I grew up in suburban New Jersey with the understanding that I could do just about anything I set my mind to, if I tried. And virtually color-blind. It is a tribute to my parents that if they held any prejudices, they didn't transmit them to me. When I announced that I was going to grow up and marry Yankee Roy White, they applauded my choice of the best left fielder in baseball. We never even talked about his skin color. He was just my favorite Yankee.
I never considered myself a proto-feminist either. Let me explain. In first grade it was announced that the class would be putting on a play, "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," and that the boys would all be billy goats and the girls would all be flowers. No mention of the troll, hmmm. Anyway, the teacher, Mrs. Oswald, went around the room and asked each student what part they wanted to play. Each boy said "billy goat" and each girl said "flower." When she got to me I said that I wanted to be one of the billy goats, securing my first starring role as the Middle Billy Goat Gruff. I was more interested in getting a speaking part then just being a posy, or one of the bunch, so to speak, but it wasn't until years later that I wondered if Mrs. Oswald may have been a feminist, laying out a gender-oriented structure and seeing if anyone would challenge it.
So, just like I think that every kid, boy or girl, should get to be a billy goat (or a flower, for that matter), I also am actually a little pissed about all the talk about those "cracks in the glass ceiling." Hillary was a very good candidate. I didn't vote for her, because I thought Obama was a better one. My thoughts about her candidacy never centered on her being a female. Maybe being a Clinton...But I think it's pretty lame that it's taken a new century to shake up the old white WASP boys club. That ceiling never should have existed, much less needed to be cracked open. I'm half WASP myself, but with a hard-to-pronounce Italian last name. Hell, most of my family members can't even pronounce it correctly. But when will we ever see an Italian-American in the White House?
And all this crap about marriage. Enough. It is time to let people be who they are, legally and spiritually. It's a big world, people. There are so many religions, ways of thought, spirituality. Why do I feel that this country is only starting to catch up to what a little girl just took for granted, that she could marry anyone, and achieve anything she put her mind to, take the "boy's part," so many years ago?
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