There is sort of this theory I have been forming over the last couple of weeks. It’s been mostly influenced by the archetypal image of the working class man as conjured through books, movies and music. With the recession now and paranoia everywhere, I have kind of wanted to look at how it would be like to be a working class person earlier on in the 20th century.
In the western world, and I’d imagine in most places, girls from well-off families, actually most families, usually ended up being housewives. It’s only the poor women, and some upper-class women who were ambitious and passionate about what they do actually got out and joined the workforce. The poor women probably didn’t have much choice as to what occupation they wanted to go into. They probably just took what most conveniently was around. Surely, some of them went into prostitutution.
But with the opportunity of living and working like a man of the same status would, comes the challenge of male standards and expectations. I don’t believe that we should distinguish societal expectations by gender, but right now I think we are in a turning point in history where we are in between a previous society where everything was in terms of gender roles, and a future society where there are no such thing as gender roles. At this point, working women face a billion obstacles having it all, a personal life and a successful working life. Like times before us, we can’t just sit around and expect a man to find us, but we have to be the man ourselves, and be proactive and go look for someone. These are not the times where there is anything like Prince Charming or even Damsels-in-distress. We are all kind of just a group of men, trying to survive and get the best of what’s out there. Everyone’s apparently in a rat race.
