Women’s Work

In my new job, I’ve been working on establishing nourishing routines. So every day, after work, I’m reading (I should be walking or lifting weights – eventually, I will be walking or lifting weights, but I’m not there yet; routines take time) – and I’m reading Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series. I never got into it before now, and suddenly I’m very into it.

And when I can’t stand any more of it, I’m watching Call the Midwife. Vanessa Redgrave’s voiceovers are so healing. The centering of women in this show – it’s so incredibly feminist.

It also tackles things that people might want to forget. Thalidomide. The Windrush immigrants – Lucille, Joyce (with the amazing Afro in the photo above), and Cyril (who can slay me anytime simply by smiling; this man has charisma such to spare that he could pack it up and sell the extra and I would buy all of it) – the insane levels of prejudice in British society. But it’s not simply race-based as it is in the US – which is bad enough. Racism in the US is an absolute horrorshow, a monstrosity. In Britian, the prejudice is also class-based, and that includes the accent you’re born with, the clothes you’re wearing, what city you grew up in, and other people’s knowledge of your ancestors, should you care to trace them. Think of any person who has ever mocked or humiliated you with a superior smile. That’s the vibe.

One of the first things I was told by a dear friend of mine is that I have a good voice for speaking. It’s…accentless (in US terms). This voice was washed through several generations of schooling: my father was from Oklahoma, my mother was from Iowa. They met one another in Boston – well, Cambridge, as they say. I was born in New Jersey, and spent the formative six years of my life there, before washing that accent in Delaware, and then Massachusetts, and then New York City. I can summon a Brooklyn accent when I’m pissed off. But otherwise, my accent is….

The US equivalent of Received Pronounciation.

It is bland, it is multi-purpose, and it is like a Swiss Army knife. And I’ve found, in my massive career travels, that it helps me fit in wherever I’m needed. It allows me to be somewhat of a chameleon.