Magggie Jordan's character when first introduced is a meek, indecisive, walking talking accident about to happen with the highest level of unpredictability I've seen in a while. She is an incredibly smart, eloquent, loyal, young woman with a pleasant personality and an aura of positivity around her. Later in the series she leaves to Africa to cover a news event but gets caught in the middle of a violent calamity which, to quote the company lawyer, takes Maggie through a Girl from the Dragon Tattoo phase. So this first post is about Maggie and how seeing her evoked all the times I, along with many women I know, was the pre-girl from the dragon tattoo version of Maggie.
The scene which struck me most is from the very first episode of the first series when Maggie makes a call to her father to give a phony excuse as to why her boyfriend at the time couldn't meet them for diner, because he [insert air brackets] had to work late. After ending the call she gets called out on covering up for her boyfriend by the new executive producer MacKenzie McHale, when Maggie herself admits that she was and her father most likely worked out the same too. Even after acing the show that night and being coached by MacKenzie on how to stand up for herself, Maggie gives in yet again and leaves with her incredibly condescending, confused and blatantly jackass of a boyfriend. The second scene is one in which Maggie heavily drunk after a screw up at work, is dumped by her boyfriend for the umpteenth time within the last few months. When her colleagues try to call a cab to get her home she claims she wants to go back to her ex-boyfriend's so she could apologize and make up. When asked for what, when clearly everyone knew it was in fact his fault mainly because he was for the lack of a better term a jackass, Maggie tries to mumble a reason before blurting out that she'll think of something or the other in the cab on the way to his apartment, because how it works is he breaks up with her, she apologizes and they get back together again and that's how it's always been. I think this is when it hit jackpot for me at an emotional, personal and even psychological level when I paused the show and pondered why this smart, witty, attractive, young woman consistently lied down on the floor and asked a man to walk over her to get to the level of I feel good about myself.
The weekend after while casually debating with my best friend via a transnational call on the ethics of flirting with the idea of flirting with someone who was romantically involved with someone else when you yourself was single, I found myself suddenly channeling my desire to save Maggie and going off in a rant when the realization hit me that I was really trying to save myself, and other smart, young, educated and attractive women I knew who also happened to be my friends and family. On most days we were Maggie's and I'd just worked out why.
I represent a community of incredibly privileged women. By the time I was born women had already fought for and won the most crucial rights including right to vote, own property, work, marry if and who they want, and so on. In my little bubble on the sunny, middle class side of the equator growing up I had everything I ever needed. My parents invested most on my education, took pride in all my achievements, trusted me to the core and gave me every opportunity imaginable. My mother never once cornered me into the kitchen or any stereotypical housework and was the sheer force of nature behind ensuring I went on to conquer the world she and her mom, and her mom's mom only ever dreamed of. My father, otherwise knows as the only consistent and stable force in my life, is even today filled with encouragement, wisdom and wit, who considers his sole purpose in life to ensure my happiness, safety and success, investing everything he has on me. So much so that when I describe him I tell people, "You know if I ask my father for the moon he will give it to me". Just like my other girl friends, female cousins and Maggie would say, we come from an incredibly fortunate background where our fathers brought us up like queens, not princesses, but queens, instilling in us the wisdom, skills and drive to keep reaching for intergalactic cosmic matters and heaven itself. Our fathers set the bar so incredibly high on what men should be like if they were ever to be a part of our lives, yet here we are so far from it all so naturally I had to investigate how Maggie and I got here.
I am 28 years old and on my 2nd Master's degree. I have started from scratch in 3 different countries and independence is my second name. I have worked graveyard shifts mopping beer stains and broken glass, cycled in -30 degrees and camped out in thunderstorms to make a living. I caught and recovered from chicken pox in 5 days, changed addresses close to 20 times in 8 years and been held in a high security transit are in Turkey without a visa. What I'm trying to get at is I believe I'm tough, and the women I know who are dispersed across the world are so much more hardcore and have achieved much more than I have. However apart from this widely observed common denominators of having incredible dads and inner strength, a significant number of us appear to be brought to our knees in the most pathetic manner by a series of narcissistic hollow shells of men on a regular basis. And the worst part is, we had let them.
So I began to wonder some more why Maggie, my friends and I didn't aspire to be with men who were of the most purest caliber as our fathers or who could realistically even be 1/100th the men they were. Why was is that we would allow men to enter our lives and use us for the purpose of making them feel better about themselves in one way or the other, while changing, altering and giving up who we are and what we want so we can make them feel better, so they would not leave us? Why were we pretending to like the music they liked or the films they liked or the hobbies they were obsessed with, be at their disposal in bed and try to impress their parents, when they couldn't even remember our full name. I started racking up my brain trying to piece together how Maggie, my friends and I didn't simply lower the bar but from the looks of it unhinged it and had it fall on our own heads causing some sort of a self deprecating concussion to accept such terrible treatment from insignificant men when we ourselves wouldn't even dream of treating the next-door neighbour's pet ferret in such a manner. I think I may have had a revelation or in the least a clue or two down the path where the answer lies.
I together with Maggie and my friends are at an intersection of what I like to call the in-between generation. We are millennials. We were brought up on the premise that we are special in are own way and we could be anything we want to be. We were rewarded for our smart mouths questioning everything from authority to religion and applauded for our attempts at being independent and making a unique place in the society for ourselves. And the funny thing is we did. Most my girl friends are doing wonderful things in numerous fields from medicine to technology to design to marine biology making tangible differences and literally saving the world one day at a time. However, as it appears we are at the intersection of being millennials and women, a factor which creeps up on you particularly following professional success. Because when our parents cheered us to go get the world what they really meant was go get the world and come back. Because while they taught up to be successful and selflessly offered their shoulders to stand upon to get there, they also left the door half open so we could still hear the society shouting "now that you are successful you need a man to be complete".
It is no doubt that I together with Maggie and my girl friends have some serious self-confidence issues. Underneath our outgoing, witty, sassy facades appear to be a group of women desperately seeking reassurance, approval and willing to please. However, each time my father subtly hints that now it's time to think about getting the rest of my life in order during our casual weekend chats, or people question the supposedly unusual nature of this unnaturally prolonged single life I'm leading, it indicates to me that somehow finding a man is a crucial goal I haven't met, ipso facto I have failed in life. So knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, I have been left at an intersection with knowledge and wings to fly but only in the direction of a potential male partner also the father of my future children.
I cannot speak for my male counterparts when I can hardly speak for all of the women in the world, but perhaps their side of the grass may not be as green as we presume it to be. But I really do think its time we realized being without a romantic partner is not a sign of failure. This way when we pursue a romantic interest or randomly find one like in the movies, we will be driven by reasons such as is he/she a good human being who compliments my journey in life, and together we can be even better and do even more good, as opposed to how can I no longer be single. I really do believe it's high time we pick that bar up again, raise it even more higher and make a proactive decision to only consider a man if he is in the least half the man our fathers were. The generations of women before us have fought bloody fight so we could go to space, rule nations and decide who we would like to spend the rest of our lives with. So the least Maggie and I could do is not lie down on the floor and say it's all right walk over me until you feel better. It's time to get the hell up, don't you think?
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