funny femme

Babs. She was one of the first women I looked up to when I was young. And her film, Funny Girl, was a pivotal part of my falling in love with singing, and I learned a little about life from it.  I saw it two nights in a row this week, as it was featured as the late night film at my local theatre.

Fanny grew up in a tight knit neighbourhood on Henry Street, but makes it big on Broadway with Ziegfeld Follies. She falls in love with Nick, a (very suave and handsome) professional gambler, and for a while they both are very successful, until she surpasses him in her career, and he plateaus in his, and goes bankrupt, and can’t handle the hit to his pride. He chooses to go to jail, give in to his chosen defeat, rather than have Fanny save him, financially, (but also emotionally?). And Fanny has to let him go.

• I was inspired to be successful and independent, to go after whatever I wanted for my life, but saw that falling in love can make the most brilliant women second-guess their career goals.
• There is more to life than a career. I think women understand that more than men.
• Apparently some men can’t handle a woman more accomplished than themselves.
• It’s good to have a sense of humor, and to laugh at yourself, but also to understand and appreciate your worth. Especially to embrace your talents. And to stand up for what you believe to be true to your art.
• You can’t help anybody until they help themselves, regardless of how much you love them. Pride is a tricky thing. Sometimes loving someone isn’t enough to fix them or the relationship.
• My mother told me that Gamblers have very high highs, and very low lows, and I’ve never forgotten that.

I think its important to have female role models that go after what they want in life, yet are distracted by the details of love, and can’t help but succumb to the pull of that desired connection with one other person. It’s annoying for me to deal with, myself, that of balancing relationships while still doing what I want for my life.

My mother was distracted and career subdued by men, until she realized my risk-taker of a father wouldn’t be the financial success our family needed, so she pursued her dreams later in life. That may have lent to their eventual divorce, as maybe my dad couldn’t handle the counter success of my mother. So she let him leave.

It sucks that we have to do that as women, love the men in our lives enough to let them go, even if we have a feeling that they’d be better with us than not, that’s something they have to figure out on their own.

I think falling in love should feel like the luckiest feeling, and to have that with someone, where both parties feel so incredibly lucky to be with the other, that’s what I’m looking for. When you feel lucky, you appreciate life and love all the more. Can you really be in love with someone if you don’t feel lucky to be with them? Can that feeling last a life time?