When I lived in DC, I had a friend who was 10 years older than me. She sometimes marveled at my attitude/confidence when it came to guys, saying that my generation was so much more self-assured than her generation. We've just "got it,” she always said.
I always found that notion funny, because in my opinion, women my age – including myself – are plagued by insecurities. My friend Monique and I talk about it all the time – about how our younger sisters have so much more attitude than we do. They’re the more self-assured generation, we say.
Well, as it turns out, all of us are right. Or none of us are right, depending on which way you look at it.
Check out this NYT story on the topic.
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2 comments:
Note the NY Times article link you provided contains the following nugget that relates to your contention (Vikki):
"Mr. Arnett worries that “youth bashing” has become so common that accomplishments tend to be forgotten, like the fact that young people today have a closer relationship with their parents than existed between children and their parents in the 1960s (“They really understand things from their parents’ perspective,” Mr. Arnett said), or that they popularized the alternative spring break in which a student opts to spend a vacation helping people in a third world country instead of chugging 40s in Cancún."
How so?
Because I have read your blog for a long time and, in this simplied sphere, perhaps understand in part your character -- which leads me to again compliment you and suggest your self-doubt is unwarranted.
Indeed, your obvious "accomplishments" are evident professionally and in your makeup -- so it's a matter of honoring them.
I don't mean to be too much of a cheerleader on your behalf, but I think a lot of social science studies have limitations. In the vast majority of cases, social scientists' claims are applicable to only a small segment of the general population.
Thus, given everyone is different, I think oneself is the best judge of your own self worth.
If there's inner self doubt, then so be it.
"Youth bashing" is a common activity that people turn on themselves. Is that what you do? Yet your friends believer you're fine, even wonderful?
Anyway, end of homily, my opinion:
You've got your priorities spelled correctly on life's scrabble board. You're fine.
"Attitude/Confidence" comes from self esteem. And self-esteem comes from many sources: first but not only, accomplishments(big and small),also upbringing,daily life influences and habitat/societal influences. It affects men and women in similar fashion, though I will admit women have had more challenges historically than men in this regard.
The changes today are more in technology and media, as to what's available and how these things are covered and used, as opposed to a generational change. And, your topic of attitude/confidence is not gender specific and this has always been the case as well.
For every collegehumor.com sited,(as the article does) one could site a Daily Show to match it with an opposite fact, which leaves us back to the point that the more people want to say things have changed, the more they appear the same. Mediums have changed, technology has changed, but things such as curiosity, or questionable decision-making, aren't new in any way.
Cheers,
John
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