Feminist Flat

It's as if there are two little goddesses, one on each shoulder, whispering counterproductive tips in your ears. One's in a miniskirt and platform heels; the other hasn't shaved since 1987 and carries her own beat-up toolbox. And you there, you in your blue jeans and Burt's Bees Shimmer, you kinda look like you can't make up your mind.

You call yourself a feminist, a 40-something female totally in charge of her future. Last summer you fled from a ten-year relationship that had gotten itself way out of kilter and today, after ten months of crying and coping and clinging to hope, you’re finally walking upright, sleeping through the night like the confident capable woman you thought you’d already become.

And then … you get a flat tire.

In the stories you’ve always told about yourself, you come off sounding like the kind of woman who would know how to change a flat. It’s a given, one of those Empowered Woman Standards you check off a list. Exercising your right to vote: check. Carrying your own backpack across Yugoslavia: check. Finding a career and paying your own way: check. Changing a tire: uh-oh.

In your defense, you spent your formative feminist epoch living in San Francisco without a car. You took public transportation everywhere for seven years, rode subways and buses through the sketchy neighborhoods, even at night. Instead of car keys you carried a stun gun in your trench coat pocket.

Now you recall that blossoming era of feminism like it was a class you vaguely remember taking at San Francisco State where you learned about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women’s reproductive rights and the E.R.A. It must have been on that one day you missed (because of the flu or an earthquake or a broken down cable car) that they taught the class members with two x chromosomes how to change a tire.

Since then, you've been dodging the opportunity, admit it! And quit trying to defend it with "I've been through it all, sister." The experimental drug use in college, the post-grad self-discovery tour of Europe, the top-down-drive-across-America-with-your-best-friend... even the sailing a small boat 10,000 miles into one exquisitely traumatic divorce doesn't make up for the fact that you still haven’t changed a tire.

And when that night inevitably comes upon you, and you think you can just keep turning the stereo volume up as you drive and deny that the whonkity flap flap sound is what you think it is, you'll pull into your driveway to Alanis Morrisette wailing at midnight and smell the burning rubber yourself. You'll shine your flashlight onto the mangled-looking hub. You'll cringe. And then you'll cry like a sissy because for the past ten years you let yourself become one of those women who let the man do all the dirty jobs.

Then you'll crawl into bed feeling small and alone, and in the weakest weak moment of the past ten months you'll actually regret filing for divorce. You'll wait to be struck down by the Goddess of Feminism and when the bolt doesn’t hit you, the unshaven angel with the toolbox on your shoulder will make you pinkie swear that first thing in the morning you’ll get out the manual, teach yourself how to change a tire and go bragging into work with a grease smudge on your cheek and black fingernails.

It won't be that easy, though, because when you wake up, the devil in the miniskirt with all the mascara will be whispering sweetly in your ear. She’ll have figured out a thing or two while you were sleeping – for instance, you don’t need a husband to change your tire – that’s what other people’s husbands are for!

So you there, you in your denim skirt and Burt’s Bees Shimmer, you'll just have to ask yourself…
Which way do you want it to be?