I was recently having a “back and forth” with a friend on email with respect to what it means to be fEmpowered – and I thought a few snippets of that email “trail” might be a little instructive.
She is very “Bond” herself – and says that she “tends to know more women like this because of the things I'm involved in, but am well aware that not all women are cut out that way.”
She says this as almost a put-down, and really didn’t understand the whole “feminine + empowered” idea – and Bond girls, by a long shot. My answer to her was:
. . . The idea of a Bond girl is that she's not the one who does the big adventures that Bond does . . . BUT . . . she is not an "eek girl" when it comes to doing stuff either. She can 'do it' but 'it' is stuff that one "should know how to do" -- swim. Walk over a canyon. Swing from a tree to another tree. Drive a stickshift. Stuff like that. The "technical" stuff (scuba, making a bomb, whatever) is generally not 'Bond girl' material – that’s generally what Bond does. A Bond girl should be prepared to do what she "might have to do" (because Bond gets her thrown off a ship and she has to swim to shore, for example). The best way I can describe it is this: Think of the "lowest common denominator" of an activity (whether swimming to SCUBA diving, or stick shift driving, or shooting a gun versus being a sharpshooter, or whatever) and a Bond girl needs to at least have some clue in all these things. She can't say "eek, I can't swim" or "eek, I'm afraid of heights" -- she isn't the one navigating the boat, or tying the knots, or (you get the picture), but she has to "go with it" when it happens. If you were going to use SCUBA as an example, she understands "this is what happens when one SCUBA dives," so if handed a regulator and told "the boat is blowing up in 5 minutes" she has a clue -- but she's not planning a dive to 80 feet to plant dynamite on the underside of a bad guy’s boat, etc.
Or, let’s take riding a motorcycle. A Bond girl needs the weekend "CC Rider" course -- where she can turn it on, change gears, get around some cones, and skid to a stop. She's not going to get her license -- but if she has to hop on a bike and Bond says YOU DRIVE I'm SHOOTING -- she can do it . . .
My friend then analogized to women that she knew who were “all very tough cookies (but at the same time very loving), totally in-shape, very focused, they are attractive but not the high-heel wearing kinds . . . they have followed their passion to live & be with what they love.”
My answer:
The deal with a "Bond girl" is very much like this. That's the "specific" part of being a Bond girl though -- every Bond girl is a "specialist" in something. Bond seeks her out (or she is "in the movie") for that reason. Take Dr Christmas Jones. She's a nuclear physicist, and has to disarm a nuclear bomb (Bond doesn't know how to do it). But on the WAY there, he has to do all sorts of fighting, leaving her back and saying "open the door when I blink the light" stuff like that. She doesn't "fight him" on that -- she is "#1 at being #2" -- she takes that role and does exactly what she's told. (I know MANY WOMEN of the Lara Croft archetype who would say "F*ck you, I'm going to go fight the bad guys, YOU hold the door when ~I~ get back"). But when it comes to the area of her expertise -- blam, she's on, and she's #1. On the way, she's made to climb out of an elevator up a HUGE and "scary" thin ladder, deal with being handed a gun "just in case" then of course Bond gets in trouble and she (with his "this is the safety, this is the trigger, this off first, point, this second") kills the bad guy. The idea is that the Bond girl always has something that's her "thing." In another one (Never Say Never Again)), she's a deep sea fisher"person", and she rescues Bond because she's out fighting marlins and he basically comes up on her line. You get the picture.
Her Answer:
My husband & I were talking more about the Bond topic, and I came up with a couple of women friends that would be prime candidates for B-girls, which helps me to visualize this better. Also, he says I'm looking at it all too literally, and to start from the perspective of your audience/client, vs from the perspective of the woman-chemist-Nobel prize winner. In other words, the Nobel prize winner is not your client...your client is a woman who wants to improve herself in the direction of having more self esteem, being a more interesting (multi-faceted) person for herself and her partner, etc. That makes a lot of sense, once I get out of trying to 'literally' figure it out, which is what you've been telling me the whole time, but I haven't been able to 'get'.
My answer:
He is definitely right BUT..........it also IS for the "Nobel Prize winner" in THIS respect -- maybe this makes it easier. That drive/drive/drive is very "yang." It is my very serious feeling that people need about 50% "yin" and 50% "yang" or 50% "leading" and 50% "caring/following" to be "whole." A Bond girl is "yang" in what she does -- her area of passion. But she also knows that this has to be balanced with "yin" -- and she is the BEST follower/caregiver/etc. that there can be.
I know many women a la what you're talking about -- the "knock’em dead be #1 at everything gals" -- and in fact one was my first "client." She got divorced, and then does LIKE sex/men/partnership/etc. -- but all she could do was talk about herself and her accomplishments. She didn't have a CLUE how to listen, be "yin," be enthusiastic about someone "else" (e.g., "hold their energy" without doing a "me too"), etc. Even walk -- she "didn't care" -- and so there she was, galumphing along.
I think part of what you are say is that all women should be "just love me the way I am, or f*ck you" (nicer, of course). But the thing is, I don't think anyone REALLY is like that, b/c I think that as "beings" we are 1/2 yang, 1/2 yin. And I really think that women are possibly even more than 50% “yin” beings –- and then wind up, due to being in a “Man’s world” or the undervaluing of the support-giver role, having an over-drive of “Yang” going on. The idea, once again, is not at all that a woman has to “roll over” on something she’s #1 about. The best way that I can describe this, and definitely the best example, was the post I made a while ago from Sheila Kelley/S Factor about the friend of hers she set up on the bowling date. It’s the perfect example of what I’m talking about here.
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