‘POWER IS THE ABILITY NOT TO HAVE TO PLEASE’
Gina Barreca understands women can laugh at themselves. One of her previous books, They Used to Call Me Snow White . . . But I Drifted, was a bestseller in Canada. Barreca continues to delve into women’s daily quirks in her latest book, If You Lean In, Will Men Just Look Down Your Blouse? Questions and Thoughts for Loud, Smart Women in Turbulent Times. She teaches English literature at the University of Connecticut and writes a column for the Tribune News Service. Our conversation has been edited for length.
Jennifer: Let’s talk about purses. Today mine contains two books, five lipsticks, three eyeglass cases, a hairbrush, a bottle of Tylenol and four pens. It weighs a ton.
Gina: We are the nurturers and the caretakers and we carry everything we need to start life in another city. Men just carry a credit card and $20 because they figure if they need it, they can buy it or they can ask any woman for it, and we will have it, be it Aspirin, Aleve, Tylenol.
I am surprised you don’t have Band-Aids. Most of us have Band-Aids because we have grown up with cheap shoes and we have bleeding ankles from the cheap shoes digging in.
Women want to make sure they look after everybody. Not only do we hold up the sky, we do it with a 500-pound bag.
Jennifer: What do you have in your bag today?
Gina: I have keys, a tiny change purse. I have my iPhone in a leather protector that looks like a holy book so people think I am deeply religious. When I take a picture it looks like I am holding up a small Bible and doing an exorcism instead of a selfie.
I have a pink plastic pen that says Cat Lady. I have an eyeglass holder. I have Aspirin, Advil, Aleve, Imodium, Day-Quil. I have makeup: liquid lipstick, a regular lipstick, mascara and Gas-X because I am 59. I have cheques, all the credit cards I need for stores I haven’t been to in years but just in case . . . And one earring. I hope to find the other.
Jennifer: I used to watch my mother put her girdle on and I always thought it was ridiculous. Our generation of women thought they had eschewed girdles and falsies, but no . . . I admit I wore Spanx to fit into the dress I wore for my son’s wedding.
Gina: How did you pee? You need to have an evacuation plan if you’re doing that.
When I give a speech I always reveal my age and my weight, as soon as I get the mic, to get it over with. I am 59 years old and 157 pounds. Now you can listen to me. You don’t have to figure out whether I am older or younger than you or whether I weigh more or less than you do.
When I was in my early 20s, I read fashion magazines like Vogue but knew I could never afford anything. Today I look at Vogue but I know I’d never squeeze into anything. Not only that, but who ever heard of size 0 or size 2 when we were young?
Size sub-zero is a refrigerator. It is not a size for a human being. We are looking for the same types of deductions with our weight as we do with our taxes. I just don’t get on a scale. Why do that to myself?
My mother was French Canadian from northern Quebec. One of the great gifts she gave me was to feel good about how I look and to have everything in my body working properly.
I’ve had my gallbladder out, my uterus out, but I really try to be grateful to all the bits in me that work. I am astonished that women I know get on a scale every morning. They do this as a ritual of self-loathing, not to make sure they are healthy but somehow to measure their self-worth. If I could go in and steal people’s scales, I would.
Jennifer: You say learning how to raise hell is an important skill for middle-aged women. But then we get ostracized and typecast as bitches.
Gina: Any time a woman opens her mouth and a cooing sound doesn’t come out, then you are already a bitch. You might as well enjoy it and accept the privileges of that position. There is not a way to avoid that moniker, so therefore it needs to be embraced.
Power is the ability not to have to please. That is something women, more than men, need to take lessons in. You have to be so good at what you do so it doesn’t matter whether they like you. They can think you are Medusa but still want you to work with them. You are the one they can rely on. I don’t think you are ever given something because you are nice. You are given things because you have the talent.
Jennifer: Everyone asks about the title of your book.
Gina: Of course men will look down your blouse. What women need to do is stand up straight. We need to make noise, we need to make trouble. jhunter@thestar.ca