When Minneapolis honored the fictional TV character Mary Richards recently, it took me back to growing up during the height of the feminist movement. I was a teen-ager in the mid-1970s and the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” was gospel to me.
Mary Richards was my role model. She was smart, funny, and nice, the woman men wanted to take home to mom and the girl other women wanted as their best friend. But most importantly to me and the National Organization for Women crowd, she was the feminist poster girl for: a single woman who didn’t need a man, a woman working in a business dominated by men, a woman who was making it after all. She may as well have had “The Time Is NOW, Ask Me How” tattooed on her forehead.
I loved Mary and wanted to be just like her. I couldn’t imagine how any woman could be satisfied with doing anything other than having a career. Staying at home watching kids? How boring, how unsophisticated.
Every woman’s magazine told me I was right to pursue a career instead of marriage and family. Women who didn’t make the right “choice” were made fun of, criticized, and snickered at. I bought the whole story and was convinced I was oppressed because I was female. End of discussion.
So, like millions of other women, I launched into my first professional job thinking my life would be an episode of “Mary Tyler Moore.” I was ready to claim victory and eagerly awaited my first day of clever office banter and delightfully eccentric co-workers.
But instead of victory, I got my first battlefield scars.
My boss was as grizzled as Lou Grant, but more like Sue Ann Nivens: witty with an uncanny ability to leave me feeling insulted. Soon I realized work wasn’t going to be anything like the WJM newsroom.
And I was always tired. Work was hard work. Mary always seemed to be having fun or involved in some wacky situation. After a day at my office, I was too exhausted to share laughs and ice cream with a quirky girlfriend upstairs.
There was one aspect of life I shared with my role model. Getting a date was next to impossible and my girlfriends and I commiserated endlessly over margaritas. We were smart, attractive, and available. What in the world was wrong with these guys, we asked, growing more and more convinced they were idiots.
It was years before I realized the guys weren’t the problem. It was us, the Mary Richards wannabes, who put every prospective date through a prickly and defensive “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar” routine. Looking back, I wouldn’t have asked me out, either. A day at the dentist was more fun.
Within a few months I was ready for a vacation and wondering when the heck my happy-go-lucky life as a single career woman was going to kick in.
Thankfully it did, and slowly but surely I moved beyond the I Am Woman mantra as I got more comfortable with me and less defined by Mary. I liked the new me and, to my surprise, so did other people, including men. They seemed less like idiots and more like nice guys who had good things to offer.
Before long I met the man who changed my life. I became a step-mom to a teen-ager and now a grandmother as well. Marrying was the best choice I ever made, even though Mary and the NOW gang would have considered it much too traditional. Now I stay at home managing our household, volunteer for causes I believe in, and soon will begin a job I once thought I would never undertake: substitute teacher.
Looking back I wish I could apologize to the women I dismissed because they didn’t buy into the feminist doctrine. They were much smarter than the ’70s elite and certainly much smarter than me. They realized that happiness comes from choosing the path you want, regardless of conventional wisdom. I chose what’s right for me. To my surprise and delight, I’m not Mary Richards. I’m June Cleaver.
I bake cookies, hear me roar.