\u201cRocking it at work. Kicking \u201cbeing-a-mom\u2019s\u201d ass.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reagan\u2013Cristina Applegate\u2019s character on \u201cUp All Night\u201d\u2013\u00a0is quickly becoming my new favorite TV heroine. Struggling to balance\u00a0career and family,\u00a0she\u00a0is never a\u00a0victim of work, or of motherhood. You never see her sacrifice one at the painful expense of the other. She has healthy boundaries, leaving work to make her kid\u2019s play date, but also empowering her husband Chris (Will Arnett) to be a full-time dad while she works. She doesn\u2019t micromanage. When he is home, mom is not hovering in the background, dictating what baby eats, wears and watches. In short, she is truly \u201crockin it at work, and\u00a0kicking being a mom\u2019s ass.\u201d She doesn\u2019t take herself too seriously,\u00a0and she even dons the occasional thong for her super-dad husband.<\/p>\n
Refreshing to see in a culture where\u00a0the \u201cmother\u201d role\u00a0has been pitted against \u201csuccessful career woman\u201d\u00a0role for way too long.<\/p>\n
Last night\u2019s episode, \u201cMr. Bob\u2019s Toddler Kaleidescope\u201d went one further toward bringing some girl power balance. Chris and Reagan are attending a toddler play class (wherein they do not have real names but are referred to only as \u201cAmy\u2019s mom \u201d and \u201cAmy\u2019s dad\u201d) that is full of otherwise stay-at-home moms. Wherein \u201cKayla\u2019s Mom\u201d is that passive-aggressive sort of\u00a0prototype who says things like \u201cIs Amy crawling yet?\u2026Oh, it\u2019s ok. Kayla\u2019s probably just a little more advanced because I stay home with her<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Wherein Cristina Applegate becomes the girl of our 80\u2019s childhood, who has grown up with us and nailed the truth-telling one-liner, every step of the way\u2026\u201dI\u2019m sure she\u2019ll be fine because, you know,\u00a0I was an athlete in college. I was a dancer, a gymnast\u2026Where did you get your workouts, upstairs at the frat house?\u201d Yeah, nailed it.<\/p>\n Except, that\u2019s the scene you expect from working-mom vs. soccer mom tv land. The scene that you do not<\/em> expect comes at the end\u2026wherein Reagan sees \u201cKayla\u2019s Mom\u201d struggling to fold up a stroller, and goes to help. Wherein both moms wind up taking out their mama-frustrations, beating and stomping\u00a0the stroller\u2013not each other\u2013\u00a0into pieces, and then agreeing to get together later \u201cfor some margs.\u201d<\/p>\n This is where tv and motherhood just evolved in a single scene, folks.<\/em> You might have missed it because you were too busy laughing and saying \u201cOh, that is SO my life!\u201d \u00a0but what just happened here was huge. What just happened was, the charicatures of motherhood that have been pitted against each other since the 70s, just demolished a *^$&#@ stroller together, and bonded over it.<\/em> In about 5 sitcom seconds, the world shifted. The funny girl of our youth just embodied what some of us have been screaming for years\u2026 it is hard enough being a mom without having to justify our choices to other women.\u00a0 <\/em>Ultimately [because Ava hates the phrase \u201cat the end of the day\u201d just as much as I do] women have more power when they stick together. Ultimately, we all need help kicking that stroller\u2019s ass, and we all need some other women to just go get drinks with. Even Kayla\u2019s mom.<\/p>\n We have wasted far too much time and energy trying to prove ourselves in the workplace at the expense of our families; or trying to justify staying at home at the expense of women who do not; or trying to justify not having kids\u00a0to all to the people who say your life is meaningless without them. It\u2019s high time we learn\u2013 we are all in this \u2018being a girl\u2019 business together.<\/p>\n These days, women who choose stay-home momming as a full-time job do so because they want to, not because they have no other gifts or options. \u201cChoose\u201d being the operative word.\u00a0 That right there is a huge step for womankind. Those women should be empowered in that choice, rather than being made to feel inferior to those who choose the juggling act.\u00a0 At the same time, those of us who keep our day jobs should not have to endure silent (and not-so-silent) condemnation from the Kayla\u2019s moms of the world.\u00a0 Other women are not the enemy. Hollywood, Wall Street and Washington have\u00a0somehow conspired to paint us into opposing corners\u2013and in doing so, they succeed in keeping us in corners. Or keeping us \u201cin our place,\u201d as it were.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been watching\u00a0Ken Burn\u2019s\u00a0\u201cProhibition.\u201d I appreciate how he portrays the women\u2019s role in the whole movement. In short, women brought the prohibition to reality, and a decade later, a new wave of women brought it to a grinding halt. Strong, defiant women on both sides, who realized their power and used it to effect change in the world. It\u2019s telling that on both ends of this historic movement, the women claimed to speak for all women everywhere. For all their power to effect change in the world, they still couldn\u2019t quite get it together and realize that they were all on the same side. They\u00a0had to, ultimately, demonize the other camp in order to hack it in a man\u2019s world.<\/p>\n