Many women today have it better than ever, so why are they so sad?
In recent decades the lives of women in the industrialised world have improved by many objective measures. The gender wage gap, though still present, has diminished greatly. Women's educational achievements now surpass those of their male counterparts. Birth control and in vitro fertilization have given them unprecedented control over reproduction. Technological advances have freed many from domestic drudgery. In short, women never had it so good.
Yet apparently, women have never been so flipping miserable.
Women expect romantic love and marriage to be "the cure for everything". Women buy the fantasy, and the reality comes as a jarring shock. Women complicate their relationship with food - placing thinness next to godliness while believing that, whatever else is going on in our life, we are not a complete woman if incapable of rustling up a complicated dinner for friends, family, lovers, etc.
Women set their expectations sky high, then wonder that life fails to meet up to them. And when it doesn't women turn wildly, blindly, to self-help books. Women who would never dream of buying so much as a T-shirt labeled one-size-fits-all willingly look for a catch-all solution to their most complicated psychological angst. So women buy the book and buy the notion that anything is possible if we only want it enough. And when we discover that anything isn't possible, that sometimes it doesn't matter how much we want it, we just don't have the talent to become a prima ballerina at the age of 35 or craft exquisite porcelain figurines when our only previous creative achievement was a Plasticine coin-pot in kindergarten, women feel failures and miserable and wonder all over again: "Is this it?"
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Thoughts?
Why are women so miserable? | The National
Many women today have it better than ever, so why are they so sad? Laura Collins analyses the epidemic of sadness.
www.thenationalnews.com
In recent decades the lives of women in the industrialised world have improved by many objective measures. The gender wage gap, though still present, has diminished greatly. Women's educational achievements now surpass those of their male counterparts. Birth control and in vitro fertilization have given them unprecedented control over reproduction. Technological advances have freed many from domestic drudgery. In short, women never had it so good.
Yet apparently, women have never been so flipping miserable.
Women expect romantic love and marriage to be "the cure for everything". Women buy the fantasy, and the reality comes as a jarring shock. Women complicate their relationship with food - placing thinness next to godliness while believing that, whatever else is going on in our life, we are not a complete woman if incapable of rustling up a complicated dinner for friends, family, lovers, etc.
Women set their expectations sky high, then wonder that life fails to meet up to them. And when it doesn't women turn wildly, blindly, to self-help books. Women who would never dream of buying so much as a T-shirt labeled one-size-fits-all willingly look for a catch-all solution to their most complicated psychological angst. So women buy the book and buy the notion that anything is possible if we only want it enough. And when we discover that anything isn't possible, that sometimes it doesn't matter how much we want it, we just don't have the talent to become a prima ballerina at the age of 35 or craft exquisite porcelain figurines when our only previous creative achievement was a Plasticine coin-pot in kindergarten, women feel failures and miserable and wonder all over again: "Is this it?"
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Thoughts?