Feminist Critical Essay

In Rebecca McClanahan’s essay “Bearing Life: Liferower,” she uses extended metaphor and rhythm to illuminate theme. She is comparing her endurance in life to rowing a boat and the constant pacing of a heart beating. In comparison to her own journey, is a computer generated “pacer,” contrasting society’s expectations of women.

“Liferower” has dual meanings. In the opening line, “There I am on the Liferower screen, the computerized woman in the tiny boat, and the little woman rowing below me is my pacer” McClanahan sets up a metacognitive view of how she sees herself while exercising. The symbolism that her exercise is the steady rhythm, “my pacer,” which is the center, or heart beat, of her life. “’Keep up with the pacer,’ blinks the sign on the screen” has dual meaning as to McClanahan keeping up with her exercise routine and a woman keeping up with an industrialized society.

In “with my father in space-time,” McClanahan describes “The first time I felt my heartbeat I was eight years old.” She weaves themes of the heart through her body of work in both literal and figurative ways, “My father’s valve has been replaced with plastic that clicks when he overexerts himself.” Her writing explores the father/ daughter relationship, and in it comes the question, “If I have no one to care for, who will care for me?” With this worry of a woman, comes the statement, “And the hearts of women beat faster and harder, both waking, and sleeping, than the hearts of men.”

As she recalls her younger self, the measurements of her wedding dress, she states, “The marriage lasted three years, three years longer than it should have because I was determined not to fail. My mother was my measure, my pacer, and when my husband began turning from me, I rowed faster and faster toward him. I would work harder, cook more of his favorite foods, steam his khakis with a sharper pleat.” Although McClanahan does not identify herself as a feminist, she cannot help but illuminate in her writing the expectation of a woman’s role, the physical toll to meet it, and society’s backlash once she falls short of it. The next line, “Lean into the stroke. Keep up with the pacer. You are three boats behind” shows her “rowing” what the waters have brought her, and yet behind according to the computer generated pacer.

McClanahan addresses issues of ageism in her essay with “On the rower beside mine, a young woman pumps with long, tanned legs and pulls with lean, muscled arms that she probably believes will never soften.” McClanahan, the older woman, is invisible to the weight instructor of her own age. “He does not see me.” Yet, the younger woman is so belabored in her own movement, she is not enjoying these moments of her youth. “She watches her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror as if her body belongs to someone else. Her forehead is prematurely lined with worry; she is not enjoying this.” Our physical appearance as women is objectified to the point we are out of our own bodies, seeing our reflection in the mirror, disconnected to the experience within our own skin.

“The child I chose against would have been born into the cramped space of my life between marriages.” Here, her use of alliteration, adds a literary lilting quality in contrast to this harsh reality of her life. “I still ask myself how it could have happened. Things happen.” There is the blaming of herself in the choice and yet, at the same moment, the judgment is lifted in how life happens. In the description, “The doctor, who is kind and slightly plump, his forehead lined from having seen too much,” uses the imagery of the forehead again as a symbol of worry. Here, the gender roles overlap, the doctor is concerned for her and tries to offer some words of advice. Unfortunately, his method is not comforting, but rather patriarchal and patronizing as he “holds up a glass bottle filled with something bright and red. ‘This is pregnancy,’ he says, believing it is for your own good. ‘Don’t let this happen again.’” As if there were no repercussions to a woman’s decision.

The metaphor of the liferower and the symbol of the bloody pumping heart continues with, “Five boats ahead of me, the pacer slides over the finish line, leaving red buoys bobbing in her wake.” It is a race between the woman and the computerized pacer. “I place my fingertips on my carotid artery and begin the count that will bring me back to myself.” This is an essay about a woman’s journey to find her own pace while rowing through life. “Easing up on the rope, I pump slower, slower, my boat cruising past the crowd of bystanders waving from the shoreline.” I tell my students the theme is what you take away from a piece of literature—it is your message from the author. As women, we must listen to the own beat of our hearts, even if we cannot keep up with an industrialized society’s expectation of how women should physically labor in order to win the race.

Stand Up, Speak Out

My teaching tiger escaped from her cage with a roaring rage. We were reading the article, “Gay and So Alone” about a student being harassed, when one ninth grade boy said to the other, “faggot.” I lost it. I yelled, “I don’t ever want to hear that in my presence again. It disgusts me. You missed the entire point.” There was silence. It is my ninth grade honors class. They are all good kids. But even here, they don’t understand the damage that word does.

I get tired of explaining myself. It is my job after all, but some things are just emotionally exhausting and there are pieces of myself that I don’t share with all my students. Too many classes over the years, too many students per day, and too many misfires when I was being vulnerable and then thought better of it. It’s easier when teaching high school to come up with one-liners. “My sister is a lesbian. My best friend is gay. 10% of the population is homosexual, which means about three to four people in this room.” Somehow though, the one-liners never seem to cover it all.

A previous year, one of my students said regarding the principal, “That faggot. I’d kick his axx.” I wrote it up and gave it to the principal. This is a school where a student walked down the hall wearing eye shadow and another student pelted a bottle at him. As a teacher relayed the story to me, her solution was for the student to go to a more “accepting school” near Melrose. We also had a ninth grader that came to school wearing a dress. At a meeting, the coordinator of our ninth grade academy said, “We explained to him, if you come to school wearing a dress, you’ve got to be ready to deal with the other student’s reactions.” Here is where I spoke up, “a student should be able to come to school wearing whatever they choose and not have bottles pelted at them, or in the case of Lawrence King, be shot.” I didn’t say anything about the lack of consequence when my student threatened the principal. I did, however, tell the counselor that I needed the student removed from my class next semester because there were some things that I just was not willing to tolerate.

The complexity of these issues cannot be stated in a word when I want to stop a word from being used in my classroom. Please, my gay best friend from high school died three years ago. I think about the years he survived as an adolescent with society’s homophobia surrounding him. He, himself, made homophobic comments when we were young. It took years for me to understand the denial and inward self hatred that propagates such remarks. How can I explain to them how much I miss him, how witty he was, how he told me he would marry me if he were straight—that I would be the one.

When I was at my orientation for college at the University of Michigan, we were shown a video on diversity. My sister was in the video. She was quoting how two women were walking through the diag holding hands when a man said to them, “Come over here and we’ll show you how it’s done.” Afterward, we had a discussion group. I started talking, but burst into tears saying, “That was my sister in the video. How can people be so mean?”

Edgar called Nicolas “queer” in class the day after Nicolas used “gay.” I really didn’t have the energy to deal with the ignorance that day. I was already working on this essay and had mentioned this writing assignment that they would all have to do because of this very instance. But that day, Ruben, one of the boys I yelled at in regards to the “faggot” incident said, “You aren’t supposed to use that word.” He was a little beacon of light for me in that moment. He also told a girl who called me “Ms” that “she is Ms. Enszer—she is a proper noun, not a common noun.” Ruben makes me feel not only that I teach things, but more importantly that he learns them.

When I was in third grade, Boy George was like the voice of God singing to me, “Give me time to realize my crime.” People would say, “He’s gay.” I would quip back, “Bisexual.” He is actually gay, but to be accepted by the mainstream media, he said he was bisexual. That was before my sister came out to me, before I majored in theatre, before my best friend died. There was just something inherent in me to stand up to the negative connotation of that word at age eight.

So every day, I do my thing. I don’t know if any of my students realized I wore pink on February 19 in honor of Lawrence King and in the effort to stop bullying. But I do know that I moved from a small town in Michigan to Los Angeles for a reason. There, people wear big, bulky, winter coats. Here, a boy wore a dress to school. So even though I will apologize for yelling, I am not sorry for my emotional reaction. It comes from a very personal place. So if sharing this incites a student to see the film Milk, or research on the internet the Stonewall Riots, or simply say to another student, “You aren’t supposed to use that word” then some healing has taken place in my life and hopefully in the lives of others.