WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, you know, back in the early ‘70s (born in the far-out ‘60s), I wore dresses. And roughly cut-off, hand-me-down jeans as shorts. And pixie-cut hair – and no shirts.

I looked like a little boy. The way my sister and I ran around the sandy, piney, woodsy outdoors of southern Jersey, chock full of blueberry bushes and bramble, who was to say otherwise? On Sundays, I was a girl. Every other day of the week during summer, I was a tanned, scratched up little boy, and lovin’ life.

But in my heart, I was a girly girl. And in the end, when you couldn’t hide my girliness (but could still hide the scratches), I grew up that way, as anyone who knows me can faithfully attest.

I played with Barbies (and G.I. Joe was welcome to tea parties, of course). I spoke the King’s English and read The Secret Garden and all the Nancy Drew mysteries, and I knew my ultimate role in life, because it was pretty clear-cut: Go to school. Perhaps attend college. Be a good girl. Plan on being a mom. Don’t talk back. Do as I was told. Find a husband who was like my dad (downfall, that). Maybe work someday, but that was not a given, nor was it exactly expected. Don’t play sports. Do crafts. Do sing or cheerlead. Do defer. Do look pretty. Don’t be unattractive (multiple meanings).

What the hell. How utterly ridiculous by today’s standards. Oh, wait - and by my grandmother’s standards, which were a million times more restrictive. If you're a man, you don't get it. If you're a woman over age 35... how can't you get it?

All I have to say is, I didn’t ask to be born now. And, despite all the "rights" I have, I certainly wasn't BORN FREE. I know my sister-friends agree. 

With all the roles we’ve been saddled with over the years, I’ve been anything BUT free to be me. I've had to carve out every last crevice of my life as if it were the first time a woman had ever done so. No joke.

Listen: I understand the roles have changed. No one has to tell me that.  The girls of today would laugh at the girls of yesterday, and today's women feel beyond "emancipated" now. But I disagree with their definition of freedom. In the past 120 years, women's roles have probably changed more than at any other singular time in human history. And in the past 25 years, the transformation is positively mind-boggling:

• Girls in my high school who were winners (winners!) on the track team were considered gay. Imagine that today. No, really. IMAGINE THAT TODAY.
• I wore power suits to my first jobs in journalism: shoulder pads, full skirt suits, dark colors, nylons, high heels. Every day.
• Sexually explicit jokes were common and expected. (Good, cutting comebacks from women among the men were especially appreciated, and a sign you had “moxie.” Oh, and potential.)
• As recently as five years ago, women were still learning, in workplace training classes I attended, how to “be more like men in business.” Ohhh, but let’s take that back another 8 more years…. It’s a long-standing issue – wrong to the nth degree, as almost everyone agrees now. Women add something to business – and don’t have to “ape” (sorry, it’s the best word that comes to mind, nothing personal) what men do to contribute value.
• Women fought sexual stereotypes – so much so, that in the early ’90s, harassment laws were passed, discussed ad infinitum, ad nauseum. We wrote STORIES about the change, for God’s sake.

And now. And NOW. And now. What can I say?

• I mentor women who wear pants that show their ass crack. And they think this is acceptable to wear to a JOB INTERVIEW. Or CHURCH. I wish I were kidding.
• I regularly watch women debase themselves for the attraction and approval of society, associated with an “image” of what they are supposed to be: sexual. They don’t strive to look intelligent, diligent, focused, demure. They’re aiming for the gut, what I call the "3 Bs": boobs, butt, belly. The trifecta of imperfecta. Shoot. Me. Now.
• I cringe when sorority images show dumb blondes navigating the most superficial of worlds…. But, being an older sorority woman, I cannot say strongly enough how wrong those images are about women who embrace the GREEK image of striving for excellence of the mind, spirit and body (health), an appreciation for all that makes us human: intelligent thought and discourse, the arts, the impact of science on people and the world around us, diverse cultures, etc.

In my current life, in this media-bastardized world, I’m grieving while watching so many women take a step back, oh, about 40 years where their personal reserves of power and, yes, sexuality, are concerned. I want to pull my hair out. Almost on an hourly, if not daily, basis.

Get me: I’m no prude. I’m a student and a child of the feminist movement – which started in the early 1900s. Which started well before that, but who’s counting, right?... Which culminated in the 1960s. My mother was a quintessential feminist – working full-time as a nurse in a male-dominated medical profession in the '70s and making a difference in the world, never asking for special consideration. She has known and forgotten more about medicine than (I venture to say) many or any of the young buck docs she hands instruments to in the O.R. today. And they know it. And I love it.

The other day, I had a 50-ish woman say to me, “I can’t figure out what to do…. I’ve retired. But I can’t find my passion. I don’t know what to be going forward. Can you help me?” My response: “Why are you beating yourself up about that when the roles have changed so much in the past 100 years, let alone during your lifetime? Compare yourself against the past millennium. Or, if not that, what I call the ‘normal woman’ theory…. Would a normal woman, considering the totality of change in the past century, feel as you do?” She answered, hesitantly, hopefully, “Yes!” Absolutely.

Bottom line: As a woman in the midst of the greatest female-role transition of all time, I am who I am, and not who you think I am. And a part of who I am must speak for women – and say this: Who we are is who we’ve been, and please don’t forget it. And please don’t abandon it. And please remember our most promising future. Not as sexual playthings. Not as professional adversaries or partners. Not as scintillating sports or intellectual characters. But as the nurturing, communicative, fully integrated, community-building and ultra-connected human beings we are - who help weave and preserve the beautiful fabric that keeps this screwed-up world together.

 If it feels schizo to be a woman, sister, it is. Join the club. Girl-boy, man-woman: Be yourself. In the end, no matter how much change, there's value in you being you. Never forget that. I sure as hell won't.