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.

How It Feels To Be Single Me

Modeled after Zora Neale Hurston's "How It Feels To Be Colored Me"

A single woman is how I signed all my escrow papers. My feminist friend went off—I bet they don’t make men sign a single man! I didn’t know. But I had taken this title on, turned it around in my mind, it was almost now like a commercial jingle in my head. A single woman. It seemed like the title of my next one-woman show.

I bought my property on my own. People asked if my parents helped…no, I asked, and they said no. The entitled part of me was very upset, since I feel like they have the money, or so I’m told by my mom’s best friend. But something inside of me fired up and said, “Fine then, I’ll do it on my own.” And I did.

My mother will never understand what it means to be a single woman in her thirties. She was married in her mid-twenties in the sixties, but being raised in the fifties, she is very traditional with her hats and high heels at church on Sundays. She worked as a R.N. growing up and although I always saw her as strong, I realized she would never be strong enough to leave my father and live on her own.

Although I see how hard it is to do everything on your own. Moving, legal paperwork, painting, putting in floors, fixing the clog in the sink, fixing the fan in the refrigerator, getting the fireplace to work when there is no other heat…sometimes I really get tired of being single me. Sometimes I really wish there was someone else to pick up the slack. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to do it all.

But I’m also glad I don’t have to put up with anyone else. When I moved to New York City, both my father and my boyfriend at the time offered to help me move. I declined their assistance. I didn’t want to deal with my boyfriend’s anger or my father’s annoyance and knew I could do it on my own with more peace of mind. So there I was in the middle of Manhattan on 47th Street between 8th and 9th unloading the Uhaul in the middle of the night.

When I moved to Los Angeles a few years later, I still did it on my own. This time I just hired movers. Easier to pay for the muscle of the man, as opposed to being bound by it. I landed at a man’s, but I knew I needed to quickly move out because I wasn’t going to last more than a few days.

When I was sixteen, my high school English teacher said she could see me having a baby on my own—that I was a strong, independent woman. She meant it as a compliment, but it haunts me even today. It feels lonely to be single me. There is an underlying fear constantly present that this is it. I haven’t found a partner yet and how am I going to have the baby I so desperately want on my own?

I had to fill out a person to contact in case of emergency, and I really felt like there was no one reliable I could put. The person you put is supposed to have power of attorney over you, but really, at my age, your parents no longer have that power. Since my parents live in Michigan, if I am knocked unconscious and need someone to be at the hospital with me, they are not the ones to call anyway. Who is my person to contact in case of emergency? My best friend doesn’t have a cell phone, so he may not get the message until hours later. And when you move, you really learn who your real friends are.

Howard used to say to enjoy my time as single me. He said sometimes he wished he were single. Sometimes, after hanging out with couples I am glad to be single me. But sometimes, I see what they have and I am envious me.

The archaic meaning of single is “not accompanied or supported by others; alone.” “People who are unmarried or not involved in a stable sexual relationship.” There is this negative connotation that being single has. As singles, we are singled out. My married friend did not invite me to Thanksgiving one year, because they wanted another couple at the dinner table. How it feels to be single me is the perception by others and by myself that I have somehow failed the partnering ritual so many are in. It feels sad to be single me, but at the same time, I know the sad is replaced by mad when I am partnered me.

My mother would talk about single people—how they were selfish and narcissistic. I cannot judge her decisions for staying in a relationship I would never be in. But I feel its effects on single me. I think about my Aunt, who just lost her husband to cancer, and I know her single self is very different than how it feels to be single me. My Aunt and Uncle seemed to have had a very happy marriage. Seeing that, makes me feel like someday, I may be able to move from single me to more of me.

Panther Rap for My Students

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View from a Classroom

A student teacher from UCLA commented on the beautiful view from my classroom...but for me, the beauty is inside the classroom...although the cumulous circulating cirrus clouds makes for a nice example of alliteration for the back drop of a downtown skyline.

What Is an American?

Modeled after Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crevecoeur's essay

When I was in fourth grade, my teacher explained that we were not to say we were “Americans” because people in Canada and Mexico were also from North America—we were United States citizens. So when I was visiting Korea as an adult teaching at the International School at Handong Global University, I tried to enlighten the Korean culture with political correctness that I was a United States citizen…however, it became quite tiresome with the language barrier and I quickly realized that for better or worse, wherever one traveled, the Imperialistic legacy of the United States leaked itself into the collective unconscious, and whether I saw myself as an American or not, this was a cultural icon far larger than my little spirit could conquer.

My rudimentary teachings were of the Boston Tea Party—how that group rebelled from their oppressive British rulers and threw the tea into the Boston body of water. Dr. Oz was on Oprah and advised this poor woman with feet stench to soak her feet in tea bags—how American! She came on the show extremely grateful that now she was more acceptable to society because her feet no longer stank up the room when she took her shoes off.

As if it were a past life, even though I don’t think the majority of Americans believe in past lives, because the majority of Americans are Christian minus Dr. Oz, a Muslim and a vegan mind you, I was taken by the Salem witch trials. My elementary teacher told me that they would throw you in the water, if you floated, you were burned at the stake because you were guilty! But if you sunk, you were innocent, but you were dead anyway, so what did it matter?

In high school, my teacher told me to cherish my heritage. I had no idea what these words meant. I was brought up in one of the nation’s top ten most violent cities in America—Saginaw, Michigan. I didn’t know much about my Irish heritage, although I learned later about The Magdalene Laundries, the oppression and shaming of women through the Catholic religion, but also the ostracisation of their religion and the poor conditions in which they came to this country. I am more Finnish than anything else, yet I have never been to Finland, although I love my Volvo, and like to say I’m Swedish because it sounds more exotic. My name is very German, but I don’t like to admit that to anyone because of the whole Nazi thing. Maybe this is why I’ve had so many Jewish boyfriends? Only in America. I had to call my Grandmother and prove to a ninth grade boy that I am part Native American from the Polawadamee tribe. I, too, am American. I am more than just the white woman they perceive.

We have forty weeks to cover the American Literature in our text. I know that when my students leave, they will only have a taste of Feminism, Civil Rights, Transcendentalism and the notions of freedom on which our America was built. But I am making them write this essay, so if nothing else, they will be able to define for themselves what it is to be an American.

Academic Autobiography

Mrs. Coffee didn’t recommend me for the gifted program in kindergarten. My mother was furious. She marched down to the school a block and a half from our house and insisted I be tested. She didn’t want me to go to any other school than our neighborhood school which was being converted to a gifted school. There are few things which I remember from kindergarten—painting a Native American ceramic face, trying to figure out if I was right or left-handed, being embarrassed by my mother’s fake cheetah fur coat in the doorway as she picked me up, her overly made-up rouge cheeks smiling at me, her hand waving. I now appreciate how my mother was an advocate for my education, when I was too shy for the teacher to think that I was smart.

In second grade, I was in the lowest reading group. I also had a speech problem—no one could understand me. I had two older sisters, so for the first few years of my life, only they understood what I said, translated for me, as I pointed to things that I needed. I was signed up for speech with Ms. Rose, who thought that it would take years for people to be able to understand me. She was not used to working with gifted children. My father had offered me a dollar if I could say “slippery seals.” I practiced all day, and at the end of the day, was able to say it clearly and put my hand out for the anticipated cash. Flash some green and I was a talking machine.

In fourth grade, I received four Bs on my report card, and my father didn’t speak to me for weeks. My mother had to finally have a talk with him. But from then on, I vowed to get all As. It won me a top scholarship to University of Michigan, but I was stressed out in the process. I managed to keep up all As until college. I still graduated college with honors, but let slide a bit of my obsession with perfectionism. It wasn’t healthy. Best to be balanced.

Now, I teach my students how to question, challenge, fight for their grades. I realized when I became a teacher, just how subjective some grades are—how I wished I would have spoken up more and questioned some of my teachers in college. But I also teach my students how to think critically. The most important thing is what you learn in the process of a class, the things you take away, and what you learn in yourself from an interaction with a teacher. It’s ridiculous to think you are going to like everyone, but sometimes we have good enemies, a Native term. Our good enemy is the teacher which teaches us a lesson we might not otherwise have learned.

Sometimes, I am still that shy, little girl who no one sees as gifted. But now, instead of just painting a ceramic Native American face, I now know my own Native American roots as well. I sink my energy deep into the ground, so that even if no one sees what I am really capable of, deep inside myself, I know. Sometimes, that is enough.