Rosie the Riveter

[LizzieMaine]

I still kind of feel a bit of shame when I think of my roots. When I hear college-educated 20-somethings telling *me* how it is it just brings me down. I'm so glad they don't have to go through what I did -- I maybe even feel a bit of jealousy! Talking to people like you, Lizzie, is really comforting. We're the real feminists, I think! We just do what we have to do and get on with it.

Don't ever let people make you feel ashamed of your background -- I went thru that too, but eventually realized there's no shame in working for an honest living, no matter how you do it, and that most of the people who'd been high-hatting me all that time wouldn't have ever been able to hack it if they'd had to live the life I had. Nobody in my family -- including me -- has ever gotten a college degree, but that's no barrier to someone who's smart and determined. And just like you say, that's the real Spirit of Rosie in action.

 

[Inky]

Don't ever let people make you feel ashamed of your background -- I went thru that too, but eventually realized there's no shame in working for an honest living, no matter how you do it, and that most of the people who'd been high-hatting me all that time wouldn't have ever been able to hack it if they'd had to live the life I had. Nobody in my family -- including me -- has ever gotten a college degree, but that's no barrier to someone who's smart and determined. And just like you say, that's the real Spirit of Rosie in action.

well said Lizzie!

Amy Jeanne - never be ashamed of where you came from. You're an amazing woman and definitely the real spirit of Rosie in action!

 

[Amy Jeanne]

My husband tells me the same thing -- he's incredbly proud of his "London Working Class" background. I don't think it's the actual background I'm ashamed of, though. I think I might be more ashamed of MYSELF for letting it get to me!! I'm so confused!!!! It's all part of my trying to battle it and better myself, though. I really would rather have the life experience than some piece of paper (yet, getting that piece of paper is part of my life experience!)

Still, a euphoric housewife job would totally make me over-the-moon happy!!

 

[Miss Neecerie]

I still kind of feel a bit of shame when I think of my roots. When I hear college-educated 20-somethings telling *me* how it is it just brings me down. I'm so glad they don't have to go through what I did -- I maybe even feel a bit of jealousy! Talking to people like you, Lizzie, is really comforting. We're the real feminists, I think! We just do what we have to do and get on with it.

Never be ashamed.....so many of us...who may seem on the surface to be those '20 somethings' (although i am almost 40) you talk about.....might not be what you think...

I am the 2nd person in my family (by family I mean aunts, uncles and first and second cousins) to graduate college with a BA (and I finished that at 29 or so, because I worked the whole time...sometimes at two jobs) and the very first person to get a Masters.....and trust me..other then my mother and one uncle who was a teacher...my family does -not- get this at all....its just beyond their ability to understand. I stopped trying long ago.

Keep going.....you can do this! We are all here for you!

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Never be ashamed.....so many of us...who may seem on the surface to be those '20 somethings' (although i am almost 40) you talk about.....might not be what you think...

That crosses my mind all the time! That I really have NO IDEA what these people's backgrounds are, but I'm letting my own experiences cloud my judgment!! I'm going through a BIG life learning process right now. I rarely talk about it, but maybe I should. I already feel a little better just by talking on TFL!!

 

[cecil]

Never be ashamed.....so many of us...who may seem on the surface to be those '20 somethings' (although i am almost 40) you talk about.....might not be what you think...

I am the 2nd person in my family (by family I mean aunts, uncles and first and second cousins) to graduate college with a BA (and I finished that at 29 or so, because I worked the whole time...sometimes at two jobs) and the very first person to get a Masters.....and trust me..other then my mother and one uncle who was a teacher...my family does -not- get this at all....its just beyond their ability to understand. I stopped trying long ago.

Keep going.....you can do this! We are all here for you!

Wow, I've never actually thought about it before. Nobody on either side of my family (as far back as I know) has ever graduated from university. Seems strange when I think about how smart everyone was/is.

 

[Paisley]

Just a pondering here...is it possible that putting everyone to work if they *choose,* could dilute "the funds" to the extent that in order to pay everyone who *wants* to work that now we cannot pay a single person enough to support a family on their own. And therefore, could this perhaps be a factor in sooo many people requiring two incomes to survive? Just a thought not saying it is right, but it is a possibility that I have been thinking about.

This used to be called "women taking jobs away from men." This assumes that there are only so many jobs to go around. In reality, more people working creates more funds: earnings are spent or invested, and there is more demand for goods and services. Consider that Colorado's population almost doubled from 1980 to 2000. Probably, the work force doubled as well. Yet as of 2000, Coloradoans weren't living on half what they lived on in 1980.

 

[miss_elise]

to me it seems as if 'feminism' is a term widely abused like 'political correctness'

 

[Paisley]

I still kind of feel a bit of shame when I think of my roots. When I hear college-educated 20-somethings telling *me* how it is it just brings me down. I'm so glad they don't have to go through what I did -- I maybe even feel a bit of jealousy! Talking to people like you, Lizzie, is really comforting. We're the real feminists, I think! We just do what we have to do and get on with it.

You might like Emerson's essay "Self Reliance."

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till....

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.​

 

[Paisley]

Quite by accident, I came across a quote that fit this thread. I have no idea to what extent it's true--I'm just repeating it here.

Without waiting for the future, Dorothy Dix ventured a prediction in the Boston Globe, April 24, 1945, as to postwar marital manners: "The first war emancipated girls who scrapped the clinging-vine theory forever. This war emancipated the married women, and made the meek wife, who yes-yesed her husband and took whatever treatment he accorded her, as extinct as the Dodo....She has proved that she can support herself and she is never going to be pushed around by any mere husband again." But, returning to the theme a year later (Globe, April 28, 1946), she viewed the situation somewhat differently, expressing apprehension about the "Problem Wife" intoxicated by her wartime "draught of freedom." Deploring this "new species of fauna," she wrote, "Now that Johnny has come back from the war they are finding it hard to put their necks back in the yoke. They still want to be free as no wife can be free....This...is one of the main reasons why so many wives are getting divorces." She added darkly that, unless husbands and wives arrived at a satisfactory compromise, "the war will have been in vain, for we will have lost our country if we have broken up our homes."​

Source: Learning How to Behave by Arthur M. Schlesinger, 1947, pp. 89-90.

(Dorothy Dix was an advice columnist.)