For a take or two on what the kids are saying these days about the American career woman and Marissa Mayer, both timely subjects in the wake of the release of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s new book on female leadership, CNN came to the obvious place to talk to the world’s next generation of powerful women: Barnard College.They interviewed a group of Barnard students about the meaning of “having it all,” and their views on marriage, children, and independence.
Full disclosure: Renée Kraiem is Bwog’s Head Barnard Correspondent and Anna Bahr is the managing editor of The Blue and White.
20 Comments
@Uh, bwog It’s strong, beautiful Barnard women. That’s the phrase. Strong, beautiful. Saying “strong, independent” is equally annoying as saying “Roar, LionS, Roar.”
@Socially Unaware Nerd “Strong, Independent Barnard Women…”
huh? I thought Barnard women were mostly liberal-slanted…
@Anonymous Good point by Anna. I don’t know anyone who “has it all”, either. Its probably better to phrase the issue as “an equal chance to have what you aspire”
@BC14 Im truly disappointed with the girls chosen. No hate but I know so many other BC girls that would’ve represented Barnard much better.
@can't we all just get along honestly, who does this comment help? “no hate”, but we’re supposed to be an intimate, supportive community; instead of being “disappointed”, let’s support our fellow Barnard students.
@what if we stopped thinking of the phrase “strong, independent women” as a cute lil joke
@BC'13 The entire point of Barnard is that it’s a women’s college. Thus, when media outlets want to showcase women (particularly high-achieving ones), Barnard gets chosen, especially if the media outlet is headquartered in NYC. They’re aware you exist; they just go with what’s more convenient. Stop thinking that because you go to Columbia you should get chosen to do something interesting. Entitlement flatters no one.
@BC'13 meant to be @grr
@grr Calling it entitlement, are you kidding me? I’m not asking that Columbia get all the attention, I’m only frustrated that not one woman speaker has come to talk to the women of columbia, it is as if we do not exist or are not feminists.
@grr b/c there are no women at Columbia.
@You've missed the point. Barnard is a separate institution with a different atmosphere and culture. This feature is not a slight to Columbia women, it’s just not about them.
@Anonymous Separate; when convenient.
@Anonymous can i like this 1000 times?
@grr It’s never about us though. And as a Columbia woman I find it very unfair that whenever Barnard starts its feminist stuff or has feminists speak about work and life balance, it is almost as of all the girls at Columbia are forgotten, as if we don’t go to school with guys, study with them, date them, hold leadership positions in clubs, aren’t women, don’t have a vagina, don’t have to have work and life balance and won’t become leaders and all of that. Then whenever barnard is attacked, it’s “why don’t our sisters in CC support us”. Well, then why does Barnard keep forgetting about us? We have needs too.
@hmmm the elephant in the room is that a lot of times in discussions like these (including Sparr’s article a ways back) the issue of socioeconomic class is not given enough emphasis. “Having it all” is a whole lot easier when you can send your kids to summer camp and a school with lots of extracurriculars as well as pay someone to clean your apt, pick up your kids, make dinner occasionally, etc. I’m sure lawyer mom doesn’t intend on taking out the trash very often–if you know what I mean.
@hmmm con't... it seems to me that the fact that this conversation is “trending” is related to the increasing preprofessionalization of the undergraduate experience. when my parents were my age it was normal for college grads to spend a few years figuring shit out (and smokin a lil bit) before they found a profession that moved them. they didn’t have these conversations because they didn’t make 15-year plans like all of us do now. yeah yeah, sure, opportunities for women have increased since then so now things are “different”, but i still think the reason people find this discussion worthwhile is because it feeds into this long-term planning craze. why are we so afraid of not knowing what the future will be like? it’d be interesting to do an interview with some freshman boys across the street and see how many of them have an idea of when they’d like to have kids. i bet you some would say something like “well maybe around 30; I’ll have made managing director at Goldman by then, so that seems like a good time”.
@Anonymous Shit I meant to like both of your posts but I clicked the downward thumb button instead (maybe it’s bc I just finished two midterms and I’m now enjoying a celebratory j?)
Basically what I meant to say is YES both of your points are really important. They bring up the very issues that create the conditions in which the women on this video are able to make: the accumulation of privileged upbringing as a secure base for social reproduction and the rapidity in which ‘keeping up with the pace’ is now required in contemporary forms of life.
Although I can’t really articulate what I think right now (as explained), I agree that it’s kind of imperative that these women having these conversations about ‘women having it all’ stop trying to loudly assert to the media that the struggle to produce one’s prophetic future reality as a capitalist form of labor [when one is already a benefactor of wildly unequal accumulated privilege] is … a struggle to ‘live’ at all? I mean, damn, the media really likes to twist it around so they don’t really have to represent the range of inequality that constitutes reality, just the struggles that are crucial to its reproduction.
Where are the conversations about the continued waged gap for women ‘choosing’ to work for a wage that devalues service and reproductive labor for raising a child? For women growing up today accepting the current moment’s continued unequal waged conditions while also ‘being it all’ in the sense of continuing to strive/to be the ideal female consumer subject that magazines and televisions and all that other bullshit tells them they want to/should be? Single moms, of different generations or perhaps ethnicity/race, where are your conversations about your struggles?
UGH never thought I’d ever be *this* blog poster, but it seems to me that this video, and the whole trending vibe around it, is getting the picture wrong and it’s unfortunate that this is how we circulate and ‘skirt’ around the issues (pun intended)
@Anonymous They bring up the very issues that create the conditions in which the women on this video are able to make *these statements about themselves as representations of a larger pre-professional female population:*
ok done haha
@Anonymous Um, Marissa Mayer?
@Anonymous Oops. What I meant to say was, it’s Marissa not Melissa.