#arressted development

Today I became that woman that commutes in sneakers. Not a nondescript pair of chucks, but neon yellow and pink gym shoes.

I would try to explain it, saying that I forgot to pack my regular commuter flats (a pair of slip-on Merrills) in my pre-work gym bag, but I can’t. There is no justification, other than middle age and apathy, for commuting in gym shoes.

I am so ashamed.

Book: Lean In

Author: Sheryl Sandberg

Thoughts Prologue: My thoughts on this book can easily be divided into two posts. Not because I have a lot to say (which I do, but I don’t write everything I think), but because my opinions on the first half of the book are completely different than my thoughts on the second.

Thoughts – Part 1: I couldn’t tell if I was bored and annoyed because the message wasn’t novel or because the advice is really geared to a particular set of women: those of privilege.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I have benefited greatly from privilege. Because of privilege, I am able to write this from my kitchen in my house in a really nice NoVa suburb. I get the luxury of readings, and hobbies in general, because I definitely have some privilege.

Still, just like the Mark Warner speech at the DNC in 2008, no one cares to hear how the sort of rich became super rich. No one cares that you get this platform to speak on because you went to the right school. No one cares how you make your marriage and family work because implicit in your talk about dividing up who fixes the computer and who plans the kids’ schedules is the conversation that hired help takes care of the dishes and getting the kids to the right place. The very people that don’t get the chance to Lean In because that necessarily implies that you have the option to lean back in the first place.

(At this point I can go into a whole post about how someone making near minimum wage cannot just really pick herself up by the bootstraps, but honestly, I have those conversations on Facebook when I decide to jump in and poke the ultra-conservatives. That shit is a fucking sport to me.)

I realize that you can’t write a book for everyone. I also realize that if you are going to write a book that speaks to a particularly privileged group of people that you probably shouldn’t recognize your privilege in the book because it makes you sound like a douche. (I am well aware that I sound like a douche.) The whole first half of the book just makes me want to point out that maybe opening your magnum opus on why women need to be aggressive in their careers with stories that are based on how you got somewhere because you were upper-middle class and white isn’t exactly the way to hook your audience.