Cindy Crawford is not a model. She may be something pretty to look at, but she is not exemplary. While she relives her youthful commercial hit in the new Diet Pepsi sequel, slurping from a can and then whizzing back to the kids in the car, she masks a huge misperception. You can't wholeheartedly do it all at once.
Here's why the picture perfect woman's a bit sketchy: Many successful women do not bounce back to stardom after motherhood, according to a rash of recent publicity. With Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift ducking out of the re-election race partly because of her kids, People magazine's cover story on those famous for putting family first and Hollywood second and women at Penn infuriated over the charge that they're emotionally unfit to rule the world, there's a lot of chattering about there being a trade-off. And there is.
But you don't have to make a choice early in the game or feel like a failure if one area of your life is on vacation (and some women -- such as Oprah -- do control the world). There's time to do it all, but at the end of the day, you are either reproductive or productive.
You may disagree. Even older columnists have trouble tackling this one. Take Lisa Belkin, whose New York Times column provoked a fury of responses a couple weeks ago and a follow-up column last Sunday.
Belkin cites a new book which purports that close to half of all professional women are childless at age 40 and, furthermore, the more powerful the woman, the less likely she is to bear children, and vice versa for men.
It launched painful agreement -- "The day after my college graduation in 1974, I began my corporate climb... I sit here now with two master's degrees, wishing I had stopped to pause for a child" -- and angry denial -- "Parenting is still something for our culture that is done 'on the side.' When it becomes a respectable career choice for men and women, maybe there will be more men willing to be stay-at-home fathers for powerful women."
Maybe more men than just Carly Fiorina's husband will get the message. If our husbands stay home, though, that's a sacrifice -- not a failure.
At Penn, we're often the ones striving for the windowed-office and the three letter title and the three year old. So we do kinda hafta sorta make some kind of finite decision about motherhood and work. Don't we?
According to mom, we have our whole lives ahead of us. We look at our moms, our aunts, our sisters, our cousins over Easter, Passover and Holi and we realize -- as usual -- she's right: We do have our whole lives ahead of us.
But what does that mean?
Do we have to think about the Mommy track -- or a Daddy track, as the case may be -- if we have a whole span of life decisions to come? Do all other decisions hinge upon that decision?
I'd say no.
The M.O.M. vs. C.E.O. debate can't be settled in black and white newsprint or a book. First of all, "success" defies definition. It is not how much money you make. It is not how many children you have. It is not how many people recognize your face.
It is all these things and none of these things. Each woman has her own definition of success, and it is constantly changing. If your definition of success today is making millions and making a family, then follow Celine, buy a house near Caesars' Palace and only perform after your child's bedtime.
The idea of success depends on your perspective. Last week, my first-cousin-once-removed, unknowingly, offered up one of my favorite insights.
She pointed to her children and said, "I wasn't as focused as you, but if you want it, I have one piece of advice: pick a job that allows for one of these things. I didn't."
Here's what I heard: "Yeah, I'm doing it all, but I feel like I'm walking through a carwash on its own wash and dry cycles."
In Hollywood, you leave to have children and risk obscurity. Rosanna Arquette, of Desperately Seeking Susan semi-fame, left the glitz and glamour to spend time with her baby. In 1997, a Universal Studios casting agent didn't know who she was.
And back on earth, low-profile women have problems staying on the ideal track too. The newsroom is notorious for burning out motherhood desires. Many -- though certainly not all -- female journalists marry their jobs or reduce themselves to obit beats to have children. They've left the scene, as far as the scene is concerned.
And that's the misperception. A woman's scene, like her definition of success, is always changing. A woman's scene changes as she changes. A woman's workplace is wherever she can give of herself -- whether it's at home, on stage, in the office, in the classroom or next to a Pepsi machine. Aliya Sternstein is a senior Psychology major from Potomac, Md.
