Is mediocrity the last taboo?
The question came to mind a while back when I spied a column by Thomas Friedman, who suggested that in our global economy where work gets done cheaper overseas and where, here at home, technology is eating jobs in a rapidly accelerating pace, only the strong will survive. His overall point? Average is officially over.
Your pulse just started racing, right?
Whether or not we happen to be gainfully employed, it's a message that pushes a button for so many women: We're convinced that mediocre is never going to cut it, that "average" is something barely north of failure. And in fact, that was the subtext of what many of the women we interviewed for Undecided told us about their struggles with career and life decisions, their second guesses about the road not taken, and their pervasive belief that today's women can/should/will have it all: great career, hot sex, well-behaved children and granite in the kitchen.
Ever wonder how we got to this place?
1. The Treadmill. It starts early and stays late. We've written before about young girls building their resumes at their mama's knee -- always with an eye on five years down the road: the right high school, the best soccer team, the prestigious college. It's a bad habit to break. But what's worse is that when young girls especially are trained to keep their eye on the prize -- we have to take advantage of all those doors that have suddenly flown open, right? -- what happens early on is that they become afraid to take risks, to rule things out, for fear that they could fail. Is this future-thinking why I see students who get an assignment back with a "B-plus" on the top and dissolve into tears? Why "good enough" never is?
2. We Aim To Please. Why? We were raised that way -- from the days when we were Daddy's little girl. We talked to an admissions director/counselor at a prestigious girls high school in an affluent area of California, and that's what she told us she sees in many of the over-achievers in her school. When she talks to students these days, a lot of the chat revolves around serious stress. They admit that a lot is self-induced, but when she asks them, "Well, do you really need to take six honors courses?" the answer will be "But I want to." What they really want, she suspects, is to please. "Studies show girls have so many more problems than boys -- depression, eating disorders, migraines -- because girls will stick with the craziness a lot longer than boys will," she said. "Girls are hard-wired to please, which makes the pressure even bigger. They won't give up, because to do so would be a failure. And they don't want anybody to feel they're a failure, because then they'd be letting people down."
3. Social Media. Ah, yes. It's become our own private echo chamber that keeps us comparing and contrasting, the alternate reality where only perfect will do. After all, what else do we see in our news feeds? When was the last time you saw an ugly baby on Facebook? Heard your friend got fired -- as opposed to hired? I've heard of college girls who have their make-up done before they head out on Friday nights because they want to look good in the pictures that will inevitably appear on Facebook the next day. No joke. And let's get real: When was the last time you posted anything that was less than, well, cute and witty. Sure, we all know our own online personnas are carefully crafted, that we use them to brand ourselves, but that doesn't prevent us from looking at all those others out there and believing in the surreality of it all, with the nagging feeling that those folks out there are doing it better, faster, cuter -- and having lots more fun.
4. The Judge. It's become a cliche that we tend to judge each other by our choices: Defending what we've chosen for our lives -- and what we've chosen to leave behind. We judge our friends' choices. We interpret the fact that our friend has chosen something different as her judgment (and rejection) of what we've chosen for ourselves. But what we often forget is that the worst judge of all is often the one in the mirror, holding us to impossible standards and feeding our self-doubt. (Be honest here: how many of you sat glued to the tube during the summer Olympics when you were a child, watching those preternaturally small gymnasts -- and feeling like you yourself had failed because at the ripe old age of 10 or 12 you had never nailed a vault -- and most likely never would?) When we're deep in the throes of a "Which way should I go," part of the angst is often the knowledge that no matter what we choose, we will be judged. In all sorts of ways. In ways that men aren't, and in ways that are often contradictory. And the damnedest truth of all: We often do it to ourselves.
5. The Great Expectations. Especially those that go hand-in-hand with the mantras with which we've been raised: You can do anything! You can do everything! And it will all be amazing! No wonder that the thought of mediocrity sucks our soul. One of our sources who is herself far from mediocre said it best: "I wonder if some of our frustration is about the fact that it's virtually impossible to excel at everything -- wife, writer, teacher, runner, in my case -- and so we're always worried about the area in which we're not measuring up to our own expectations."
All of which could be the ultimate buzzkill if it weren't for a bit of wisdom we heard from Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz, author of "The Paradox of Choice," who told us about a recent study that found that starting at age 50, people actually get happier. Why? "What you learn from experience," he told us, "is exactly that good enough is good enough, and once you learn that, you stop torturing yourself looking for the best, and life gets a lot simpler."
And, we might add, far from mediocre.
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I wish I was smart.
Today's women snipe and take down each other at every possible opportunity. They have AWFUL, competitive "friendships". Their kids are in the toilet. They have more work, more money, and more opportunities to grow and their main focus is:
Ego,entertainment, and other women. They spend more time worrying about what other women are doing than anything else in their own lives.
There is no repairing of the city government, hospitals, school systems, or unions so that citizens have better chances.
Women are coddling men at an incredible rate.
Women cower and say that men are ruining their lives by making them competitive against each other in the media. I don't think so. If men are weak it is a woman's fault. We literally, as wives and mothers, grow and make every man and woman you see today. If men fail it means their women have failed in raising,handling, and educating them.
Large societal changes can't happen because women are mortal enemies of one another. Now it's reality TV, backstabbing, lack of social awareness, and image issues all over the place.
Wait a minute...
I thought the "hardwiring" argument was nonsense?
Anytime someone offers the "hardwiring" argument for men "spreading the seed" the "hardwiring" argument is dismissed as selfish justification.
there's nothing wrong with working hard, girls. and men are our greatest enemy, not each other. take a look at the panel that testified in congress with the goal of making birth control illegal again. that's our enemy. take a look at who's in the running for the republican nomination, that's our enemy.
don't pay attention to them. be honest, work hard, set high goals. it pays off in the end, when you can kick a no-good boyfriend out the door like yesterday's garbage, on the way to your job/business trip/vacation/whatever you want to do with your life.
nobody hates you. look at how males are behaving. look at the republican presidential nominees. santorum thinks victims of rape should give birth to a rapist's child, since it's a gift from god. look at congress, an institution that's 84% male, which recently had a hearing about birth control WITHOUT A SINGLE WOMAN ON THE PANEL. that's just here. i don't even want to talk about afghanistan, saudi arabia, or the mass rape happening in the congo.
why don't you ask why men hate women so much? it's causing much bigger problems in america and the world.
I also agree with those who say that women tend to be each other's worst enemy. At work it is the women who tend to have some nasty comment about every new woman that works there or every woman that comes in. At lunch they are the ones after every award show flipping through some magazine and trashing how other women look.
Men will say something if a hot woman walks in but we really are not as shallow and judgmental as many people make us out to be. The fashion industry is the main culprit behind promoting super thin women and it is run by women and gay men. I really wish men would stop getting blamed for everything when in many cases they are their own worst enemy.
nobody asked for your opinion, especially not here. and it proves the point of this article, how men are deluded and unaware. this section isn't for you, spew your misogyny someplace else.
Also most men in general couldn't care less about this birth control issue. It is just a wedge issue the republicans are using to get elected. Nobody is going to outlaw birth control.
women are FORCED to work? huh? we like working. and we aren't forced. with males not going to college and sitting on the couch all day, we're happy to work. and we're glad we can.
children suffer in afghanistan. look at what feminism has done over there!
Where is your proof?
It is pointless. You must be a little girl? I do not wish to be accused of child abuse.
Women have always worked. Only the upper classes and, in more recent centuries, middle classes have had the money and social expectations that women should not work. Peasant women worked and still do; working class women worked and still do; middle class women worked and still do. The idea that women did not work outside the home (and the discounting of all their work in it as actual work) is a myth.