I'm sure a lot of you out there are familiar with the conundrum of the modern feminist experience: the more successful a woman is --> the smaller her dating pool is --> the less likely she is to find a man --> which for many women is also a strong element of success --> which makes the point of being a feminist (read: successful woman) moot.
If that was too complicated, just watch any "Sex and the City" episode and that should get you up to speed.
Maureen Dowd even wrote a book about how feminism is undoing itself because many modern women would prefer the 1950's status quo.
More importantly, why am I at all interested in feminism at all?
Here is the source of my morbid fascination with feminism...
My mother was in all sorts of female empowerment groups in the early 70s. She was an Indian Health Nurse (the only health care on an entire reservation) when she was 22 where she would explain to Indian women in Cree that they didn't have to be just squaws and that they should start practicing birth control and take control of their lives. While this makes for an interesting woman, it also makes for a bizarre mother. When I was 12, I remember calling a woman a "chick" and getting a stern lecture from my mother about the equality of the sexes.
Then my mother stopped working for the government and opened up her own business. Slowly, government bureaucracy and shiftless employees drove her to the brink of madness. That's right, she began listening to conservative talk radio. She claimed to be older and wiser but crazy things would come out of her mouth like, "How would you like to have been adopted by a couple of homosexuals. That should be illegal." Now, instead of getting lectures about women's equality I have to listen to, "You better do right by that girl. A woman has to depend on a man," and "A man's life is empty without the direction a woman provides from the home." The woman who once rode in an elevator with the prime minister of Canada and lectured him about women's rights would now prefer to listening to her idol, Dr. Laura Schlesinger.
Someone needs to tell Maureen Dowd that feminism has already come full circle. It has a perm, a dog named "Princess" and three boys, one of whom has a blog.
