... and dance happily out of line
It was one of the highlights of my life as a writer: At the Frankfurt Book Fair, I sat in an improvised TV studio in front of the mirror on the dressing table and waited for my nose was powdered over camera. On the folding chair to the left of me was a dark-haired woman whom I did not know, but who was so beautiful that I could hardly look at her. Then Alice Schwarzer was brought in and placed to the right of me. She immediately knew who was sitting on the other side: Uschi Obermaier! The wild life! In person!
The two women greeted each other over my head, talking a bit, nothing exciting. "What's up?" I sat very still. I wish the time would stand still. The threads that stretch these two extraordinary women over my head formed a fine web of grandeur above me, a tent that included me. I hardly dared to breathe.
Schwarzer and Obermaier - for many the pure provocation
Then the make-up artist joined in and tore the fine threads with her powder puff. The moment was over. And later, when I was back home and wanted to tell this beautiful anecdote, no one understood them - and certainly not my girlfriends. That I, sitting between these women, was happy, simply because they exist. Nobody but me seemed to love Alice Schwarzer and Uschi Obermaier, these two unique women in such different ways.
Man, that annoys! What I perceived as a magical moment became a small one in the retelling. Alice and Uschi - two women polarizing, to put it mildly. They do not leave you cold. Which one finds wonderful or horrible, in between nothing. Just to name a few, Veronica Ferres, Verona Pooth, Hillary Clinton, Heidi Klum or Angelina Jolie. Luckily, I think, the list will be longer every day. The more often a name is mentioned, the more often it provokes irritated reactions. With increasing importance, the nerve factor increases. Recent examples include Charlotte Roche, Alexandra Maria Lara, Nina Hoss, Sahra Wagenknecht.
Women, who, as they become more important, increasingly provoke contradiction. The more women dare, the less likely they are to gain general recognition. In other words, brave girls do not polarize. This is often interpreted as a feminist problem, but in fact it is mainly women who do not like it when other women dance out of line. About Alice Schwarzer was even written literally in the so-called "critical biography" of Bascha Mika, they should have just "put back in time". The series. Which series? The series we stand in, we others. We did not do anything on the scale of Alice Schwarzer (or Uschi Obermaier or ...).
Although we like to think we could do it too. Could move the world if we just had a little more time or money or the right shoes. But actually we are very happy when others take over for us, what we do not dare, what is too exhausting, too dangerous, too big. We need these women, and we do not forgive them completely that we need them. Yes, they should do great things, but they should please pretend that they are just like us. Conversely, to be able to imagine that we are like them, we could do whatever they can.
To sustain this illusion, we ask Angelina Jolie to provide her children with regular meals and a decent home in the first place. Uschi Obermaier's breasts should please succumb to gravity as well as our own. We reproach Mrs Pooth for not forcing her husband's embarrassing demise, and Mrs Ferres, too, could be more modest. Or at least shut up, just shut up once. And Heidi Klum should spare us with her closet sex with Seal. We would much rather hear from her that she sometimes finds married life quite exhausting. Just like us.
Yes, we need women as role models, women in positions of power and in the glamorous starry sky, women with visions, women who change the world - but you should not imagine it. They should at least pretend that they were still dancing with us. In line.
Funny: we put much less demands on male icons and visionaries. Above all, not one thing: to be nice in everything you do. Pablo Picasso was a women's wearer? Martin Scorsese likes roaring around on the set? No matter. It's their performance that counts, their contribution.It's not that easy for women. What Alice Schwarzer is accused of, especially to stick with the grateful example, is that she is not nice. Not even to other women. Scandal!
Male power people do not have to be nice
Would you expect male powerhumans to develop great visions without even a spark of megalomania? That they seize power without enjoying it? That they lead and are always nice anyway? No.
It is well known that the strictest standards are imposed on women by themselves. And because the boundaries between women are permeable and blurry, we make no distinction between ourselves and other women. That's why we insist that our friends think the same, feel the same, live the same as we do. In this equality we find confirmation that our life is right. That our decisions are the right ones. Therefore, we judge the actions and expressions of prominent women as strictly and as accurately as if they were about our own lives. The unfulfillable demand to stand out and at the same time remain on the ground, to do great things, without attracting attention, to stand in line and dance out of it, we put to ourselves, to our lives. We often fail at this claim.
That other women dare just override him, not only shake off the shackles that hold us on the ground, but even feel, that makes us ready. And that's why we react so hard to these women. ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser, psychologist and management consultant, has an interesting theory. In her book "The End of Excuses," she describes the qualities that annoy us in others more than our "shadow." As a side of us that we do not live out and so we are missing.
"Instead of condemning what the other person does and what provokes us, we can conceive it as a question: could we live the positive of what annoys us, and would that be good for us?" She says a ChroniquesDuVasteMonde WOMAN conversation (issue 9/2007) to consider. "If we are annoyed by someone who seems arrogant to us - would not more self-confidence be good for us?" "If we are irritated by a woman playing out her femininity, why do not we allow ourselves that, and would not it be helpful to do it? and getting upset prevents us from expanding our own repertoire of action. " In other words, the women we are most upset about have exactly what we are missing.
Of course, we not only subject the prominence of our exact inspection. The rector of the "best" elected school in Switzerland admitted in an interview, for their husband and their three almost almost adult children, not to clean, nor to shop, nor to cook. "You see, I delegate!" This statement caused more protest than the somewhat questionable ranking of schools.
Or the unknown, whose behavior was recently discussed in front of the supermarket in my village. Exactly I could not reconstruct their offense, although I stopped for a long time at the shopping cart and pretended to look for something in my pocket. Finally, I understood that the absentee who was arguing so violently, has her children registered for lunch at school, even though she is not working. So she has more time for herself. Time for yourself? Instead of cooking for the kids? Where is there such a thing? Where have you heard such a thing?
Anyone could come. It usually comes down to that. But it is not true. Not at all. You have to dare something. You have to want something. Whatever it is - an undisturbed daily routine, a magazine of your own, a head glass ceiling, some of the 500 richest citizens, or reading his name on a movie poster in the largest possible letters - you have to want more than anything else , Even more so than to be loved.
Women polarizing: I like them most of the time. Because I am used to her from an early age. My mother is one of those. It leaves, until today, no cold. Either you find it great or impossible. That was not easy training. As a child, I often wished she was different, that she was like the others. A mother who is holding herself in the background, one does not notice.
It's fun to dance out of line
If she stormed the congregation meeting in our small but affluent suburb, accusing those present (not unfairly, as it turned out) of corruption. When she went to a garden party with a local industrialist who had installed a timer in his toilets to keep workers away from work for too long.
It's fun to dance out of line
That's what my mother thought was inhumane, and she told him that too. And loud. She fought so hard with the man that she was eventually rejected by the party. I followed her in great distance - both spatial and temporal - as if I could cut off the connection between us.
I wished then, the soft grass under my feet would open and swallow me. I wished to die at that moment.Never having to go to school - the industrialist's daughter went to my class. A few years later, I saw things differently. I understand my mother. I was even proud of her.
Maybe that's why I have a great affinity for so-called difficult women. Every color. Whether they attract attention through flamboyant political engagement or unscrupulous self-promotion, I like women who are out of line. But I also know how exhausting her life is, how lonely sometimes. I know that they often like to step back in line, disappear into it. If only they could. I also know how easy it is to stand in line and how tempting it is to dance out of it. With very small steps first, with gentle twists, to the right, to the left, push the toes, but that's fun.
To read more: ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Roser: The end of the excuses. BRGITTE book by Diana Verlag, 350 p., 16.95 euros
More about the author Milena Moser
