Todays womanhood is caught in a trap of its own making or what we say own petard. It is female emancipation that has put us on diets and treadmills, consider that the more economic and political power women have acquired, the fewer clothes we have worn,the fewer clothes, the less friendly concealment. That is why our bodies, themselves, have come to be of such supreme and exasperating importance.Say what you will about corsets, they at least gave every woman a waist and made a pleasing contrast with zaftig hips. In olden days, the contours of one's calves, let alone one's thighs, mattered nor at all, for they were veiled in sumptuous layers of skirting. Rich or poor, chunky or sylphlike, all women used to wear garb which conveyed femininity whilst concealing womanhood's more problematic hip-thigh-buttock zone. Not only were women's pillowy backsides hidden from male eyes, they were also hidden from those of their owners. And if you can't see your thighs, why would you worry about them? My guess is that most women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries passed their whole lives without once scrutinizing their cellulite.
Today women make more money, and are courted more assiduously than ever in history by politicians,though less assiduously by men. Women govern, run companies, adjudicate lawsuits. So why is it that from dressing rooms across the English-speaking world comes the querulous cry: "Do these pants make me look fat?"It is a fract that the woman problem arises not from lack of freedom but because of it.
No one has ever led a life with so many private options in it as the modern enlightened woman. It is nor surprising that she is often confused and restless and vulnerable to a lot of abstract notions about what she should be doing. It is not surprising that the family appears, for the moment, to be a highly unstable institution. The family will not in the end, remain unstable for long. The nuclear family is the most useful invention of the human spirit, a means by which men and women and their children can negotiate a tolerable settlement of their respective, very different needs.
Still then how are we to get along in the meantime as we need desperately to understand what is truly going on with us and to be as honest about it as possible. A proper feminism would result in a movement that spoke to women not about their grievances but about their new condition of freedom. It would be saying to them not, "You are entitled to complain" but rather, "Your difficulty is also your opportunity. Having an high heart will make you win over the situation.
