A Measure of Success

 

   Several months ago I was bored and started surfing You Tube on my iPad. I was tired of watching the same A Football Life episodes over and over again when I stumbled upon a channel that had short informational videos about the history of various people of royal birth. There were videos about the children and grand children of Queen Victoria of England, royal wedding customs and the off spring of a Danish king whose name escapes me at the moment. (It's either Christian or Frederick apparently the kings of Denmark alternate between the two names.)

  One of the videos was about women from the United States who married into foreign royal families. The narrator quoted a statistic that caught my ear. She said that since the United States does not have a monarchy, girls born in this country can't dream of marrying a prince. However there have been more women that have married into royal families than have been on the Supreme Court. Then the narrator said, "There's still hope ladies." 

  The feminist side of me bristled at that. I really have a problem with the whole idea that the pinnacle of success for women is marrying a prince. Or any man of great power or wealth for that matter.   

   I'm sure there might be someone out there right now who is thinking that I just demeaned marriage. I'm not. Marriage is wonderful. I've been married for 16 years and I believe that a marriage to the right person is a good thing. I am saying that I'm against the idea that success for a woman is marriage to a prince or other wealthy or powerful man.

  Part of this comes from being raised around my mother's Italian immigrant family which was very matriarchal. Not that men were disregarded or disrespected. The women were the glue that held things together. The women worked along side the men. They picked eggs, weeded gardens, slopped pigs, cleaned the house, canned fruits, vegetables and meat, did laundry and cooked meals for family and others. My grandmother sewed a lot of her clothes and sewed things for other people. They weren't sitting around filing their nails or shopping for the latest fashions.

  Another part of this comes from something I have observed over many years. There have been several high profile fairytale weddings that seem to fall apart rather quickly. It seems that the bigger the wedding, the shorter the marriage. To me is a successful marriage is one that lasts and is mostly happy. One thing I noted from the list of American royal brides is that several of those marriages ended in divorce. 

  My final reason for having a problem with success for woman being defined as marriage to a prominent man is the idea that a single woman cannot be successful. Just as a man's success is not based on his marital status, a woman's success should not be based on her marital status. 

   This idea that a woman's worth depends on the material worth or importance of her spouse is an outdated idea that really needs to go. It places unfair expectations on men and women. 

   One of my favourite women growing up was Esther, the Persian queen in the Old Testament of the Bible. First of all she is one of the two women who have books in the Bible names after them. (Unless you count the Book of Judith, then there are three.) She is honoured not because of who she married but of her role in saving the Jewish people from extermination by government official. (To be fair she could not have done what she did if she had not been married to the king.) The holiday of Purim commemorates her act of bravery.

  That's the kind of thing that should determine a woman's success. Success should be on what a woman has done, be it raising children, working in a profession or working as a volunteer. Not on meeting some standard set by Disney fairytales...…