"Funny business a woman's career. Things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman."
Bette Davis delivered those lines from the backseat of a prop car in 1950 on a black and white screen. However, the sting of the script and its truth lingers in full technicolor 67 years later.
I sort've resent that the writer for "All About Eve" was a male. Partly because he seemed to project his own reluctant tolerance for the strong female role, but also because he seemed to understand the bittersweet reality of working women, almost more keenly than I. In our honorable and justifiable fight for equality and accomplishment in our careers, we still inevitably lose something of ourselves. Something soft and something intangible that I do believe can be recovered when we're finally ready to settle down and... "get back to being a woman."
The ladder and the steps that hold you on your way back down, however, can be unsteady and unforgiving.
"I am woman, hear me roar!" is the trumpet call. Because if you trumpet loudly enough, perhaps others will be too distracted to notice your pain.