What does it mean to be an American woman? Is there a difference between an American woman and a woman living in America? I've spent a decent amount of time contemplating these two questions, and have had trouble coming up with any definite answers. It seems that all women living in America are subject to many of the same pressures. There seems to be a societal tendency to separate women into two dichotomized categories. The woman who works and the woman who raises children. Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of American women and women in America who live both lives, but society seems to view living both lives as a sacrifice of one thing or another. It seems a working mother is quicker to be called a bad mother if her child breaks their arm or struggles in school. My mom works a full time job, she has a private practice for ophthalmology, and studies with my brother John every night for a science class that has been troubling him all year. My Mom is amazing, yet as soon as John started having problems in science, his teacher implied to my parents in a special meeting that if they were at home more, especially my mom, maybe John wouldn't feel as inclined to rebel against them or waste time playing video games or doing other things that have resulted in a C seventh grade science grade. The teacher happens to skip class once a week to go skiing in the winter, but of course that wasn't discussed in the meeting.

Married women seem to face pressure to seamlessly bring together the disparate aspects of their lives. Married women who don't have children often are regarded in a curious borderline confused borderline disdainful light. Our society expects everyone married to want kids and to try their hardest to have kids. Society also demands of women to want to get married. My mother's best friend from growing up has never chosen to marry. She's had long term relationships spanning five to seven years, yet at age 45 remains unmarried. Of course, it's impossible to know whether or not someone is actually happy with a situation, but my mother and her are very close, and she has always said she's happily unmarried. She treats me and my siblings as her own kids and has been an amazing figure in our lives, but she seems content being a wonderful auntie and an aunt to her many nieces and nephews. I've found that women who don't want children or don't want to get married are sometimes considered crazy or unwell or under some other ridiculous spell or problem or pathogen. The one family in my neighborhood whom my gossipy neighbors talk about is the one without kids. The neighbors think it's "weird" that they live in an expensive town with such a good school system, but don't have kids. Wellesley is filled with nasties like this, but it's beautiful and it makes a lot of sense why this couple has chosen to live there. People who find marriage and life with children the ultimate goal to life seem to look for reasons why these people aren't married or don't have kids. In my town of Wellesley, Massachusetts people look more highly upon a divorced mother with children than a single mother, a married woman without kids or a single woman in middle age who has not married. The broken home is less out of ordinary to them than a home without a husband or kids.

Women in America are also often broken up into categories by their looks, their clothes, and their hair. Everything on the surface of their body is scrutinized and judged by other women and men with whom they interact. My perspective on women in America is very limited as I grew up in a wealthy town in Massachusetts, and have attended school in another wealthy school in Massachusetts. However, I feel that women in America are constantly pressured to conform to some standard. The standards set seem to be different for many different representative parties of women in the United States. Even wealthy women in New England seem to be pressured to look different than wealthy women in California. However, all women seem to be told or influenced in some way, to change and to strive towards an ideal of image. The image of a woman is considered a reflection of what their life is like.

Women in my town of Wellesley, Massachusetts are pressured to fit directly into a J. Crew catalogue. I suppose it could be worse, as J. Crew is a store that I really like, but the J. Crew articles of clothing in Wellesley, Massachusetts carry an image of their own. They stand for wealth, for marriage, and for children. Mothers in my town wear J. Crew and Lily Pullitzer. Unmarried women don't usually live in Wellesley, Massachusetts as there aren't great jobs around and most of the reason people move to Wellesley is to utilize the school system. These women might wear these clothes, but without the husband to go along with them other women in the town call them "fake."

An American woman seems to be one that is expected to stay composed in public even during the hardest of times, and if they need help they are to ask their husbands or family members privately. While psychology is always an option for people suffering from emotional distress, our society does not look objectively at people seeking a psychologist's help. We often assume that patients of psychology have some kind of pathological disorder or are looking for someone to help them solve their problems, copping out in a way. When a woman, married or single, with kids or without, who lives a life most would consider prosperous, shows signs of being worn out, jaded or just plain unhappy we look for an answer. We want to know why someone who has everything is sad. Why they're tired. A woman living in poverty in America is expected to hold down her family, to be a support system in a life that is hard on her and her kids. A woman in America is scrutinized and therefore must choose whether to hide her feelings and weather the storm alone or to reach out and ask for help, whether its from a friend, a relative or a psychologist. This choice an American woman must make multiple times in her life. American women seem pressured to balance every part of their life perfectly in order to escape the judgement of outside parties. In small towns or communities in cities in America, judgement and changed opinions can influence a person's life significantly. When any fiber of a woman's life falls out of place, producing a scandal of sorts, it is immediately picked up by society and used as a tool for insulting a woman who works and has kids, one who never married, one who forgot to wear J. Crew on Monday and Lily Pulitzer on Tuesday or one who cries in public because she can't give her kids everything they need and want.

I've often wondered why the women in my town are all so similar. They go to the same places for vacation, wear the same clothes, exercise at the same pilates studios and gyms, and rarely do anything outside the box. When women get divorced they might stop exercising at the same places or wearing the same clothes, the status quo is disrupted, and often I've found that my friends divorced mothers are left out from their previous group of friends. If they don't fit the mold they aren't necessarily ostracized, they just aren't invited to all the old activities or they feel unwelcome. I think the women in my town behave in this way not to be malicious but because they don't know how to deal with someone who has experienced a divorce. They believe that person to be terribly sad and depressed at the loss of their husband, but never take the time to confirm that this is the case. I've known two women to get divorced in Wellesley. One moved away about six months after buying a new house in Wellesley. During that month I never saw her in my neighborhood, I didn't even see her at the school her kids attended with me. The other mother lived for a year in seclusion and then remarried and reemerged in society. She now has five kids instead of two, and has gone back to yoga parties and shopping, almost as if nothing happened. I don't know her well and at no point would I dream of asking her this, but I wonder if she and her friends ever talked about the divorce. I feel as if one day she got married in a small ceremony where few friends were invited and therefore few were insulted not to be invited, and then the next day there was a message on her machine asking her to pilates, and that's how it went. Maybe the women had a heart to heart about the whole situation, with them expressing their reasons for not talking to her for a year, but somehow I doubt it. Like this woman, women in America are subjected to judgement about the many states of her life, judgement that can lead to life changing events or happenings. American women in some ways can never be free of society's scrutiny. A woman who lives her life the way she wants might find happiness, but will always be subject to a condescending glance in the grocery store or from the family across the street. I wonder if America is alone in its inability to comprehend and accept women living outside the norms of marriage and child bearing. Are other societies more open to the shifts in relationships, and more accepting of a woman's decision to have children or not? I can not possibly give a comprehensive view on womanhood in America, as I'm young and relatively sheltered, but I've tried my best to describe how women in my hometown and the women I've met in my life, are viewed and treated by society.

As I read the Terror Dream tonight I realized that while I understood the plight of feminism in a post-911 America, I didn't really understand what feminism was like before 911. Women won the right to vote decades ago, as well as the right to own property and have a job, so what exactly were feminists fighting for? I've decided to embark on a mini study of feminism in the United states in the 1990s. I lived through the nineties, yet my breadth of knowledge on what women out there, and some men I'm sure, were fighting to provide me with, is very limited. I'm also interested in examining what manifests when feminism is Googled in a few different ways.

I will begin my search by typing "american feminism 1990s" into Google. The first few pages are wikipedia articles, which I'm choosing to skip as I worry the articles could easily be biased or inaccurate. What I did extract from the blurb below the first wikipedia link was the term "postmodern feminists." Since we're living in the postmodern age, I'm refining my search and using "postmodern feminists America" as my second search. The first yielded very few fruitful results, and as I now find so does the second. Besides for Wikipedia articles, the sites elicited are ultra specific, focusing on particular groups of feminists such as black feminists or Argentine feminists. I broadened my search to "feminism america" and immediately found more promising results.

The first page I'm examining is for the organization Feminists for Life. They have various different sayings or apparent motivations of people who should join the group on their mission page. A few of them are, "If you reject violence and exploitation," "If you refuse to choose between women and children," and "If you believe no woman should be forced to choose between sacrificing her education and career plans and sacrificing her child." The website appears to focus on giving women the right or support to be educated and to work as well as to have a family. I immediately wonder what the website is fighting for. Are they hoping to give support to women who struggle with societal pressures to choose between life in the workplace and life in the home? Do they hope to push for harsher laws punishing husbands or boyfriends who beat women? What's interesting is that the top of the browser reads "Feminists for Life - Pro Woman Pro Life. The term "pro life," carries serious weight as it is ubiquitously applied to people who are anti-abortion. Is this a group of feminists who believe abortion is wrong?Apparently that is exactly what this site is about. After reading all the, "if you ares..." there is a small link to the page that uses the actual term abortion. In all honesty the website was terribly vague before this page.

Even after I clicked on the "FFL's mission," page I had to study the site to find the actual mission. These women believe that abortion rates in America are a sign of society not giving women what they need. It confuses me how abortion connects to societal neglect of women. It seems that giving women the choice for abortion is recognizing them as being fully capable of controlling their reproductive lives. At the same time, I wonder if societal pressures make women feel that having a child will interfere in their work lives and prevent them from having a career. I wonder how this site views teenage pregnancy, which often leads to women being incapable of finishing high school let alone going to college and entering a profession they desire. This website has given me valuable information on the reach of feminism. Women in large numbers are capable of being feminists and being pro-choice.

I do wonder though when this group was created. According to Susan Faludi, the post-911 America has increasingly encouraged women to return to the home, to have children and families, and let their husbands work and protect their livelihood and happiness. Is this site a post-911 compromise between feminists and American sentiments? Is it a unification of women who want women to feel they can have a career and have children, and anti-abortion, and in some ways pro family, feeling.

I next Google "American feminism," and at the very bottom of the page I found a site with quotes from a book about American feminism titled, "American Feminism: A Contemporary History" by Ginette Castro. A few quotes that popped out to me were as follows, "Consciousness-raising has continued because of the perpetual nature of the issues involved, and analysis of these issues has gradually become much more profound. The first of these is the socioeconomic oppression of women...," "The second issue that has retained the attention of feminist thinkers is sexuality...," and "The third issue addressed by feminist theorists has been the cultural oppression of women." These quotes helped me to understand a few of the goals of feminism in America. I'm not sure what decade these issues refer to, but they seem to be continual issues facing women. Also, the topic of sexuality was not freely talked about until later in the twentieth century so I can figure that these aims of feminism were similar to those of feminists in the 1990s pre-911 America. Also the book says the issues are perpetual which contributes to my belief that these quotes are a decent summary of American feminist aims in the 1990s. I wonder, of course, what socioeconomic oppression of women the author perceives in America, and how exactly women are oppressed sexually. I'm quite interested to know what these issues are, and how feminists in America are combatting these problems.

The patterns in feminism throughout the ages seem to be based on similar goals. Although at one point in time feminists were fighting for the legal right to do various things, social injustices still pervade our culture. Percentages of distribution of female and male executives and leaders in the workplace still tip significantly towards the side of men. Feminists in pre-911 America seemed to be fighting to lift these percentages, to see change in the workplace, and to also lift societal pressures on woman that constantly push them to change and conform. Some members of our society view women who work and have kids in a negative light. Some members of society pressure women to be thinner or to change their looks in some way. Of course, our society puts pressure on men to conform and change, but it seems that only feminism has taken a serious punch since 911.

Postcards

Yesterday in Los Angeles, California, I found myself sorting through boxes filled with thousands of old, rather, vintage postcards. I sat there methodically sorting through the various images, flipping over the cards to see where they came from and whether or not someone had actually sent the postcard to another person. The experience was surreal in a way. It felt so weird to be reading someone's correspondence from 1909 and 1958, yet the little connections I found throughout the postcards were amazing. I recognized some of the places on the cards or the towns they were sent to. What struck me most though was how each decade had its own image. Of course, the individual images varied, but there were overall themes represented in the postcards. I'm not sure if postcards are considered part of the media, but I feel postcard makers in history have had a similar control over the masses as the modern media does now. Both determine how people view human relationships, they shape the way humans interact. In the 1910-1920 group the postcards were simple and almost exclusively had bible quotations or scripture on them, coupled with pastel flower arrangements and curly cues curly qs? hmm... Anyways, the general feeling of the cards was that one person was sending the other a blessing. The cards were serious, the images simple, placing emphasis on the language and messages. The postcard at this time seemed to be a vehicle for a message from a person to a person, it was incredibly personal.

Most of the postcards from the era looked something like this. This one lacks the scripture, but it remains simple and delicate. It's not flashy, and emphasis is placed on the correspondence on the back as the front isn't particularly striking or interesting.

I wasn't capable of finding any postcards from the 1930s, but I did find a lot from the forties and fifties. As time went on the cards got flashier, probably as the materials and technology used to make them improved, but this development also matches the way the times were changing. In the forties the postcards focused on landscapes or structures. They didn't display many people or things, but showed beautiful images. As time went on the images became more and more suggestive. I remember our talk about misrepresentation of teenage sex in the fifties. At this time teenagers were having sex just like teenagers today, but it seemed less talked about. Personal affairs such as these were covered up. Public exchanges between people, such as those on postcards, stuck to emotionally dry or neutral images, as to cover up what was really going on. Of course this could be a conspiracy theory of sorts, but what do we use postcards for? We use them to show people where we are and what we're doing. Rarely are postcards sent to people purely for their enjoyment. If we send stunning images of the Virgin Islands all around the world to our friends, were suggesting something about our lives. The postcard might just show a few islands suspended in an ocean image, but what those islands mean goes so far beyond blue and green shapes. Tropical drinks, suntans, water sports, and gourmet foods all lie beneath the images. In the forties and fifties, images seemed to be used as suggestion, similar to how we use postcards today, but the images today incorporate people and material things, allowing them to suggest even more about our lives. Postcards aren't like greeting cards. They rarely have more writing than a scrawled "Florida," or "The Cathedrals of Spain," adorning them. The images are what count.

As time went on the images in the postcards became more and more suggestive. A postcard of the Bahamas in the forties showed people looking at a waterfall, the same postcard in the 1980s might show those people clad in fancy swimsuits and holding fancy drinks. Sunhats are replaced by sunglasses, and long pants and dresses by two piece swimsuits. The general message, however, is the same throughout the ages. The Bahamas are beautiful and fun and the people experiencing the waterfall are having the time of their lives. Postcard makers get to dictate what exactly we reveal about our lives to our friends. They dictate just how much decadence is evident in a postcard, just how expensive the hotel looks. They dictate how fluffy the snow looks on a postcard of a mountain. In a world of infinite suggestions, a postcard maker decides just how much will be visible and how much will be left to the imagination of the receiver.

The images on postcards we send to friends and family often seem to affect the way they view a trip of ours more so than what we write on the back. Postcards are so short that most of what is written has to be superficial and explanatory, ie. "We're having a great time in the sun. So far we aren't too sunburnt but we have gained weight from the buffets!" This is a generic message, and while it suggests something about the trip, that there is a lot of sun and a lot of food, it suggests little about where the trip is or how it's really going. Gaining weight stinks, but an image of a beautiful person sitting on a beautiful beach speaks loudly and says, "This rocks." I would send this message (the one above) to almost all of my friends and family, but I would pick specific images to send to certain friends and family. I might send best friends a different postcard than a friend I'm in touch with but not completely open with. There are a lot of factors that would go into what type of postcard I sent, and how much it might reveal about my life. If I was sending a postcard to someone I knew hadn't travelled much in their life but really wanted to, I'd probably send a postcard with something more interesting on it and less insanely decadent than a seascape and villa such as this:

This postcard is beautiful, but very revelatory. It shows off a fancy and expensive looking house, and boasts a life or vacation in a beautiful place. It's revealing in some regards, and subtle in others. Postcard creators give us the different views on a place or a situation that we distribute to the many different types of people in our lives. Postcards might just seem like a little thing that you send as a hello of sorts, but they are infused with so much more meaning. Maybe I'm the only one who notices the subtle hints, but I think seeing postcards from different decades made this pattern more distinct. It clarified the subtleties in postcards, the little things that might not seem significant but which change the feel of a postcard completely. Would postcards be considered part of the media? They certainly change the way we communicate with one another and the way we view different places or structures or families or people or lives. In some cases, postcards create an entire image of a place for someone. I've never been to Colorado, but a friend sent me a postcard from Aspen this past winter. Now, whenever I think or hear about Colorado, the only reference I have is a smiling family clad in matching ski gear at the top of a mountain. I know there's so much more to Colorado than just family vacations and skiing, but the image is forever engrained in my head.