Role model

Thank you, lovely Bloggy Friends, for being with me through my insecurities.

Over the past few months, I've thought it best to keep blogging, because then, at least, I am writing. And that is better than not writing. Then occasionally, just occasionally, I write a post and decide not to publish it, but to keep it for my book. So there are just a very few pages written. A very few. But that seems to be where a lot of bloggers are, if your comments are anything to go by, and it's always good to know you're not alone. Thank you.

9-yo asked me a little while ago, about jobs and being a mum. I don't know what prompted the question. I didn't want to get too heavy about it all - she's only 9 - but I said that it seems that most women have to make choices that men don't have to make in quite the same way. I said that you don't have to have children, but if you do, you either have to look after them, or have someone else do it. I said that it was super-fun and very wonderful to be able to do it yourself, but that did mean you couldn't always be concentrating on other things. I said that anyway, it might all have changed a bit by the time she's grown up, but probably not, and she will have choices to make, but it will be ok. You just do the best you can.

She thought about it for a few seconds, and then replied,

"I think I'll have children, and then I'll chillax and get a dog".

So I'm a role model... of some kind?

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It's a MAD dad world

I am guest blogging today over at Fertile Feminism.

When she addressed the English troops at Tilbury, Queen Elizabeth I inspired them with a speech that began:

"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too".

I'd like to say something similar. I know I have the body of a trailing spouse and a stay at home mum; but I have the heart and stomach of a feminist... I suppose I could add ...and a feminist of England too, which would sound very splendid, but I'm not quite sure what it would mean.

Feminism has a bad press, but honestly, how can a woman NOT be a feminist. All it means, when it boils down to it, is that you are someone who believes that women are equal to men, and should have the same rights and opportunities as men to make of themselves what they want. I flinch a little, if I see a reference in the mummy blogging world to mums who have jobs as being 'good role models' for their children. Yes, I suppose I'm a little defensive. We stay at home mums can't help it, from time to time. But I feel I might just be a 'good role model' for my children, because I chose not to work when they were little, and because I'm grappling now with the consequences of that (which I foresaw, incidentally).

I sense this is turning into a blog post in its own right, when all I wanted to do was to send you over to Fertile Feminism. It's a website that was set up by Noble Savage (she who has been blogging since 2005), and you can read about its aims here. For me, reading this blog is the way I keep a small toe dipped in feminist water. So I'll stop now, and if you want to see me sporting my feminist garb, head on over.

It's a post about why there are so many Daddy blogs in the finalists of the MADs awards.

It all comes out in the wash

As you know, I’ve been thinking recently about feminism, and whether it’s aliver and weller in Britain or America. Of course trying to answer that question is rather a hopeless cause. How could I possibly assess what life is like for 300 million people this side of the Pond, or for 60 million the other? This is something you get used to, as an expat. People ask you questions beginning “Do Americans…?” or “Do the English…?” and you find yourself trying to make an assessment of an entire culture, its history, philosophy and traditions, from your own very small amount of personal experience and knowledge.

I read blogs written by Brits in America, and by Americans in Britain. One thing I love is that whatever opinion you read in one, you will find it contradicted in the other. I know that whenever I write a reflection on life in America, someone in Britain will read it and think “No, no, no! That’s exactly what it’s like HERE.” It’s all part of the fun.

Take a big issue like feminism. There are American bloggers who feel strongly that Britain is so backward. There are British bloggers who think that America is way behind.

What about social habits? I read recently that British people don’t wash their hands after using the loo/restroom. Which is odd, because I have never ever once in 40 years in Britain seen anyone leave a public convenience without washing their hands, but in the 2 years I’ve been here, I’ve seen it 3 times (including one of my own friends). I have been congratulated by a stranger in a restroom for teaching my daughter to wash her hands. Yikes. I’d assumed every mom did.

Right down in the smallest detail of life, I’ve found exactly opposite opinions. An American friend was telling me the other day how her daughter’s name had an R added on by locals when they lived in Scotland. Gemma became Gemmrr. Funny that, because I’d already noticed that my daughter’s name, which also ends in an A, underwent the same process when we came here.

Then there is the great washing machine debate. Goodness me. I tell you, if the “special relationship” between our two nations, that special relationship which Gordon Brown yesterday described as "unbreakable", if it depended on blogging expat women’s opinions on the subject of washing machines, it would have no chance at all. "Special" would not be the word.

Who knew there was so much to love or hate about a washing machine? You can love or hate its size, how many programmes it has, the length of the programmes, whether you can open the lid once the machine has started in order to throw in a stray sock, whether you have to bend down to load it up, the method of putting the detergent in. This will be familiar territory to many of you. If you want my personal take on it, I will go all not wrong, just different on you, and say that I do have a preference, but that it’s just a personal inclination. It's based on a slight divergence between how the two types of machine operate, but really, it's a minor difference. British front-loaders get laundry clean; American top-loaders don’t. See? Minor stuff, as I said. Nothing to get too excited about. I just have to confess that I find it useful when a washing machine removes dirt and stains from the clothes you put in there, and keeps white things white.

Here we are, come full circle, right back where we started. Feminism. Surely feminism is nothing if not the right to define your individuality and womanhood by your preference in washing machines. It’s true that front-loading machines have recently come onto the market over here, but they’re fearsomely expensive, beyond the reach of your average oppressed housewife. Yes, it’s all about choice, but until that choice is available to all women, feminism remains a word, a theory. Sisters, our work is not done.

Women of Britain, rejoice in your washing machines! Join hands in a line of solidarity, a washing line of solidarity, and do not cease to fight for the day when all women, no matter their race, religion, age or nationality, have access to a decent front-loading washing machine. And until that day, don’t burn your bras. Just keep them nice and white, even on a delicate cycle.

Blogging and Margaret Thatcher

One of the things I love about blogging is how it’s really just an extended conversation with a bunch of friends. You see, I’m sitting here saying “now where were we? Ah yes. Margaret Thatcher.” It feels to me like we were chatting away over coffee, everyone chipping in, and I was just about to say a big thank you to you all for dropping by, and then the doorbell rang. It was an award being delivered. So then I had to show off the award, decide who to pass it on to, and just as I was rewinding to what I really wanted to talk about, there was a phone call, about a picture meme. I’d been dying to show off my mural to you all anyway, so I had to dig out some pictures and pass them round. So here I am, still drawing breath, and still saying “where were we?”

Perhaps this is why blogging is such comfortable territory to people with small children. Which of you hasn’t had a conversation along the following lines?

“It’s not the same as going out after work for a drink and chatting to someone all evening. Huh. Lucky if we get an hour before ‘someone’ gets tired and we have to head home.”

“Yup, and it’s not like it’s proper conversation anyway. [Sigh] I guess that’s just one more skill we all develop. The art of talking while chasing a snotty-nosed toddler round the room with a tissue. Come here, you.”

“Right. They never warned us how we’d have to talk in two-sentence chunks all the time. Share nicely please. I mean, it’s fine. You get used to it. I said ‘Share’. But it’s not the same. Anyway, what were you saying about your mother-in-law’s ingrowing toenails? If you can’t take turns, we’ll have to put that Postman Pat V-Tech learn your shapes and colours talking boomerang right away. Surgery?”

Those of us who are a bit longer in the motherhood tooth no longer even have the novelty of self-congratulatory awareness that we are doing new things. Get me. I’m so multi-tasking. We’re the ones who would now probably struggle to talk to the same colleague for a whole evening and would be thinking of a way to leave the pub politely. We merely furrow our brows, and search each other’s faces in companionable memory-lapse silence, until one of us says “Margaret Thatcher”, and the other slaps the table, takes a gulp of tepid coffee, and replies:

“Yes. Margaret Thatcher. Well, I loved everyone’s comments, and what an interesting read they made. As for my own opinion, well, it rather changed as a result of the debate. I’ll even confess to lying awake at night not being able to sleep for thoughts of Margaret Thatcher.

I started off with several of you, thinking she wasn’t a proper woman, because she got to the top by being like a man. Then I realized what a very unfeminist position that is. We women really are our own worst enemies. I mean, what would I want a woman Prime Minister to be? Someone younger, more attractive, more fashionable, whose choice of outfit would make the news alongside her policies? Or a mother of young children, so we could all smugly wonder whether she found time to help her children learn their spellings in between meetings at Number 10 and voting at the House of Commons? How we love to do down women who achieve. Yes, we are our own worst enemies. This article, put my way by A Modern Mother, says it so well. It’s about Rachida Dati, the French politician who took five days’ maternity leave when she had her baby. Five days. I can't even imagine... But I don't need to. She's not me. She doesn't have my life, I don't have hers. That's the point.

So I have shifted. I now think Margaret Thatcher was a proper woman (handbag and all). I think she found her way, fought her way, to where she wanted to be, regardless of her gender. She was a feminist without having a feminist agenda. And yes, I think it did make a difference. I don’t think she was exactly a role model, but having a woman PM did prove to us all that no sphere of life could any longer be considered the sole preserve of men.

I’ve just created a picture of her for myself (and this is pure whimsy) losing her thread, and scanning Geoffrey Howe’s face in a moment of silence, before slapping the cabinet room table and exclaiming 'The Single European Currency. Yes. I knew there was something else I wanted to talk to you about.'"

I have a question

All the excitement that the world has been feeling on Obama's inauguration day has got me thinking. I have a question for you. Now, it's not meant to be making clever comparisons, or drawing parallels, or grinding an axe or anything like that, so please don't get all upset with me. It's just something I've been pondering, and I would be interested to know what you all think, on both sides of the Atlantic.

When Margaret Thatcher became the first woman Prime Minister in the UK, there was a sense of excitement, surprise, achievement, history (I don't really remember, but I think there was, although nothing compared to yesterday of course). Women had had the vote only since 1928, fifty years before. My question is this. Did Margaret Thatcher's appointment change life for British women? Do we see ourselves differently? Do we have different ambitions? What about for British men? What about people outside Britain? Has it, three decades down the line, made a difference? Ah, that's more than one question. Alright. Just answer the last one.

My ponderings were extended by this post, on the blog She's not from Yorkshire, which is written by 3 American women living in Yorkshire. I love reading their experiences - the mirror of mine in some ways. I was intrigued to read what they say about feminism in Britain, backed up by other American commenters. I can't decide whether I agree with them or not. What do you all think? (OK then, 2 questions, but you can just stick to the first if you like.)