You've probably read or heard the news that Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy after discovering, through genetic testing, that she carries the gene that gives her an 87% chance of developing breast cancer. For the most part, the collective response was, "Wow, how brave and conscientious of her to make that decision for her and her family, and how strong she is to have disclosed it to a world that propelled her to stardom based mainly on her physical beauty."
But, then there were other responses..."How could she have butchered herself like that? She'll never be seen the same way by her fans!" and "Will she ever get another movie role?", and perhaps the most troubling to me, "Why did she publish this article in the NY Times and scare women since 99% of us do not carry the gene and therefore don't have to worry about this! Just another celebrity using their misfortune to cause public hysteria!"
The majority of these comments were made...by women.
As women, we are accustomed to being treated like second-class citizens in a country in which we outnumber our male counterparts 51:49. We earn 75 cents to every dollar that a man earns for the same work; we are judged on our physical beauty much more often than on our intellectual prowess, skills and talents; we are judged for being sexual creatures or for being too prude, for having a baby out of wedlock or for terminating a pregnancy, for drinking a glass of wine or being "of advanced maternal age" while pregnant, even though science shows that men contribute as much or even more to the health and well-being of an unborn child; mothers are damned if they do stay at home with their children and damned if they don't.
But, I've found that one thing that is rarely discussed in polite conversation (or even in public discourse) is the manner in which we women shortchange, stymie and set back other women. It wasn't so long ago that Sheryl Sandberg was featured on the cover of Time magazine for the publication of her book "Lean In", a megaphonic callout to women that they need not sacrifice the upward progression of their careers simply because motherhood and family beckon; instead, there are ways (and there need to be more and better ways created) for women to achieve the professional success of men without giving up their important role of mother. After all, women are earning advanced and graduate degrees at increasingly higher rates than men, and so it doesn't follow that they should be dropping out of the tenure process in academia, or off the corporate ladder right around the time that the maternal clock starts to ring. But, boy, oh boy did Sheryl Sandberg get a vicious backlash. How dare she tell other women who are not of her social status how to balance career and homelife? How dare she suggest that women abandon motherhood in favor of work (which she didn't actually suggest)? How dare she strut her wealthy, successful self onto the cover of Time magazine and pretend she has the answers? Gloria Steinem came out shortly thereafter in support of Sandberg, and said this to the critics: "Even its critics are making a deep if inadvertent point: Only in women is success viewed as a barrier to giving advice."
So why are we women thwarting other women?
I wish I could offer an insightful and intelligent exploration into this, but I fear this post is strictly observation. But I fear the downfall of women in this society might not be, as we popularly suggest, the oppression from males, but rather our own inadvertent self-flagellation.