Wanted: Role Models

Posted by
Jess

From our original archives! Please forgive any old links and formatting quirks.

I was REALLY hoping to stay away from all this Sandra Bullock drama. The Oscar Love Curse, the cheating husband, the dirty sexts, the creepy Nazi photos…the tabloids seem to be doing a thorough enough job of covering every gory detail of the story. But now that The New York Times’s David Brooks is weighing in? I’m powerless to resist!

Attempting to place Sandra’s romantic tragedy in a broader context, Brooks talks about “The Sandra Bullock Trade” and asks readers, “Would you exchange a tremendous professional triumph for a severe personal blow?” And although Brooks isn’t blaming Sandra for what happened to her, here it is again – that traditional assumption that success and love are at odds with each other, that we might eventually have to choose or trade one for the other, that we can’t realistically hope to have it all. At least not as women.

I remember hearing the same thing (in not so many words, of course) at a “Work-Life Balance” panel that I attended as a Harvard undergrad. While the female panelists offered helpful tips about family-friendly companies or the unexpected perks of being older and single, none of them were able to stand up and proudly proclaim that they had discovered the secret to getting everything they had ever wanted in life. The various compromises they had made were severe. It was a bit of a disappointment for us open-eyed, open-hearted girls in the audience, to say the least.

And now we have Sandra. For a moment there – and really, it only lasted for the quickest and slightest of moments – she actually seemed to have it all. We believed that she had somehow avoided the tradeoff that becomes inevitable in so many women’s lives. She was enjoying all of the success, fame and respect that she had been working for her entire life. She had a great husband who she truly loved, as she enthusiastically gushed at every available opportunity. He was a fixture on the red carpet with her, holding her umbrella, praising her talent, and looking teary-eyed when she won award after award. She even had close relationships with his children and, by every account, cared for them as her own. She had everything that she could have wanted (except for maybe world peace, as Miss Congeniality might note).

And then, suddenly and shockingly, it all came crashing down. We are now being reminded that it was silly of us to look up to Sandra and see her as an example of a woman who could be at the pinnacles of both her career and her personal life at the same time. Because really, is that possible? As empowered Millennial women, we believe that we can have it all, and we can’t help but search for role models in the generations above us. But who is there? Who can show us how to make decisions and structure our lives to reach fulfillment in every way?

Saying this makes me feel like a downer, but so be it. I’m drawing a blank.

Is there anyone out there who can be our role model??