Note to Self -- Sexing the Political: A journal of Third Wave Feminists on Sexuality

note to self

portrait of a thirty-year old woman

On February 8th, 2001, an episode of Friends aired that created a hearty and robust discussion amongst my gang of friends. Rachel turned thirty. And she was pissed. So pissed in fact, that she refused to come out of her bedroom unless cajoled by chocolate chip pancakes.

Well … fine. Having recently made the cavernous leap to the fourth decade of my life, I readily admit to abrupt fits of youthful behavior: my pants are now a little baggier, my shoes a little chunkier, and my eye shadow a little more glittery. I occasionally utter the menacing threat: "I’d kill any of you in a millisecond to be twenty-nine again." And I most certainly did pierce something on the day I bid adieu to my lingering youth. So I’m a cliché. So what? Who among us hasn’t raged against the sweet decade’s demise? Ye without piercings cast the first stone.

Rachel, in order to combat the anxiety of turning thirty, does what any socially traumatized woman would do; she works out her life backwards. You know how it goes: if you want so many kids by the time you're such and such an age, and you want to be married so long before you have the first one, and you want to be engaged for this length of time before the wedding, etc., etc. And then she realizes, much to her dismay, that thirty is the age at which she must be with the person she wants to marry. So her twenty-four-year old, prettier-than-she-is boyfriend is politely told to hit the bricks. Her reason? She is too old to just have "fun." And "fun" is unambiguously interpreted as "too old to hang out with a guy unless it smells like marriage."

Fine Rachel. Be that way. If you want to pass up adoring, fun-loving, sexy, kindness then that is certainly your misguided prerogative, but there is something about this representation that troubles me. Rachel perpetuates the ugly myth that women of a certain age just want to get married – that thirty demarcates the end of pleasure for pleasure’s sake and begins the decade of professional partner-hunting.

I asked around and discovered that many thirty-year old women do indeed feel a pressure to be in "serious," marriage-type relationships. "What’s the point otherwise," one friend said. "I’m not getting any younger." Indeed. Who is?

These feelings of thirty-something panic are predicated on a number of issues. Sure the biological clock is a reality. Sure having babies becomes a little harder and riskier as our bodies age. And sure, having a partner to help out with the work would make things easier. But to see such a representation so vividly and drastically exposed on a mainstream television show smacked of antifeminist backlash. Are we still at the stage of our history where a thirty-year old woman is a done-like-dinner spinster lady?

Here’s what I’m thinking. We don’t need any more representations of the thirty-something freak-woman who freaks out because her freaking life has not gone according to her freaking plan. News flash: nobody’s life goes according to plan. As it turns out, the plan is what keeps us from enjoying our lives.

In this new feminist landscape, young women have the power to live any way they choose. So wouldn’t it be nice to see some alternative representations of young women who give voice to various lifestyles? Must the single-is-bad scenario continue to play ad infinitum? Must marriage be the only choice we have? Hey, I’m not asking for the moon here, just a nice, healthy balance in the way young women are represented in popular culture. Until then, young women everywhere in North America will continue to be subjected to Rachelesque tantrums of cartoonish proportions. Bring on a variety of options, I say! And bring it on quick.

Note to self: find new show to watch on Thursday nights and find twenty-four-year old to pursue relationship characterized by that dainty yet functional phrase: "no strings attached." ASAP.

Each month Shauna will explore the ways in which young women are depicted in the realm of the popular, from tv to film to videos to computer animation, etc. She will explore less talked-about representations of young women. While Buffy, Xena, and Sabrina are all intriguing personalities, her goal would be to explore some of the less obvious, more subtle portrayals of twenty- and thirty-something women.