They're Dropping Like Flies

As I learn of yet another one of my close 22 year old friends becoming engaged, it takes all my energy not to ball up my fists and punch a hole through the wall in pure, unadulterated rage. What the hell happened to the women’s movement?

Now, I am the least likely candidate for a feminist. I once was a registered Republican. I am, for the most part, a traditionalist. I think that the man should make the first move and believe in the fundamental inequality of men and women. I can’t stand those bra-burning bitches with unibrows and hairy legs and their “feminine mystique.”

But it really irks me when my friends decide they’re worth nothing more than writing their life away at 22 for a man.

Okay, whatever, they may be “in love.” But that’s a crock of shit. Nobody falls in love at 22 anymore who isn’t Amish or Mormon. It’s just not normal. For all of the craziness that the feminists in the 60s and 70s brought us, they also had a point: women, tear off your aprons, take the world by storm! Despite our fundamental inequalities, women are just (if not more, I might add) as capable as men to run corporations, find cancer cures, be politicians, blah blah blah.

This we all know and love and nobody in their right PC mind would try to challenge it. Which is why I just cannot get my head around the concept of my fellow females being so willing and eager to get married and have babies so young. Don’t you have dreams of your own? Career aspirations? Personal life goals?

They say that history moves like a pendulum, and that this retroaction is a natural reaction to the women’s movement. But that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, since the women’s movement changed the world as it was. It evened out the playing field, and made the world more receptive to women in general. These things should be championed and celebrated and we should praise our fuzzy-legged foremothers for them.

And some will argue that the point of the women’s movement was that women should be allowed to do whatever they want to do—even if that means closing down shop at 22 and turning into a baby machine at 23. I shouldn’t begrudge anyone their right to choose, I know. But it would behoove you marrying folk to take a second look at why, exactly, you think it’s necessary to cut your life off at a time when the world is at your feet. We’re not exactly in the depths of a shrinking human race, here, it’s not crucial that you reproduce ASAP to propagate the species.

I think the real problem is not that they’re in love or that they want to have babies, but that they’re apathetic. Generation Y is the generation of affluence, and with affluence comes apathy. We’re not as motivated as Gen X’ers or Baby Boomers to go out and change the world—it even seems that anti-war protests and stormtroopers on the White House are spearheaded by “real adults.” It has been made so easy for our generation to just sit back and do nothing but watch TV, play on the computer, page through the tabs, etc. etc. etc. With more money and more education, we take just about everything for granted.

I’m not trying to denigrate my peeps, here, but honestly, why else would girls flash their tits for some beads? Why else would they decide to shack up right after college and work a brainless job until they can get hitched? Boredom, I tell you, it’s boredom. You would think that something like the Iraq war or the horrific treatment of women in the Middle East would be issues that would mobilize people, but apparently, we’ve decided it’s just more pleasant to do nothing. (Until it affects us, that is.)

I can’t help but wonder if we’re throwing everything our mothers and grandmothers worked for away, back in their faces. Maybe I feel like an outsider because I do want things for myself, and because I have been single my whole life. But it just seems to me that girls who marry themselves off so early in life aren’t giving themselves enough credit and aren’t embracing all of the options the world has for them. You can’t very well drop everything and go backpacking around the world for a year at 27 if you’re married and have a mortgage and twins on the way, Susie Q. Why would you want to deny yourself the experiences of life?

In the end, I suppose it’s none of my business to pry into the reasoning behind other peoples’ decisions, and the beauty of living in a free society (so they say) is that we’re free to do as we please. And so I am grudgingly happy (and, natch, a little jealous) for my friends who are overjoyed that they’ve found “true love” and are going to live happily ever after. I hope the divorce rate goes down, I really do, for the sake of all my friends. I hope they’re still able to do something for themselves other than fall into a life of soccer motherhood. We do have a right to choose, and I shouldn’t try to stop anyone from seeking out what they believe is their path to happiness.

But don’t you dare come crying on my shoulder when you’re knee deep in diapers and haven’t had sex in a month.