Transition to the Feminine from the ‘Dude’

I had my first child when I was 35. 35 was long enough to do a bunch of stuff: try and fail at relationships, attempt jobs, go on adventures, try on a career. I wanted my 20s on much of that, and folks would tell you that’s what you are supposed to do, so I guess I did it right. 

What people don’t tell you is exactly what you miss at later life childbirth, and among the multitudes of possibilities which I will more than likely lament about in the future, I had to take a good hard look at what I was doing for money…and then completely stop doing it. 

Let me explain.

I graduated when I was 21 with my Bachelors of Fine Arts; more precisely, in theatre. I had a load of tech theatre under my belt when I wanted more performance experience…I guess I should have taken a hint when I was not getting cast for shit except musicals since I can sing fairly well. Not that I am bitter, seriously…I made money and a name for myself, and more precisely, a direction.

I moved away from my tiny college town two weeks after graduation, ready for life to begin; shortly after working as a retail manager (an experience everyone should have), I rolled up to New York City. Mere days after 9/11….whew. Talk about cutting tension with a knife. I will say after being in the south for so long, NYC was full of authentically nice people making sure I got the right subway home. Here I was so used to passive agression. The aggression aggression was a nice breath of fresh air.

After only attending one audition, I kept getting tech work. It fell into my lap, seriously. Working my transition retail job, I met a customer whose name I don’t even think I got get me in touch with the TD for Neil Simon Theatre on Broadway and the rest was history. I would drink at the bar after my restaurant shift and get in touch with ‘actor/director/writers’ that were so impressed with my tech resume and offered me work. Public Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre (where I met Terrance McNally and talked to Edward Albee on the phone…Google it if you don’t know). So, naturally, I started to get a big head about it. I was working with actors who worked on tv, like Sex and the City and Law and Order, famous movie personalities, even 80s has-beens. I even got a music production job with all of my sound knowledge that I had, working out a facility in the village three days a week. 

I had to leave NYC. Not for any other good reason than I was looking for a quality of life change. You could say I turned 25 and thought, oh, the party is OVER. I was looking for a better thing than working 6 days a week for 10 hours a day. God blessed me with a lot of energy, so that was nice…but…yeah. I wanted driveways and mailboxes and suburban fantasy for myself. I decided that was the time to ‘nest’.

So I moved back home to keep the music thing going and see what else I could get into. Music fell away, but then came my really big break; working as a TA for a university theatre program. Instead of doing grunt work, I was in charge and doing grunt work with summers off. Score!

Carpentry became the name of the game for the rest of it. I worked hard, learned a lot, hurt myself a lot, and tried to be a big shot. But…it’s tough for a lady in a world of men, which sounds like an excuse but it’s really not.

Again, let me explain. 

My first boss of my first real job hired me because he believed women were more detail oriented than men. He was absolutely right. I was less inclined to barrel ass my way through a project (ie, let’s glue these two boards together and staple it instead of paying attention to the drawing) than some of my male counterparts. Male counterparts that wanted, applied for, and didn’t get the job that I had.

So I won that round, and I went with the flow. It was a part time gig and I decided to move to the mountains to kindle my love for nature after two years, and so, the job competition became more stiff. More stewy.

Let me just say that I have always been able to find work. Let me just say that. In this day and age, that is a tall fucking order. What I will also say is that, in my experience, I had to be less feminine in order to fit in.

We all want to fit in. Women especially. I have had numerous experiences working as the single girl in a wash of an all dude work crew, and I can swap dick and fart jokes with the best of them…and my Simpsons and Star Wars quotability is really up there. Really. 

What I am trying to say is that I fell into a trap of never being myself in order to never make waves…and ultimately, after years and years of doing so, I had to stop. Wanna know what the last straw was…? Getting into a relationship with my (now) husband.

I served in a position of hiding my femininity, and more or less, hiding my sexuality. For protection maybe, but I think it was to remain thoroughly under the radar. And honestly, I didn’t have amazing chops when it came to carpentry, as I have always been a people person and organizational nazi and those are really my fierce skills….so that was what I leaned on primarily in those times…my ability to be a chameleon. And my aforementioned energy. That too. I always showed up. Always. 

But..I never talked about other guys, I never talked about relationships, I memorized bits and pieces on gear and lumber specs and kept my mouth shut. I thought everything was okay…okay until I started bringing my boyfriend to openings. All of a sudden dudes I could totally speak super frankly to about male anatomy got all uncomfortable (even though I knew their wives and children…weird) around him. Now, don’t get me wrong, my man ain’t the people person I am (he has a tendency to ramble when he tells a story and be really weird socially even though I think he’s the smartest and funniest motherfucker I have ever met), so maybe that was it. 

But it got weirder. I actually quit that first job, vowing to leave the theatre to spend more time with my man, and I did. I did non-profit stuff instead for a bit, with some teaching. But, like I said, need that money and that work and you go back to it in a huff.

So I did, and it got more insane. I found with my now established relationship I couldn’t even be included in dick and fart jokes any longer, even though I changed the people I was around. I actually decided to go to graduate school to do more theatre, to hopefully elevate me to a better position, and coincidentally, found out I was pregnant….now we have hit weirdo jackpot. 

I tried, too. Like a woman desperate for it all to work I busted my ass. I showed up. Worked extra. Had the baby and waddled my ass back to work two weeks later.

All of this time I had been what everybody wanted me to be. And in a male dominated field, that’s the only way a woman can really survive. We all want to be in a pack; we are pack animals. Nobody wants to have the experience of being different, or worse, having to deal with someone being different. 

I was part of a graduate panel dictating females in theatre, and we all agreed it was a total sausage fest. Not to mention that Hollywood had zero female creatives (or creatives of color at a high level), but it was also the case that each of us had the same issue.

Now I know some women who LIKE being the only lady in the pack. I think I used to be the same way, until I decided to flaunt my femininity and my desire to have babies and make jam and flower arrangements. And it was only until I was 32 that I figured that shit out. I think, for most of my 20s, I was getting an ego hard-on about it, ignoring my basic instincts for femininity. Being one of the guys was way more powerful than being a girl. 

…and why? Why. I asked myself that ALOT. Why did it take me this long? When I gave birth to a girl really changed my inner dialogue about it.
When I found out the sex of the fetus, I was heartbroken a little. It meant I had to teach her all of the things I don’t want to have to teach her…how to protect herself from men (knife key hold, don’t dress the way that might make you feel good or you will have to deal with unwarranted attention, tell Mommy EVERYTHING, no means no, etc), and how to let the more aggressive ones be in charge and feel like they are right to protect your own professional position. Pretend you are weak in situations, even though giving birth naturally is the hardest thing in the world and should be respected as such…can’t let that fly. 

I wrote a post very shortly after the time I left my theatre graduate program about all of this. I was put into a room with three grown men that had no children and I was sobbing about how I couldn’t work a 60 hour work week while I had a sick child at home. I said, ‘I tried to fit in, but you are going to have to work with me in order for me to do all of this…’ they replied, ‘this is the way we have always done it.’

I pulled out of that program 2 weeks later. Always done it? What a cowardly excuse. Fuck off. 

Well. No one missed me after I left, I assure you. I was the ‘trouble maker’. So I went on the graduate with honors a Masters in Communications. But…talk about career change. Midlife change. All because I was tired of being the underdog to everyone else. 

I recently was called in for another theatre position — remember what I mentioned earlier about needing that sweet cash money — and it came full circle AGAIN. 

Sure, great money, prestige, a title and a 401K….if I work 60+ hours a week. 4 months after my second child being born. And not only that, but knowing— KNOWING — that I would have to pull the same old shit to make some douche bag in charge feel better about swinging his dick around. I could tell in the interview. 

Fuck all that, I said. Rather raise my kids and stay at home with the occasional writing or guiding gig to pay for groceries. See my husband once and a while. Eat decently. 

It’s been a tough transition. Remember my energy thing….it can get self destructive if I have zero outlet. I had to basically do the newborn and postpartum thing without any help, which was exhausting, but sometimes, when parenting does get easier, I worry about how I am doing in the career field. I’m almost 40 and just decided to say a big fat NOPE to tech theatre again….something I have been doing my whole life. I recently saw an entry level position that asked for four years of experience…(?) Have I really just shot myself in the foot? So I can have a child and a family and I can’t work 60 plus hours a week?

I also have a friend of mine who recently told me (she’s an anomaly in this business as well) that she is consistently being treated like she is a child in the group of men that order her around. I’m thinking, OF COURSE you are. If you aren’t playing the part of the innocent up front but behind closed doors vixen who is perpetually single that is ‘cool’ with off color humor, then get the fuck out. Speak up? Why? When there is so much righteousness in here? 

I need to simmer down some, as that self righteous anger is one helluva drug. Seriously. But…I could totally go there. 

Anyhoo. Here I am. Making jam and being a super mom. But daily, I question my value in the marketplace, and more or less figuring that I will have to deny my femininity in order to do so, which is what I do not want to do…and trying like hell to choose not to believe that way. I know my mind is like a bad neighborhood at night. Is it really the way things are…? Is this something I developed to cope, because I am not above second guessing myself in that manner… I just think that the conversation is a little one sided. And if I did get all of those jobs because of affirmative action (oh no! No women or black people? gotta remedy that in this era pf political correctness!) as someone mentioned to me, fine. But at least allow me to not work a bazillion hours in order to raise a family. Or pay really fucking well so I can hire somebody. Yet…why do that when there are plenty of young ‘uns available for no money and no expertise…right. 

Therein lies the joy of late parenthood. I get to figure all of this out, and feel the agonizing slow burn of watching my old life die while waiting for another one to take shape. But trust me…relieved I don’t have to go back. At least right now, and for that, I am MEGA grateful.