The Last Exile

My daughter and I have been watching Mad Men, well, mostly I. The Last Amazon watched a couple of episodes but was completely turned off by the characters and the times. One of her first comments watching the show was; what is wrong with those women? I shrug and say; it was the times. She doesn’t get it, and no matter how hard she tries; she just cannot ‘get it’. Why should she? She is 18 years old and studying neuroscience for her second year. No one ever told her there were things she cannot do based solely on sex nor can she imagine a time when even wearing or not wearing a bra made a political statement on human liberty.
No one has ever told her she is just too pretty to bother studying anything ‘hard’ for her ‘little brain’ to bother with. No one has ever told her there is no point for her going to university because she will just waste the cost of her education by getting married and having children. No one ever scolded her for competing with boys and beating them. No one told her she couldn’t join Army Cadets because girls don’t wear combat boots, shoot guns, or run 10ks with a 50 pound pack on her back. No one served her last at dinner because she was female. No one paid her less because ‘males’ have bigger life expenses…like the cost of taking out girls. Her life hasn’t been defined by a set of societal rules predetermined and set by a genetic roll of the dice which made her female rather than male.

How I laughed last year over coffee when she came home for a weekend visit from university. We went out to a Second Cup for a little mother and daughter chat. She was full of bluster and scorn for Freud’s theories of female sexuality. As she ‘enlightened’ me on Freud, I found myself imagining a meeting between the two of them in 2009 and I wonder what Freud would have thought to see and meet this thoroughly modern young woman. Would he even believe it was possible or would he attempt to live in denial and take refuge in his theories of penis envy? The idea of them meeting has become the basis of a short story I am writing.

Last night the Last Amazon and I met up via Skype and she told me all about her sheep’s brain she has been dissecting. The more enthusiastic she got, the more squeamish I felt. Her younger brother kept shouting out ‘geek alert’ from across the room. She just yelled back ‘Jealous!’ and continued on undeterred. I was relieved she hadn’t taken pictures on her cellphone to share with me. But there is one thing I know is true, and in this, my mother and I are in complete agreement. We both want to be the Last Amazon when we finish growing-up.