3 posts tagged “woman”

It was raining as I drove to work this morning. As I waited at one set of stop lights, I noticed a young couple standing at the side of the road. Young man was holding a large umbrella over both their heads as they waited for a break in the traffic to cross the road. He finally judged that the time was right and raced off across the road ...and she stayed still.

He ran off through the cars, with the umbrella, and she stood perfectly in her spot as the rain fell upon her. The traffic started again and the lovers were stranded on`either side of the road. He perfectly dry and she looking at him as though his life was about to come to an immediate end, which no doubt it was about to!

I drove on then and did not see their reunion, but no doubt the very first then she said to him was that next time she held the umbrella.

If the had just walked another 30 meters they could have crossed at the lights...safely and together, under their umbrella.

How many people can you get under one umbrella?

World's oldest blogger makes final post

July 15, 2008

The Australian woman renowned as the world's oldest internet blogger has made her final post, aged 108.

Olive Riley, of Woy Woy on NSW's central coast, died in a nursing home just after 6am yesterday.

She will be mourned by family and an international readership in the thousands.

"It was mind blowing to her," her great grandson Darren Stone, of Brisbane, told AAP last night.

"She had people communicating with her from as far away as Russia and America on a continual basis, not just once in a while."

Olive had posted more than 70 entries on her blog, or as she jokingly labelled it, her "blob", since February last year.

The ardent Sydney Swans AFL fan shared her day-to-day musings and her life's experiences raising three children on her own, living through two world wars and the Depression, her work as a station cook in rural Queensland and as an egg sorter and barmaid in Sydney.

In her final post, dated June 26, an increasingly frail Olive noted she couldn't "shake off that bad cough".

She also: "read a whole swag of email messages and comments from my internet friends today, and I was so pleased to hear from you. Thank you, one and all."

Olive's musing live on at http://www.allaboutolive.com.au and more recently at http://worldsoldestblogger.blogspot.com.

She was born in 1899, and would have turned 109 on October 20.

"She enjoyed the notoriety - it kept her mind fresh," Mr Stone said.

"What kept her going was the memories she had, and being able to recall those memories so strongly."

Olive's funeral will be held at Palmdale Cemetery, on the NSW Central Coast, late this week.

AAP

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/07/14/1215887459476.html

I hope that I can go out, blogging to the end!  

Is a woman's hostility toward other women a manifestation of the woman's dissatisfaction with herself? Is this social behavior overwhelmingly motivated by the desire to feel good about oneself?

Over coffee I recently asked a few female friends these very questions. “There is this one woman I work with” said Georgia. “who just makes me want to scream every time I see her. She is just so perfect, make-up always perfect, dressed immaculately even at the end of the day, always rabbiting on about taking her children to some great event where they win all sorts of awards. I get so angry when I hear her speak I just want to shred her. I certainly never help her with anything more than the bare minimum, the cow!”.  Kirsty on the other hand replied, “Oh I never let those types worry me. Usually the kids turn out to be drug dealers when they grow up anyway. Or spend years in therapy getting over Mummy Dearest!” For Georgia the woman eroded her self-esteem and made her feel less of a success so she used the passive aggressive behaviour of limiting her assistance when given the opportunity, while Kirsty discounted the woman’s success, or achievements, as her mechanism of handling comparison.

Clearly competition among women differs from competition among men. Men's competition is generally directed toward power and status such as sports and careers.  Women's competition is more often manifested in the context of attractiveness, such as, (dare I bring the elephant into the room)… thinness.

 So does the constant viewing of women in the media, with its emphasis on women's physical appearance,  increase women's hostility toward other women in the wider community?  Do we use these media constructs to not just judge those appearing in the media, but to also judge others in the act of making ourselves feel better? Are we self-inflicting both negative upward comparison and discounting upon ourselves and on those around us? If I can’t look like Katie Holmes then convincing myself that you have even less of a chance, makes me feel better? I feel more secure in my position then. Convincing myself that while Katie Holmes is beautiful, that she has only achieved it because she also has lots of money and they air brushed the photos,  makes me feel better too. I reward myself by dismissing the competition!

Way back in 1954 Festinger suggested that people evaluate their opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to similar others in order to better know themselves; that is, women compare themselves to other women in order to learn about their own feelings, traits, and abilities. We sort out what is important to us by what we use as our yardstick.

Major, writing in 1994, used this same comparison to explain her findings that women are not dissatisfied with the amount of family work they do compared to their male partners, because they compare their family work primarily to that of other women. Is that what we are doing to each other? Is that why we clear the mess off the dining table when girlfriends are expected?

We all know now, that women don’t really dress for men, they dress for other women, so on some level we must be aware that we are all appraising and objectifying each other constantly? In the process we are making ourselves unhappy. Georgia’s self-esteem obviously bottomed out easily as she also mentioned that during the day she thought about how she looked constantly. If she didn’t measure up in her own mind she felt ashamed, and these feelings often led to her feeling frustrated and discouraged with her life in general. We are making ourselves miserable, ladies.

Isn’t it time we ceased letting our insecurities effect are relationships with other women? We are missing out on rich, strong relationships  by mediating and moderating individual female differences. We are our own worst enemy.

Is this also why women appear to create different relationships as they age? Does the fading of beauty actually release us from our competitive behaviour and erase the yard stick therefore allowing us to interact on a whole new level?

I hope so. I hope that one of the comforts of old age will be not trying to keep up with Mrs Jones. Pity we have to wait so long though.