that maybe this whole time I've been after something else. something not soo typical. Maybe I gave something up for something more important to me. Maybe I'm paying the cost of being true to myself. And following my own path..A different path but a no less worthy one.

I don't have the answers and I suspect if I did...I would be analyzing and overanlyzing them. Cause that's what I do...I also suspect if I did...I'd be alot more bored with myself....so time marches on...and so do I!!!!!

WHO MARRIED UP: THE WOMEN OR THE MEN

Once upon a time, Cinderella fell out of favor.

In the 70's, feminists found her insipid, waiting in the ashes for her prince. But they didn't give her enough credit.

Teaming with the spirit of her dead mother, Cinderella cleverly rescues herself from servitude. Conjures up her own glittery makeover then saves the prince from the same torment she endured living with her hedious stepsisters.

The Grimms' version doesn't end with any Disneyesque pablum about Happily Ever After. It finsihes with a gory Hitchcockian wedding scence feauturing two vengeful birds from the grave of Cinderella's mother: as the bridal party leaves church, the white dove's fly from Cinderella's shoulders to pluck out the eyes of the wicked stepsisters.

Those unsisterly sisters messed with the wrong girl.

In real life, however, many of our Cinderella brides have taken tragic turns, from Jackie Kennedy to Grace Kelly to Carolyn Bessette to the doe-eyed Diana Spencer.

Yet the power of the fairy tale was vividly illustrated once more with the luminous wedding of comely commoner Kate Middleton to a charming Prince William, and a hypnotic new film adaptation of " Jane Eyre", Charlotte Bronte" gothic take on the Cinderella story.

The enduring fable is a female version of " The Odyssey". Our herione, starting with a family disadvantage, facing hypocrises, cruelities and obstacles, on a periolous journey to a thrilling new world, and uses her wits and integrity to triumph.

The new christened Duchess of Cambridge only had to rise above a middle-class background, the hydra-headed press beast, and Will's understandable hesitation about marriage.

But her task is herculean: to help save a stiff-necked monarchy sent into a shame spiral by Diana's humilation's and confessions.

A central element of Cinderella's, Jane Eyre, and Charolette Bronte' herself was a mystical connection to a mother who died too young. And that certainly was present at Westminister Abbey, but this time the bride lamented the mother-in-law she would never know.

Jane Eyre is not as lovely as Kate Middleton. Charlotte Bronte,' who never felt attractive herself, wanted to show her sisters that a plain herione could be as compelling as a beautiful one.

Poor little Jane also had a wedding, wearing a beautiful white dress and veil, to the wealthy man of her dreams. When the wedding is shattered by the news that there is already a Mrs. Rochester, Jane listens to her former master's anguished explanation about his mad, vamparished wife in the attic.

He begs her to stay and be " my comforter, my rescuer." When a dazed Jayne goes to bed, she looks out the window and sees the moon start to blaze as if " a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthwind. It gazed and gazed on me. It whispered in my heart, ' my daughter, flee temptation."

Jane answers," Mother, I will." picks up her slippers and flees Thornfield Hall.

In the end, after Rochester has been widowed and mutilated for his sins, Jane returns. She rescues her dark prince as he recues her.

When Rochester first meets Jane, he calls her a " curious" sort of caged bird. " a vivid, restless, resolute" one.

When she returns and sees him blind, with one hand gone, she describes him as a " caged, eagle whose gold-ringed eyes cruelety has extinguished."

Now on a footing of equality, because she has inherited money, and is less dependent on him, and he has lost his mansion and sight and is more dependent on her, they release each other from their cages.

Reader, she marries him. It's a bare-boned ceremony with only a parson and clerk present. There's no coach or tiara. But it' s very much a Cinderella ending.