This month’s episode is not an interview. And it’s short. Just me, talking to you.
Last fall, frustrated with not being able to answer the question, “What is your show about?” I cast about looking for a theme. The one theme I had explored most often was a broad one: women’s lives. I asked a number of people for advice, and writer Patrice Vecchione responded that when I talked about women’s lives, my voice “lit up.” So there it was, my theme. Thanks for telling me what to do, Patrice!
It was a hard theme for me to get comfortable with at first, because gender lines have become, for me and for a lot of people, blurred. What defines a woman in the 2020s? Is it the ability to gestate babies? No. Is it XX chromosomes? No. Is it other people’s perception of your social gender? Definitely not. I decided to embrace the term woman broadly, which has allowed me great freedom to explore a variety of topics through a gender lens.
In the last six months, I feel like I’ve moved lightyears in this podcast…and found out that I had lightyears to go. I had a ton of experience writing, a lot of experience interviewing, and a fair amount of experience in live radio and sound editing, but I was a novice podcaster. There’s a steep learning curve!
What I’ve found as I learn this new medium is that my experience with The Babblery embodies a common theme in the lives of women (however you define us!). Women experience change, whether we want to or not. Our bodies force us to embrace change. Even in these days when women have the opportunity to live lives that resemble more traditional masculine patterns, we find ourselves changing our lives along with the changes forced upon us by our bodies. Teen girls are choosing their own paths, not letting puberty force them into gender-specific roles. Young women often find that the choice to have children, or not have children, sends them in unexpected directions. Middle-aged women reassess when their bodies change again and they reinvent themselves in tandem.
When I was younger, I found talk of women finding freedom in menopause embarrassing. Now I totally understand that it’s called “the change of life.” So many women, despite trying to ignore their social gender, find that “wearing our young woman suit” out in the world effects how we interact with others. We react to expectations, even when the people around us are not conscious of their expectations and we are not conscious of our reactions. It’s not until later in life, when our bodies force change upon us again, that we can really see how we molded ourselves to fit society—or not.
One of the things I see in my young self, looking back, is my discomfort with making firm decisions about my life path. Over and over again, I see that it’s changes in my body that force the decisions: In my teens, my body told me I couldn’t be the marathon runner I longed to be. When I had children, my body sent my writing and research in a new direction.
Another theme of this musing has to do with another common theme in women’s lives: the sage advice of strong mature women. I really was casting about last fall when I decided to call Patrice. And it was the specificity of Patrice’s observation—that my voice “lit up” when I explained the theme to her—that spoke to me.
I may, in fact, shift to a new theme in the future. It is “The Babblery,” after all, and we can babble about pretty much anything, can’t we? But for now I’m having fun babbling with the women I’m connecting with. You can look forward to forthcoming shows about women comedians, artists, historians, and publishers. We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?
As a side note, I should have taken Patrice’s advice about the skinny-dipping, too, but that’s another story.
Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash