....You've got personality
Walk, with personality
Talk, with personality
Smile, with personality
Talk, with personality
Smile, with personality
Charm, personality
Love, personality
And plus you've got
A great big heart....
Love, personality
And plus you've got
A great big heart....
I realized something last night at writing group.
I used to covet personality! I listened to all the Fifties songs and watched the Fifties and Sixties teenaged movies, studying the moves of older girls on screen. I practiced the toothpaste smile of Miss America and the flirty flipping of the hair of movie stars. I watched Gidget and Tammy (remember them?) being all cutesy and clumsy. (I didn't want to be cutesy and clumsy, but the big screen stars made it okay to be just adorable.
Everybody gleans different subtexts from the music and films of an era, especially during teenaged years when our aspirations are being formed.
In the years that formed our collective psyche, we Baby Boomers had few female role models of intelligence, activism, strength, accomplishment, courage....
We had Gidget and Tammy and Miss America. And we aspired to be the desirable object of male attention like the ones in the soundtracks on our 45s playlists. (We didn't have the word, playlists, back then.). The media gave us a mold to either pour ourselves into--if we wanted the real prizes--or to measure our failures by. I tried to cultivate the charm, walk, talk that would give me Personality's twin sister, Popularity.
Years before social media came along, we all wanted "likes."
Maybe it's my age talking, but now I see personality differently. I care a lot less than I used to about "winning friends and influencing people"--as the title of the best seller of those years taught his readers to do. I'm not a bubbly extrovert, never was, never will be. At this age, I know who I am--undisciplined; moody; random; curious; a lover of color, my family and friends, and backroads.
Everybody gleans different subtexts from the music and films of an era, especially during teenaged years when our aspirations are being formed.
In the years that formed our collective psyche, we Baby Boomers had few female role models of intelligence, activism, strength, accomplishment, courage....
We had Gidget and Tammy and Miss America. And we aspired to be the desirable object of male attention like the ones in the soundtracks on our 45s playlists. (We didn't have the word, playlists, back then.). The media gave us a mold to either pour ourselves into--if we wanted the real prizes--or to measure our failures by. I tried to cultivate the charm, walk, talk that would give me Personality's twin sister, Popularity.
I wanted to have a. bunch of boys' names in my diary--whether I liked them or not--to prove my mettle as a girl with personality.
A ring on the finger was one reward--after which we could be Donna Reed or the forgettable and deferential mother in "Father Knows Best." If we played our cards right, we could be some house's wife and worry about other rings: "Ring around the collar, Tells a tale on you." Careers were optional, limited, and secondary to those of our men with the shirts we laundered and pressed.Years before social media came along, we all wanted "likes."
Maybe it's my age talking, but now I see personality differently. I care a lot less than I used to about "winning friends and influencing people"--as the title of the best seller of those years taught his readers to do. I'm not a bubbly extrovert, never was, never will be. At this age, I know who I am--undisciplined; moody; random; curious; a lover of color, my family and friends, and backroads.
The competition for prizes is over. What I love--in myself and other people (like the women in my writing group last night, like all of you)--is not "personality" but character, authenticity, zest, humor, honesty and--je ne sais quois--a few other ingredients, plus or minus a few.
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