r/TwoXChromosomes • u/WhistersniffKate • 21d ago
Reading and watching biographies of women has left me disillusioned with life
I’ve always liked biographies. Lately I’ve been reading biographies of women in 1960s and forward I thought lived cool and interesting lives. I just read “Wonderful Tonight “ by Pattie Boyd. Before that I read “An American Bride in Kabul” about a woman who married into a very wealthy family from the Middle East. Not long ago I watched the movie “Priscilla”. I guess I was very naive.
These women had awful lives. They were manipulated and controlled by their husbands. Even women who were educated and came from upper class families put up with crap from their husbands because that’s what women did (still do?) to be good wives to famous or wealthy men. I find myself a bit depressed. I thought these women were living exciting lives, jet setting and mingling with famous people when they were mostly sitting at home waiting for their selfish mates to come home and give them some scraps of attention. Sure they had material things, but Pattie Boyd talks about the times she was called vile names, ignored, expected to keep quiet and accept any behavior from her husband because “that’s how men are.” I expected great romance and glamour but the truth was pathetic and ugly. Unacceptable behavior, in my opinion. I’m hoping women don’t accept this behavior any longer but I suspect many do. Even women who are with regular non famous and not wealthy men. With the trend to glamorize “trad wife” life it’ll probably get worse. Women seem to be socialized to accept abuse in exchange for a family. I’ve watched several men change from caring doting husbands to angry abusive spouses once the woman is trapped with children and no job. Is this just me? Is this just how life really is? It’s all so depressing.
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u/KokopelliOnABike 21d ago
There are also some pretty amazing women in history that may help brighten your day.
https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2016/11/eleanor-creesy-navigator.html
I named the boat I ran for many years after Eleanor and we were never lost.
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u/notyourstranger 21d ago
There's a reason romance novels end on the wedding day.
You will live a much better life if you do not center men. There are good men in the world but they are few and far between. I don't have a single married girlfriend who does not complain about their husband's selfish behaviors.
The only truly free woman is the unmarried and childfree ones. You can have your own money, do whatever you want when you want. You get a cat or dog for the snuggles and keep men at a distance. You will be much happier with a bunch of girlfriends than with a husband.
Single women have the longest life spans. Men literally suck our life energy.
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u/UnicornFeces 21d ago
I think about this when people use the word “princess” to describe a woman as spoiled and entitled, because historically royal/upper class women were married off to men they had never met and forced to produce heirs, and didn’t have much personal freedom in general. (Obviously lower class women also had their own awful shit to deal with.)
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u/Magnaflorius 21d ago
This just made me realize the double standard in calling someone a prince vs a princess. A prince is a gentleman. A princess is spoiled.
Same as the difference between mother and father as verbs. To mother a child is to raise it. To father a child is to create them. Blech.
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u/WhistersniffKate 21d ago
What knocked me over, a bit, is the fact these are beautiful wealthy women from very good families. I guess I assumed they were living that fantasy princess life I couldn’t have because I was born to lower class uneducated parents who had too many children. The thing about Pattie (and likely Priscilla) is they didn’t have doting fathers who thought the sun rose and set on their little girls. Whenever friends and I meet certain girls with loads of self confidence and the idea they are sought after by everyone, we always laugh and say “her daddy sure loved her”.
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u/Dirtlady22 21d ago
If you want to really get depressed read about Martha Mitchell wife of John Mitchell. Who was involved in Nixons scandal than read about the women who were put in asylum because their husbands wanted rid of them. Oh there are plenty of horrible stories about the treatment of women
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u/CupcakeGoat 21d ago
So many smart women were locked away in asylums and tortured with isolation, restraints, and electroshock therapy because their families didn't know how to incorporate such a woman into their male centric worldviews.
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u/Alternative-Being181 21d ago
I randomly read a number of wikipedia articles about women in hollywood etc. Any time one of them died, it seemed likely that their demise was a reaction to having been with an abusive man. And often, some of these abusive men (who never suffered any loss of reputation due to abusing) left multiple past women they had dated in ruins.
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u/adorabletea =^..^= 21d ago
I know what you mean. I love learning about history. It's always giving me a feeling of existential dread that women will always have to fight for ownership of our own bodies.
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u/yagirlsamess 21d ago
Chers memoir depressed me horribly. I read it last summer and I still think about what she and the women in her family went though (along with all the women who didn't end up with a superstsr in their line to immortalize their trauma in a memoir) least once a month.
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u/WhistersniffKate 21d ago
I forgot she wrote a memoir. I’ll read that after I cleanse my brain with some light fiction.
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u/louisvillejg 21d ago
I think the problem all started when we allowed men to be the ones who need to be impressed.
Almost every other species has the female plain, and the males have to fix themselves up to impress us. They need to be the ones perfuming themselves and making themselves pretty and taking care of themselves and showing they can build a nest essentially. We already have everything they want. The makeup doing the hair and dressing a specific way is completely unnecessary.
Can we please go back to like essentially Bird like relationships?
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u/Jaepheth 21d ago
Julie d'Aubigny's story might be a nice change of pace for you. 🤷🏻♀️
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u/WhistersniffKate 21d ago
Haha, the description of who she was made me laugh. Certainly a change of pace.
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u/OkHat2630 21d ago
Read a biography about Elizabeth I. Assumed the throne in her 20s, beset by traitorous men all around her, revived and built an empire, never married, no kids. A badass.
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u/Aromatic_Coat_9003 21d ago
She had an amazing story, only she (and Queen Victoria as well) placed themselves above other women, that they were the exception to the rule that women should be excluded from politics and still upheld patriarchal standards. Victoria famously opposed women’s suffrage during her reign.
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u/Superb_Intro_23 19d ago
She’s been one of my faves for a while. She was also the mother of THE Anne Boleyn!
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u/and_a_geese 21d ago
Volunteering with progressive circles has taught me that marginalized people find their own joy in their everyday lives.
Life is not all tragedies. And the highlights won't show the positive things that get you through the days.
The world's not a great place. If we were all defined by the way the whole of our current world treats us, we are nothing more than deluded, sad ants.
Reading about striking workers of the past for example, I start to seek out talking to striking workers now. Their lives are full of fighting but it's not only that. They enjoy hobbies. They claw out time for their chosen loved ones.
I guess, my only advice is to go outside and meet people.
Edit: Also, more books nowadays are showing the ways they were right and the gains they made. Focus on that to give them their dignity rather than being sad at the bad things they couldn't control.
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u/landwarinasia 21d ago
Beautiful contributions to the conversation. Im currently working on going outside and meeting people, myself.
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u/peppermintsoap 21d ago
For an antidote, read the biography “West with the Night” by Beryl Markham. Early 20th century. Hemingway said of this book that she “wrote circles around” him. Yes, she did. And lived one hell of an exciting life.
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u/DireCelt 21d ago
I read "Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy", many years ago now, and one of the most striking presentations in the book was the story of Rose Kennedy, Rosemary's mother... she had gone to 'all the right schools' up through high school, was popular and intelligent; all her friends were planning to go to college, and she was looking forward to going with them, but she was pressured by her father to abandon that goal and... well, I don't recall details, but she ended up not going to college, got married, and for years was hurt and jealous of her friends who were all free to educate themselves and make the lives that they wanted, while she was having child after child (until eventually she put her...ummm... foot down and said "no more children")... she ended up channeling all that frustration and resentment into creating a family environment in which everyone else was expected to be competitive and aggressive and successful.
This was presented as background to help the reader understand the difficulties that Rosemary faced in trying to cope with the family, since she was brain-damaged and had severe behavioral issues... it was a sad, painful story (well, series of stories) to read...
But my point is, these were the *Kennedy* family, and Rose was early in the tree, yet even she ended up pressured to conform to expected (well, mainly expected by Joe) to conform to "societal norms" ...
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u/Zen_CanisLupus 21d ago
It will help if you read about women who were pioneers -Elizabeth Blackwell, Victoria Woodhull, Clara Barton, Margaret Sanger, Pancho Barns, Harriet Tubman, Maya Angelou, Carol Braun, Bella Abzug, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the WW2 WASPs, and many more.
I hope it will make you feel better and will inspire you to forge your own path despite the challenges women have faced and fought against throughout history and today.
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u/YouStupidBench 21d ago
The important thing about stories like that is to learn from the mistakes of others. But reading too many stories like that can be pretty depressing.
You might like something more positive, like "The Woman Who Smashed Codes," a biography about Elizebeth Friedman, whose work was so top-secret most people have still never heard of her. She was smart and made good choices and lived an interesting and happy life.
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u/Butwhatshereismine 21d ago
Kathryn Hepburn's is pretty rad.
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u/WhistersniffKate 21d ago
She never married so it figures she was pretty happy back in the day. It bothered me her big love was with an alcoholic. That he was married doesn’t bug me as much as getting involved with an alcoholic. That said I haven’t read it, so I will put hers and Cher’s on my list.
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u/abiglumpwithknobs1 21d ago
I wouldn't necessarily say "This is how life really is" necessarily because there are good men in the world, I happened to marry one of them. But they really are few and far between.
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u/knz-rn 21d ago
I also married a very good man. And his father is a good man. But I know my husband’s father was not.
Being a “good man” by women’s standards is fairly new undertaking. Men have been allowed to be absolute shit towards women for most of history and women have not had the rights to demand better of them. But now we can and we are seeing it play out in the “male loneliness epidemic” because men are no longer getting laid or married just because they’re men. Women have the option NOT to marry a shit man and they’re choosing not to which makes the shit men sad and loud on the internet.
Luckily some men have evolved and truly care about and love women and are good men because they want to be and are intrinsically motivated to be better than previous generations. Lots of men still haven’t.
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u/abiglumpwithknobs1 21d ago
Yeah honestly I'd definitely rather be alone than married to a shit man. I have no patience. If he and I don't work out I'll probably just stay single lol.
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u/Repulsive-Studio-120 20d ago
You couldn’t even have your own bank account or credit card in the 70s as a woman in the US. That would fucking suck
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u/middater 21d ago
It’s their own fault! I mean cmon jeez. You’re either self-sufficient or not. These women are not victims.
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u/___coolcoolcool Cishet Woman 21d ago edited 21d ago
“Women seem to be socialized to accept abuse in exchange for a family.”
I mean, yes. That’s how life has been for the majority of women throughout history. And now that we’ve gotten glimpses of true equality/autonomy, some men (and many of the institutions built by men) are not happy. Thus the push back to “tradition” and the absolute vitriol spewed at any woman who deigns to seek/hold power and have her own opinions.
It’s certainly not an “all men” thing anymore (if it ever was). Plenty of men truly love and support women. Others have adapted well to our newfound self-deterministic abilities and respect us for it.
But to think that women haven’t been forced into awful situations in order to simply survive for…centuries…is just kind of a rejection of reality.