Editor's Note

International Women’s Day
Should be Everyday

Women. We come in all sorts of form. A daughter. A female. A wife. A mother. We play many a great role, such a significant one that even the greatest thing on Earth bears our name - Mother Nature.

When Carrie Bradshaw said,

“Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous,”

it really is a heartfelt statement. Because when you love someone, you tend to mould into that someone he loves and what he wants you to be. It is inevitable. It is only natural, an unforseen force. You can always have a mechanical defense and say, “Never lose yourself when you are in a relationship” but seriously now, the only reason why they call your man, The Other Half, or The Significant Other is because he MAKES the other half of you. He completes you. He has become part of you and you part of him. Not only because of the existence of love in your life but because of the person you have become to suit yourself in his life and yours to his.

But human being human, it is never enough. No one would remember the things you have done, everyone just wants to be better than the other – even better than the other half. Who is more romantic, who is a better lover, who has done what more… A competition within itself. It doesn’t matter how you package yourself for the man you love, or the sacrifice you have done as a wife and a mother, because there will always be that one day when your children tell you they hate you and your husband will tell you that you are fat - whether they mean it or not.

To all the women in the world, this week is our week. It is only their loss to not know what they have, but if you have ever been selflessly loved and was accepted Just The Way You Are right from the start of courtship, please do inform me – because even Romeo had a hard time accepting the fact that Juliet was a Capulet... And I might also have a hard time accepting the fact that such a thing called Pure Love still exists in the world in this age.

Women will always be at the losing end. When we love too much, we are called stupid. When men love too much, they are called romantics. What does that leave us to feel? Really stupid.

This week’s issue, in commemorating the International Women’s Day this 8th March, I pay tribute to the women who have performed miracles to the world, built hopes for their children and being the selfless backbones for their husbands, and above all, to all those who has given their all to the industry, family and society.

We can always package ourselves to be the perfect one, fulfilling the roles to be everything to everyone. Buy more MAC, attend curtsey classes, be a UNICEF Ambassador, bring in 500 percent more revenue for your company...

But at the end of it, if the person who matters most to you cannot see the person whom you ought to be, whom you really are, then you have failed…

Then, I have failed.

Or have we?

Somewhere out there, there will always be someone telling you that you did not try hard enough and that you are a little too pudgy. Our legs will never be long enough. Mummy will always be too busy. We will never be pretty enough. But no one should ever tell us, “You are not woman enough.”


Being a Woman is the Toughest Role on Earth,


Bianca Zen


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by Ellen Lupton


“How do you do it all?”

I often get this question, and my answer is this: no one does it all. Doing it all means, of course, having a career and having kids, and it’s one of the great myths of our era. The myth is that you can pursue these two essentially incompatible activities without screwing up either one. The myth is that having children will infuse your professional work with a wondrous energy (akin to the fabled second-trimester glow), and that having a job will make you a more interesting and fulfilled person, and thus a better parent.

One year ago, I had the privilege of sitting on a panel called “Women Rock!” at the national AIGA Design Conference in Boston. Devoted to the life issues faced by female designers, the panel sought to “offer unique insights on juggling career and family, dealing with stress, and how all the chaos offers training and inspiration for becoming a better designer, a better businessperson and a better mother.” That program blurb neatly sums up the myth, suggesting that the chaotic life of the working mom provides the ultimate training ground for getting better at everything.

So there we were on the stage, a group of middle-aged female designers: Jessica Helfand, Deanna Kuhlmann-Leavitt, Bonnie Siegler, Emily Potts (who graciously organized the panel) and myself. We all had kids, and we all had jobs. Bonnie, in her early forties, had just had her second baby, who was being patiently handled by her husband sitting in the front row. We were all relatively successful, some more prominent than others, but let’s say none of us was exactly Stefan Sagmeister, about to start carving letters in our chests with an Xacto knife. (If any of us would, I guess it would be Bonnie.)

The audience was eager to find out how to do it all, but one of the best questions came from Boston-based designer Fritz Klaetke, who asked why there weren’t any men on the panel. After all, one of the ways women manage in today’s world is having supportive partners like Fritz, who exemplifies the new model of hyper-involved, ultra-engaged fatherhood. Fritz is an excellent designer, a leader in the Boston design community, and a deeply committed dad. My own husband, Abbott Miller (who is a much better mom than I am), wants to publish a magazine called Working Father—an absurd idea pointing to our societal assumption that dads have to work anyway.

The event in Boston last year got me thinking about work and parenting and all the fudging and corner-cutting we do in order to pursue them both. Younger mothers, I’ve learned, are more likely to stay at home with their small children than women my age. I was born in 1963 at the tail end of the Baby Boom, and I grew up in a household with two working parents, always believing that work would define my life. Generation X is the swath of people born between 1965 and 1979. A common experience for this group is the “absent father” or being a child of divorce. Perhaps because of that experience, as well as the general trend towards downward mobility, Generation X moms and dads both put more value on spending time at home with their kids and less value on professional success.

A strange conversational dance occurs when two women meet and begin finding out who works and who stays at home. It’s awkward to ask directly, so you look for cues. (A mom who wears tennis whites when she drops off the kids at school might not have a job, but you never know; she could be a lawyer with a home office or a brain surgeon who works the night shift.) The infamous message board UrbanBaby assigns codes for one’s employment status: SAHM for moms who stay at home; WOHM for those who work outside the home.

Why does it matter? There’s a “mommy war” going on, and members of each side often feel more comfortable with other women who have made choices like theirs. Furthermore, we are often eager to validate our own decisions as the best ones for our children. The SAHMs occupy the moral high ground in this matter—they’re the ones who have made the big sacrifice, spending crucial years of their lives almost exclusively with their kids, refusing to hand over their babies and toddlers to nannies, au pairs, and day care facilities for eight or ten hours a day.

It seems obvious to me that mothers and fathers are the best “care givers” for small children, and research more or less bears this out. Working moms try to argue that their own kids are getting the better deal: earlier socialization, more independence, an immune system toughened by exposure to pathogens, and, above all, the opportunity to draw inspiration from a busy mother whose mental life and personal identity derives not just from her children, but also from a career. But young children, as I’ve observed them, are deeply self-involved. Until my kids reached elementary school age, they rarely took interest in either parent, beyond our readiness to entertain, protect, sooth, feed, transport and so on. Little kids want to be with their parents because we make them feel safe, whole and happy, not because they admire our professional achievements.

Knowing this in my heart, I nonetheless made my own decision to continue working while my children were small. I look at my kids now, ages eight and twelve, and wonder what choices they will make. Will they have kids? Will they have jobs? (Will jobs still exist when they grow up?) Would they have become happier and more fulfilled adults if I had quit working for eight or nine years? I’ll never know the answer, any more than I will know what kind of professional success I would have achieved if I hadn’t slowed down to have children.

I vividly recall a bath-time conversation when my son Jay was in second grade. With his head covered in a foamy helmet of shampoo, he announced, “Most of my friends’ moms don’t work.” Dismay lurched deep in my gut. “What do you think about that?” I asked. “I dunno, “ he said.

When I ask him the same question now, he says he likes my job because I teach him “cool design stuff,” like how to use Flash and how to publish his designs and animations on the web. My younger daughter, Ruby, feels similarly. Getting dressed for camp recently, she announced, “Mommy, you’re cool.” “Wow,” I said. “Why do you think I’m cool?” (Surely it wasn’t because of my Lands End circle skirt.) “Because you’re a designer, and we get to design things together.” My tween-age children are now finding value in my professional skills. My work has become an opportunity for creative companionship with my kids. Indeed, design is becoming part of their own identities, for now, as they each stake out a place in the world of digital media and visual art—areas full of intrigue and possibility.

At that same conference in Boston in 2005, Alex Isley organized a breakout session about teaching kids to be designers. He argued for the social importance of teaching your own kids—and all the others kids around you—to be designers in their daily lives. David Peters, another “working father” attending the conference, talked to me and some other parents about organizing events for kids for the next AIGA national conference, so we can bring our children along and have hands-on activities for them to do all weekend. My kids and I would like to be the first volunteers to staff the booth. We’ll do the best we can, and we’ll be working.


[Reprinted with permission from the author. Originally published on Voice: AIGA Journal of Design.]





Ellen Lupton
Director of MFA program in Graphic Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore
Author
Curator of Contemporary Design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City


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		Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and graphic designer. Her most recent books are D.I.Y: Design It Yourself (2006) and Thinking with Type (2004). She is director of the graphic design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She also is curator of contemporary design at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York City, where she has organized numerous exhibitions, each accompanied by a major publication, including the National Design Triennial series (2000 and 2003),.. Click on picture to read more Ellen Lupton
Editorial Maryland Contributor

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		Joyce Choo is a photographer from Singapore who has been in the “shooting”: business for the past ten years (and counting) shot the above banner which up till now, still unfailingly intrigues me… From 30 March - 15 April 2007 at DesignSingapore Council, Joyce Choo, member of Professional Photographers Association Singapore (PPAS) is holding an exhibition titled, Photography Edge! Photography Edge! comprises of many important photographers such as Chuang Lee Jen, Peter Chua, Ruth Soh, Sebastian Tan, Eric Seow, Joyce Choo, etc - all of whom have contributed significantly to the photography scene in Singapore for the past two decades. Click on picture to read more about Joyce Choo
Photography Singapore Contributor

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