Women who snap

There's certainly a fascination with women who "snap." There's that show on Oxygen, and last month an O magazine article focusing on the diapered woman of the NASA love triangle.

And reading it got me to thinking - is this something that any woman, under enough stress, is capable of becoming? Or is it more like the Harry Potter theory? "We all have light and dark in us. It's the part we chose to act upon that makes us who we are."

There was an interesting assumption in the Oprah article. That being, women who snap tend to be overachievers - successful career women. Those women who approach snapping, and then don't (although I can only imagine they keep the stats to prove this along with the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Holy Grail) are usually mothers who reflect on how their kids need them. And that tends to get them out of the moment where they would kill someone or drive 900 miles in a diaper.

Being a single career gal myself, this kind of frightened me. I mean, I do have an obligation to water my plants and babysit my nephew, but is that supposed to be enough to keep me from snapping if I catch my BF cheating on me?

Then, in the midst of having these thoughts, I got really, really mad at Oprah magazine because this article, in it's blindered, small-view, tiny window on the world approach to feminism, has made me (smart, successful, funny, happy, awesome ME) question my ability to hold onto my sanity SIMPLY BECAUSE I AM NOT MARRIED WITH KIDS.

Dude, what is this? A century ago it was you can either be smart of have kids: the brain or womb conundrum. Now it's what...have kids or go insane? Of course, this assumes that every woman is going to get cheated on. Which won't happen. But still. I am mad.

Can there be any end to the vast and varied ways women, mothers, non-mothers and feminists are derailed in the public-eye? To have babies makes you a non-player in the working world - but to not have them might make you crazy, or less smart, or whatever.

All these (really terrible) options only seem to serve one purpose. To make all of us women feel even further out of control in terms of our lives, our bodies, our children, our careers, our families, our minds...all that. Leave my uterus out of it!