Nancy Drew Rescued (some) Boomer Females from Worrying about Floor Waxy Buildup - Included Are Sonia Sotomayor and More

 The commercials on that powerful new medium - television - told us females this: Be focused on removing floor waxy buildup. You must use the product of the sponsor which was funding the programming. Otherwise, your relationship with your man could be in peril.

But there was an equally powerful counterforce, at least for Boomer females who curled up with the mysteries solved by Nancy Drew. 

In the early versions of that book franchise, which went on from 1930 to 2003, that Drew was a teenage daughter of a single father. Essentially he seemed okay with her independence, drive and sense of a self. The latter didn't require being on the arm of a man. 

Often Drew backed out of dates with Ned in order to chase a clue. In contrast to what went on in the Drew books of the 1940s and 1950s, broadcast could make a joke of females who had goals beyond domesticity. Remember the iconic episode on "I Love Lucy" capturing how badly Lucy and Ethel fail at their jobs at the chocolate factory. It's so embedded in the collective memory bank of Boomers that the chair of elite law firm Paul, Weiss Brad Karp mentions it in a major interview with BusinessInsider. Yes, really.

It was the Drew from back then which, it is reported, influenced female leaders. They have included Sandra Day O'Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush. In addition, there were several female classmates at inner city Sacred Heart grade school who exchanged Drew books with each other. We all made it to college. Graduated not being pregnant. That allowed us options, even pre-Second Wave Feminism. 

Given that there were any of us who made it out of that world preoccupied with waxy buildup is amazing. But shouldn't that - as Betty Friedan called it the "problem with no name" - be in the past. There are so many paths for women with a sense of self to pursue. Homemaking is only one. And should be respected. But there are a growing number of others.

Yet, here's a reality. In my tarot readings some women under-40 still feel it necessary to put together an identity through a romantic partner. It could be a man or a woman. They don't think through how a pregnancy could constrain choices. 

It's psychobabble to attribute that primarily to co-dependency. Couldn't there be something in the culture, as there had been in the 40s and 50s, to shoe-horn too many females into such a circumscribed view about what a life can be? 

I have a hunch that big patches of society have turned inward. Just about everything becomes smaller. Come to think about it: Post-WWII women also were driven inward. Their jobs had to go back to returning veterans and the economy operated on establishing the isolating suburbs. 

Tarot Card Reader. Medium. Intuitive Career Coach.

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