Working Girl

It’s been years since I’ve watched Working Girl. There’s something about that movie that just stays with me. It resonates. The scene at the end, with that great Carly Simon song, where Tess (Melanie Griffith) has all of her hard work, struggle, and perseverance pay off just thrills and motivates me every time. Her hardships have been worth it, and she is a trailblazer who, for all the sexism she has put up with and perhaps inadvertently promoted, is choosing to set a new standard for working women everywhere.

I did not plan to become a career woman. In fact, it has snuck up on me, slowly, then all at once, until I find that a majority (to a fault) of my personal value is coming from the work I’m doing. I have chosen work that I feel is important, that makes a lasting difference, and that will retain significance with those involved (my students, my clients) long after I have moved on or they have. I have chosen work that allows me to have important big conversations, share valuable ideas, and have meaningful encounters with people. I have cultivated my skills, and discovered my abilities, and decided for myself what is important and what I want to choose to contribute in this life. And I’m able to do those things, that work, because of all of the women that came before me.

The careers I have had are not new for women (hairdressing, teaching), but the possibilities that are available today alongside them are different. The significance attached to any work I might choose to do is of a different calibre than it ever has been historically, as recently as the 1960s, the 1980s, and even more recently. I am allowed to attached importance to my career and work in ways that have only recently existed, been permitted, or been encouraged. I’m allowed to choose to value my career, and to not see it as a means to another end that is more traditional or expected. And I love that!

My parents married young, babies and motherhood was almost immediate for my Mom. One grandmother quit school in 4th grade so her brothers could attend, and lived with those unavoidable consequences her whole life long. My other grandmother worked for a short time, and loved it, but chose marriage and motherhood as well. I never really thought about choosing to seek value from anything besides the path of those that came before me. I have stumbled upon it, and while I’m not planning to make my life only my work, I so appreciate that I could. I appreciate my education, and value the hard work I have put into getting it. I also love that I have so many options in deciding where my value comes from, and that it is something I get to choose! It is so easy to assign life value for others; I appreciate women who derive their value from their families, their marriages, their friends, their work, their passions, their hobbies, and from anything else that provides it.

The realization that I’ve come to is this: it doesn’t matter where you want your value to come from, just recognize that you have a choice and a responsibility to decide for yourself. That obligation comes from all the individuals who have worked to secure these freedoms for us. And there is another responsibility attached there as well, to continue to do the same for those who do not yet enjoy those freedoms. It’s so freeing to decide for yourself what success will be, what it will look like. I’m glad to have the choice, and happy to be reminded that there is one.