Defining the Spectre

"So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself."

                 - Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Chap. 3

Know thy enemy. Let's talk for a minute about the "ideal" woman.  In the case at hand, conceptualizing of the "ideal" woman, i.e. the woman against whom we measure our shortcomings, as the "enemy" may just be helpful. Let's examine just who we feel or have been told we should be (Later we will dig into the origins of this "ideal," and why this bitch has such a hold on our collective psyche). 

My "ideal woman," or Ideal Me (IM) in my mind is almost always wearing oversized cableknit cardigans with pockets and has days filled with diffuse, golden light. She wakes up in the morning, before anyone else is up (I at least have this part down) and puts on a pot of coffee. She then meditates, or does yoga. She then may go for a run. She calmly plans her day in an organized, leather-bound franklin covey binder. She showers (using high-quality, nature friendly products), she eats an organic, balanced, nutritionally recommended breakfast...



At work she is cool, calm, and collected. She answers all email promptly and professionally. She makes situationally appropriate and calm decisions. Her wardrobe is quality, but understated. Her job is fulfilling- and an end unto itself- that is, it is not a means to an end (wages), but in and of itself makes a difference in the world. Her life is filled with SPACE within which to BREATHE.

Her home is lifted from the pages of "Real Simple".
She gets full from salad.

If she has children, her work schedule is such that she is able to spend gobs of quality time with them. They go to the park or the beach. She teaches them flash cards and they go to tea. They make sock puppets and bake cookies together. They wear silly hats. Most importantly, she WANTS to do all of these things, and Legos never bore her or make her want to shove them into her brain.

In her free time (she HAS free time): she does yoga, she chats with friends over herbal tea. She sends greeting cards to friends that are far away. She remembers birthdays and anniversaries. She has a hobby: knitting, scrapbooking,

I have many alternative IMs. One lives in a restored farmhouse in France- she wears large cableknit sweaters and makes omelettes out of the eggs produced by the chickens she raises in the back yard. She writes books for a living. She has a teeny-tiny carbon footprint and wears large galoshes to feed the chickens.

An inordinate number of my IM scenarios involve large cableknit sweaters, with pockets.

Invariably, the IM has the following characteristics:

She is calm.
She has perfect skin.

She is effortlessly slender.
She does not struggle with cravings for beer, chocolate, or McDonald's fries.

She is fulfilled.
Her house looks like an Ikea catalog.
She is well traveled, and speaks many languages.
She never ever loses her temper.
SHE HAS IT UNDER CONTROL.

That may be my biggest source of failure- instead of feeling like I have life by the reins, I am constantly being steamrolled by a high speed sequence of events- hanging on like Wiley E. Coyote to the malfunctioning Acme rocket with just enough time to give a bewildered camera-take before hurtling off the cliff.

The IM says things like:
"I'm just addicted to running."
"I love vegetables"
"I don't watch TV."
"I buy all my produce at the farmer's market" or "I grow all my own vegetables"

The problem, of course, is that the IM is not a detached third party. She is the shadow cast in the evening, when shadows stretch for miles- and I, unknowing, think that I am or should be that tall. She is the inner expression of what I feel I should be and what should come naturally. 

What is your definition of the "Ideal Woman" or the "Ideal Me?"