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!!!!!!!!!!!!
