Because I Was a Girl Read online

  The big day arrived, and I approached the appointment with great trepidation. The professor listened to me carefully, and he was quite respectful. When I was done, he very kindly explained that it wasn’t feminine to stand in front of an orchestra and conduct—that it would not look good and that it really was a profession for men. I felt my dreams slipping away. I tried to talk about why I wanted to be a conductor, but he told me it just wasn’t an acceptable position for a woman. He again told me I would be an excellent music teacher at an elementary school!

  It was all I could do not to cry as he continued to tell me how noble a profession this would be for me. I felt anger, I felt extreme sadness, and I felt hopelessness. I managed to leave with a smile and tears in my eyes and went to my dorm room to be by myself and cry.

  I spent the next two weeks trying to figure out what to do. This was before the Internet, so I could not search to see how many women conducted college orchestras or bands. There was no way for me to find the very few women who held these jobs to get their advice. I decided to look at other professions and see what they might offer me.

  I approached the psychology department and was fortunate to talk with the sole female professor in that group. I looked at the curriculum and decided that I could become a psychologist—there were women who were psychologists. True, at that time, not as many women as men, but at least there was an openness to my pursuing my studies. While this was a very tumultuous time in my life, it was the best decision I could have made. I finished my bachelor’s degree in one and a half years (compared with the usual three) with a major in psychology and subsequently completed my master’s degree in school psychology. I practiced as a school psychologist for fourteen years before pursuing my doctorate in clinical neuropsychology.

  I am now a division director in Clinical Behavioral Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and surrounded by other accomplished women. The only disappointment I have in my career is that all my mentors were men—no women were in supervisory roles during my education. I now aim to provide such mentorship to young women who are pursuing their advanced studies. It is a struggle as I watch my younger faculty trying to balance family life and a demanding career. But I take comfort in the fact that I can help them navigate the ways of the working world. In some ways, that narrow-minded professor did me a favor by allowing me to channel my abilities in another way.

  * * *

  WHEN I WAS DONE, HE VERY KINDLY EXPLAINED THAT IT WASN'T FEMININE TO STAND IN FRONT OF AN ORCHESTRA AND CONDUCT.

  * * *

  I am sad that still extremely few women conduct college bands or orchestras and even fewer conduct professional orchestras. It took thirty-seven years from the time of my experience before a woman was selected to conduct a major orchestra. That was in 2007. As of this writing, there are only eleven women conducting professional orchestras in the world, and only five are listed among the top conductors. We still have a long way to go.

  EMMY AWARD–WINNING WRITER AND PLAYWRIGHT

  Photo credit: Teddy Steinkellner

  CHERI STEINKELLNER

  One Saturday afternoon in the late 1960s, Papa Al took all the boys to a Dodgers game, and Nana Betty took us girls to the Valley Music Theatre to see our very first stage musical, Peter Pan. Now, this was back before terms like gender bias and heteronormative were invented. This was back when theater was for girls and ball games were for boys.

  My cousin Cathy and I were all dressed up, in scratchy petticoats and shiny shoes. The lights go down, the orchestra tunes up, and without warning, I can’t breathe. Nana Betty thinks I’m having an asthma attack. She scrambles through her Nana-bag for the inhaler. But actually it’s my brother (at the ball game) who has asthma. I just can’t breathe because it’s my first time in a theater, and I don’t know it yet, but I’m about to sneak a peek at the rest of my life.

  Because I am a girl, when the curtain goes up, I latch on to the only little girl onstage. Wendy Moira Angela Darling—sister of Michael and John, “mother” of the lost boys, and would-be “wife” of Peter Pan—is just like me. Well, except she has golden curls and a lilting soprano, and I have a frizzy Jew-fro, Coke-bottle glasses, and a freaked-out grandma. So actually, no, Wendy is nothing like me. But she’s the girl I want to be. Pretty and perfect. Peter and the boys all love her so much they even sing a song about her: “Oh what joy she’ll bring to us! Make us pockets and sing to us.” I want to bring joy and make pockets. I want to be that kind of loved.

  But Wendy isn’t the only girl up on that stage. Another female is hiding in full drag. Wearing green tights and a belted tunic, the leader of the lost boys is played by a grown woman. Little me doesn’t know it yet, but the message I’ll take home from the Valley Music Theatre that day is this: You can act like a girl, sew pockets, and sing pretty. Or you can put your hands on your hips, crow like a rooster, and lead all the boys to amazing adventure.

  CROSS-FADE (that’s a TV term that means we’re changing the scene now, moving forward in time): It’s twenty-five years later. I am in the writers’ room of Cheers, the Emmy Award–winning, top-rated show on TV. The action is set in a Boston sports bar “where everybody knows your name.” Like a lot of sports bars, Cheers is a benevolent boys’ club. And so is the Cheers writers’ room, a rotating brotherhood of comedic geniuses distinguished by their shared love of foosball, Cuban cigars, and Chinese take-out served with whiskey. Then there’s me, the female writer in the room, distinguished by a new baby at my breast and an age-old drive to keep all these playful boys on task so I can get my baby home to her crib before midnight.

  Being the Wendy, the de facto mom, in the writers’ room is a mixed bag. On the upside, you’re not expected to be as funny as the guys. On the downside, they rarely notice when you are. More often than not, I’ll pitch a joke and get … crickets. My words evaporate into thin air as if I didn’t speak them. I think, Did I say that out loud or just think it to myself? I learn to whisper my best pitches to the closest funny guy. Because when he repeats my joke, boom! The joke gets heard, it goes into the script, and we’re one joke closer to getting home by midnight.

  In TV, writers grow up to become producers, and producers grow up to become executive producers, aka show-runners. This is where I go from being Wendy to Peter Pan; from being a girl among boys to a leader of men; from being the Joke Whisperer to the Show-runner.

  The show-runner is responsible for … pretty much everything the light touches. On any given day, I live in the past (editing the episode we shot last week), in the future (prepping the episode we’ll shoot next week), and in the constantly challenging present (rehearsing, revising, and extinguishing fires on the episode we’re shooting this week). As Cheers’s first, and only, female show-runner, I do all that stuff … and push the show to number one. While nursing my newborn baby, backward and in high heels.

  Not all the boys want to be led by a girl. No matter how the ratings soar, no matter how many awards roll in, no matter how early I get us home—I still manage to piss people off in a way that my male colleagues do not. I’m called “A” words like abrasive and annoying to my face. Behind my back, I am called “B” and “C” words I won’t repeat. I am told to “shut up,” “play nice,” and “ride the horse in the direction it’s going.” I respond, “Yeah, but who stops the horse if it’s going off a cliff?” I am told, “Honey, you’ve got to stop caring so much.”

  I try to stop caring. Not caring is not easy. So I stifle my caring until I can sneak off to the back lot, hide behind the fake New York deli facade, and cry it out. One February, I cry every day. Luckily February is a short month. Come March, I get back up on that horse, grab the reins, and ride it the direction it’s going—until I need it to go a different way. Sorry, boys, that’s just how I am. And how I want my daughters to grow up.

  The guys in the writers’ room nicknamed our firstborn daughter, Kit, Cheers Baby, and today our story comes full circle, with a neat ending that I did not see coming:

  *
* *

  AS CHEERS’S FIRST, AND ONLY, FEMALE SHOW-RUNNER, I DO ALL THAT STUFF … AND PUSH THE SHOW TO NUMBER ONE.

  * * *

  When I finished writing this draft, I Googled gender fluid and Peter Pan, just to see if anyone else had made that connection. To my humbled surprise, there were 606,000 results. To my even greater surprise, the very first one was a link to an article titled “Why Peter Pan Matters Today.” I clicked it, and swear to Google, it was written in 2014 for a website called HelloGiggles by none other than … my Cheers baby, Kit Steinkellner!

  Because we are girls, and storytellers, and pocket-makers, and tribe leaders, I can now see that I wasn’t in my position of leadership just to win the awards, make the big bucks, and play with the boys. I was there to walk the walk for our Cheers baby, who grew up to become a writer herself. In fact, the week that I wrote this story, we saw the debut of her first TV show—all about another woman writer named Zelda Fitzgerald. And Kit wrote it in a room full of women.

  AUTHOR AND LITERARY AGENT

  Photo credit: Elisabeth McKay/ McKayImaging

  BRENDA BOWEN

  My father belonged to the Royal Automobile Club in London when I was a girl. He was one of its more unlikely members. A former WWII navy pilot who grew up in rural New Jersey, he sported a crew cut and spoke with an American accent rather than the plummy Oxbridge tones favored in those gilded rooms. On Sundays, RAC members were permitted to bring their families to eat in the Moorish dining room or swim in the Grecian pool. (During the week, the men bathed there naked.) One lucky Sunday, when I was not quite eleven, I was the family member who got to go.

  In my bedroom, watched over by my posters of Mike Nesmith and Marc Bolan, I rolled up my sensible black one-piece bathing suit in a checkered towel, found my swim cap, and put them in a bag for my dad to carry. I planned to dress up for the occasion, and I refused to be burdened with a plain old canvas shopping bag. My oldest sister (the future college professor) was featuring bohemian styles at the time—embroidered coats, peasant blouses. My second sister (the future union president) favored a uniform of orange pants and an earth-toned brown shirt, which she wore almost every single day.

  But for me, ten years old in the spring of 1970, dressing up for the RAC meant wearing my go-to trendy ensemble of the season: tomato-red bell-bottom pants and thigh-length matching vest, coupled with a psychedelic blouse, and finished with white patent leather shoes with large silver buckles. (Note that the buttons on the vest were also silver.)

  I rocked that look.

  Dad and I drove up to London, found a parking space on a street off Pall Mall, and hand in hand, sauntered up to the entrance of the club. When we arrived at the imposing stone edifice, which looks not unlike Buckingham Palace, I flashed a big grin at the uniformed doorman and followed my father through the polished door. Our arrival, which should not have caused a stir, did. The club manager glided swiftly over to us and stopped my father with the hushed words, “I’m sorry, sir. We have a strict no-trouser rule for ladies.”

  A strict no-trouser rule for ladies. Of ten.

  Women have been told how to dress since they could walk upright. Shirts can’t be too tight. Or too loose—I recently discovered that in eighteenth-century Paris, a loose dress signaled sexual availability. Skirts cannot, of course, be too high. Or too low. Nor can heels. Heads must be covered. Heads must be uncovered. Heads must be bowed. Even as I write this, a controversy is swirling about two young girls barred from air travel because their pants were not the “right” pants. As you read this, there will likely be another.

  My father, fighting mad, led me out of the club. “That’s not a good rule,” he said. “Let’s get you a dress.”

  “How about if I take my pants off?” I countered.

  This, we both agreed, was a superb idea. We would comply with their bad rule by subverting it. Plus, I’d get to wear a micro-miniskirt. We walked back to the car, I slipped into the backseat, and with my father acting as guard, I shimmied out of my pants and emerged in my vest, compliant with the no-trouser rule. We walked back to the club and were granted immediate admittance, and I had my swim in the pool. There were no naked men.

  * * *

  WOMEN HAVE BEEN TOLD HOW TO DRESS SINCE THEY COULD WALK UPRIGHT. SHIRTS CAN'T BE TOO TIGHT. OR TOO LOOSE.… SKIRTS CANNOT, OF COURSE, BE TOO HIGH. OR TOO LOW. NOR CAN HEELS. HEADS MUST BE COVERED. HEADS MUST BE UNCOVERED. HEADS MUST BE BOWED.

  WOMEN OF MY ERA HAVE BECOME EXPERT AT FINDING WAYS AROUND BAD RULES: THE ONES THAT SAY WE GET PAID LESS THAN MEN, THAT OUR WORK IS NOT AS VALUED, THAT WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO GOVERN OUR OWN THOUGHTS OR BODIES.

  * * *

  The moral of this story is not that it’s time to stop making rules about how women dress. That we already know.

  The moral of this story is that—at ten years old—I was already good at the work-around, because I was a girl. Women of my era have become expert at finding ways around bad rules: the ones that say we get paid less than men, that our work is not as valued, that we don’t know how to govern our own thoughts or bodies. As girls, we took in very early that we needed to resort to the work-around if we were to be granted access as equals. Or to be granted access at all.

  ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE WASHINGTON NATIONAL OPERA AND ARTISTIC AND GENERAL DIRECTOR OF THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

  Photo credit: Stephen Voss Photography

  FRANCESCA ZAMBELLO

  I have spent forty years working in the theater. Not in front of the curtain on the side of the footlights but on the other side.

  My mother was an actress and used to take me to the theater when she was performing, and I would sleep in her dressing room some nights while she was onstage. I became fascinated at an early age with the backstage world, the moving scenery, the fast costume changes, the colored lights … everything that it took to make the show. I could sit and watch rehearsals from the side for hours by the time I was five. I wasn’t interested in performing; no, I wanted to make the stories.

  By the time I was in third grade, I was creating shows with puppets under our grand piano. That safe space beneath the dark wooden sounding board was like a little theater proscenium for me. I would tape curtains to the front curve of the piano and add a theatrical drop that I had painted in the backyard. Then I would hide behind it and stick out my hands with the puppets on them. I became obsessed with making up stories and presenting them in my piano theater. The good thing was, no one told me a girl couldn’t be the director! That would come later.

  * * *

  When I was growing up, my family moved to Europe, first to Paris and then Vienna. In these amazing capital cities, I would often spend time sitting in cafés, where I became a compulsive people-watcher, which led to my creating characters in my mind and making up stories. All I wanted to do as I grew up was to tell stories through images, music, and words.

  After college, I moved to New York City with every intention of becoming a director. Friends were not very positive about this idea. Women worked in the theater, sure, but not as the number one creative person and leader of a show. There were no role models I could easily draw upon. So I set out to work my way up, first as a production assistant (read: coffee-getter), then as a stage manager. A director took a chance on me and hired me as his assistant, and eventually I started directing in very small places. When I tell it like this, it sounds easy. It wasn’t—it was hard. There were lots of other people in line, lots of men and guys with special connections. The best thing I did was leave New York and look elsewhere for work. I found directing jobs in Europe and less obvious places like Milwaukee! Over time, I built a résumé and a solid career away from the big US cities.

  A story that has always stayed with me is from the Vienna State Opera, one of the most prestigious companies in the world. The general director called my agent and invited me to come direct there. This was a huge coup, and my agent called back and said yes on my behalf. Suddenly it came to light that the general director had invited Frances
co (the male version of my name), not Francesca. A woman had never directed in Vienna, and he said one never would. He withdrew the offer, saying it had been a mistake. (A woman finally made it there a few years back, but I never did.)

  Flash-forward to now. I have often been alone on many frontiers in my field as a female director in opera and theater, and sometimes even more alone in the last decade as the artistic director of two opera companies. I have now directed in more than two hundred theaters and opera houses around the world, on stages in locations as diverse as the jungle of Cambodia, Disneyland, and Broadway. I truly believe I often had to work harder to pass my male colleagues. It is not always a happy ending, but for me there was a truth to hard work and creative talent and a fair amount of self-belief in many dark moments!

  * * *

  I WASN'T INTERESTED IN PERFORMING; NO, I WANTED TO MAKE THE STORIES.

  THE GOOD THING WAS, NO ONE TOLD ME A GIRL COULDN'T BE THE DIRECTOR! THAT WOULD COME LATER.

  * * *

  Now I devote considerable energy to supporting my female colleagues as they come into the field. We are still a vast minority, but we’re gaining. And, of course, there is the logic to it all: Women make up half the audience, so why shouldn’t half the people who create the images and tell the stories be women?

  CHEF, FITNESS EXPERT, AND MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER

  Photo credit: Elton Anderson

  BABETTE DAVIS