When I was in second grade, the teacher had us draw and caption pictures of how we imagined our lives would be at ages 20, 40 and 60. I distinctly remember being eight; the world was mine, except for when we ran the mile in gym. I knew that when I grew up I would be a writer and a doctor and a fashion model and a mommy and an artist and–if I had time–president.

But here’s what I wrote under my age 20 picture: “Getting engaged to a nice guy.” That’s all. No education, no career aspirations, just lopsided hearts emanating from a smirking couple without noses.

I don’t remember what was going through my precocious little head that day; it could just be I didn’t know how to draw a writer. (I still don’t, actually. Maybe a stick figure with a pen in one hand and a bottle in the other?)

But I doubt that’s the real story, especially coupled with the other two pictures: “Age 40: Getting old and gray with my husband really fast.” “Age 60: Starting to have grandchildren.”

I think I speak for 96 percent of the women in Madison when I say, “What the hell is that?”

Funny, isn’t it, how pervasive traditional roles can be? At no point in my childhood was I told, “Women don’t have careers. Your highest and best calling is to satisfy a man, pump out children, and sublimate yourself to your family’s needs.” My mom certainly didn’t say it; she was too busy writing music and brushing up on her German, and later, studying karate and getting her translation agency off the ground. My dad, with three daughters, had learned long ago how to send only the positive messages about women.

And yet somehow, on that day in second grade, I decided my most photogenic future would come not from my brain but from my ovaries, spurred on by my dubious physical charms.

I doubt I wanted or expected that future. I think I knew even then I would grow up scruffy and intellectual, the anti-bimbo, so if I tried to occupy the same space as a bimbo, both of us would be annihilated. (This makes parties hazardous.) Apparently, I drew what I thought my classmates and teacher wanted to see, what society and the media had somehow convinced me I should strive (settle?) for, what I assumed would make me the most acceptable whether or not I could actually achieve it.

I don’t know about you, but this worries me. I avoided the trap of tradition (I suppose it’s still possible for me to become the Total Woman, but I’d need to be heavily lobotomized), and the future’s looking bright if not lucrative, but what about all the little girls who aren’t encouraged to read and think and dream, who don’t have a powerhouse mother and two overachieving big sisters and a highly supportive father, who never learn to take society’s messages with a boulder-sized grain of salt?

Conditions have improved so much for women since the days of my mom’s college adviser talking her out of her chosen career path with something along the lines of, “A pretty little thing like you is just going to get married and follow your husband, and what are you going to do if you’re trained to be a United Nations interpreter and your husband winds up in East Gackel, North Dakota?” Any adviser who tried this now would be responded to with retreating footsteps and a filed complaint, I hope. We can be U.N. interpreters or, for that matter, the Secretary-General (right?)

But we can’t afford to become complacent. The traps still exist–at church, in TV and movies, in jokes, at our grandparents’ houses, in Cosmo. If our children are to grow up into something besides emotionless, violent manly men and apron-wearing automatons, the message that there are other ways must be broadcast loudly. With volume enough to drown out everything that shrieks, “Barefoot and pregnant!” or “Never let them see you cry!” or “A lady in the parlor and a whore in bed!” or “Show that woman who’s boss!”

Once those voices realize no one is listening, they’ll quiet right down.

Jackie May ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in English.