I’m Not Superwoman, But I’m Not a Do-nothing Bitch Either
By: Adryan Corcione
Tags: Superwoman Syndrome, Strong Women, Women, Feminism, Black Women

After my mom passed away last year, Lucille took me in as her surrogate daughter. Last fall, we started talking over the phone about pretty much everything: feminism, travel, dogs, food, menstruation She’d also tell me striking stories about her activism during Roe v. Wade and protesting war with Noam Chomsky. Three months ago, I visited Lucille’s home outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico. For an entire week, I planned to read literary magazines in the bathtub, take naps with Lucille’s Cocker Spaniel, eat fresh greens from her backyard garden, and explore a new cultural setting.

One night over tea, I started naming off my responsibilities. At the time, I worked two jobs. I visited my boyfriend, who lived two and a half hours away, every other weekend. I dog sat twice a month. I volunteered for a local independent movie theater. I went to therapy. I constantly saved up for a trip to Europe in the fall. I signed up for a online TEFL class. I tried to schedule time to spend with my dad one night a week. My plate was full — and if I wasn’t careful, it would shatter into pieces. “Superwoman Syndrome,” Lucille called it.

My plate was full — and if I wasn’t careful, it would shatter into pieces.

In a her book about the phenomenon, Marjorie Hansen Shaevitz explains describes how women juggle different roles (such as mother, professional, homemaker, etc.) in Western societies. The author first saw Superwoman in this context by columnist Ellen Goodman in 1977:

Supermom stayed home and when the kiddies came back from school she baked them cookies in the shape of pumpkins with raisin eyes and carrier noses. But now we have before us the ideal of Superwoman who prepares a well-balanced nutritious breakfast for her children, and her children eat it. She goes off to work where she makes $30,000 a year as an executive of a law firm. She comes home and reads to the children, then serves dinner by candlelight to her husband.

The Superwoman unapologetically “has it all.”

The more I started learning about Superwoman Syndrome, the more I identified with it. The various roles women play are overwhelming and exhausting: daughter, significant other, employee, volunteer, patient, student, writer. Despite my passion for writing, I placed it behind every other priority. In college, I overworked myself to dodge student debt.

Once I got my hands on Shaevitz’s book, I laughed at the “WITH MEN’S RESPONSES” patch on the cover. It resembles a male seal of approval, as if women need their own feelings mansplained to them. The patch advertises an entire chapter called “How Men Really Feel,” compiled by a psychologist. There’s another chapter dedicated to maintaining healthy, marital relationships and two more dedicated to motherhood.

In this women’s self-help book with 12 chapters, families dictate nearly half of them. It isn’t until page 116 (out of 254) when the author emphasizes, “for everyone’s sake — take care of yourself.” The majority of the book feels relationship-based. For instance, many resources cover the decision to have kids, mediating intimacy with a husband, and different parenting styles.

The book is dated; it was originally published in 1984. In 30 years, feminism has experienced at least two new waves. The text fails to address women’s perspectives beyond those that are heteronormative, childbearing, and cisgender. It also fails to address gender nonconforming individuals that might share similar responsibilities as women.

Despite their nonbinary identity, Naseem Jamnia, a writer, editor, and neuroscientist, feels Superwoman Syndrome in the STEM industry. This fall, Jamnia is starting a doctoral program. So far, their classmates have been mostly single. Meanwhile, Jamnia is married and thinking about the best time to raise a child. “As someone in the sciences, I see this all the time,” they add. “Every woman I’ve talked to admits they don’t know when to start their family based on what’s required to become a scientist.”

Beyond its flaws, Superwoman Syndrome still speaks to the societal expectations of women. Women can have it all, but not everyone’s idea of “having it all” is the same. Nor does it necessarily involve marriage and kids — which Superwoman Syndrome does suggest.

In 2012, Debora L. Spar published a more updated criticism of societal expectations of women called Wonder Women: Sex Power, and the Quest for Perfection. On the first page, she dives right into “having it all.” Still, in the prologue, she admits her context, “I am a working mother of three children, so my view of women is very much taken from this particular perspective.” I appreciate the consciousness, but this lens reveals how exclusionary Wonder Women, like Superwoman Syndrome, can be. It’s limited to working, child-bearing, married cis-mothers.

What about women outside of this paradigm? I have little desire to raise children and even less a desire to birth them myself. I’ve also rejected the idea of marriage for years. Even as a white, working woman, I feel distance from Shaevitz’s and Spar’s points of view.

Writer and Nerds of Prey podcast co-host Cameron Glover explains, “The correlation in my life is the Strong Black Woman trope.” This trope has a strong presence in media. For Bitch Media, Tamara Winfrey Harris mythologized the Strong Black Woman label as an albatross:

Because, according to pop culture and media, we are also the workhorses. We are the castrating harpies. We are the brawling World Star “hood rats.” We are the cold, overeducated, work-obsessed sisters who will never marry. We are the indefatigable mamas who don’t need help. We are the women and girls who are unrapeable; who no one need worry about when we go missing. We are the scary bogeywomen on America’s doorstep in the middle of the night. And we are angry. Always angry.

That’s why Glover runs from this trope. “[Superwoman Syndrome] feels like you can’t have it all. With the Strong Black Woman trope, it’s everything from media to suicide and depression in the black community.” She also feels it removes her agency as an individual, as if she’s a spokesperson for the entire identity.

Harris also notes profiles of Michelle Obama predominately “focus on personal and professional strength, particularly her exceptional education and career achievements, her egalitarian marriage, and her athleticism.” Google results for “Michelle Obama strong” are flooded with the First Lady flexing her biceps. Not all famous black women have such a positive media presence as the FLOTUS, but still, strength has become a societal expectation of black women. As Glover mentions, the project of strength could potentially interfere with how black women respond to mental health.

To contrast the Superwoman, Wonder Woman, and the Strong Black woman, there’s the “do-nothing bitch.” Last year, MMA fighter Ronda Rousey popularized the term at the Ultimate Fighting Championship. According to Entertainment Weekly, her speech describes a DNB as:

A kind of chick that just tries to be pretty and be taken care of by somebody else. That’s why I think it’s hilarious when people say my body looks masculine or something like that. Listen, just because my body was developed for a purpose other than f — ing millionaires, doesn’t mean it’s masculine. I think it’s femininely badass as f — because there’s not a single muscle in my body that isn’t for a purpose. Because I’m not a do-nothing bitch.

Beyoncé echoed Rousey’s speech at the Made in America Festival a month later. The term became so sensationalized that clothing companies printed DBA shirts with Rousey and Beyoncé. Rousey’s audience wore this title with pride — understandably so. Women’s bodies shouldn’t serve the male gaze. Women can be strong without conforming to masculinity; physical strength and femininity can co-exist. However, the DNB implies a negative connotation to women that want to be pretty and taken care of. Predictably, Rousey could’ve referred homemakers with breadwinning husbands. Fortunately, the intersectional feminist movement recognizes stay-at-home mothers as working ones.

Women can be strong without conforming to masculinity; physical strength and femininity can co-exist.

While her speech intends to strengthen independent women, it hurts women who are not, according to her own standards. The DNB separates women into two categories: “just” trying to be pretty for caring men and pretty for the sake of independence. Superwoman Syndrome also upholds this binary. Although Shaevitz stresses women shouldn’t have to be a superwoman, it still divides women as one type over the other.

Superwoman Syndrome excludes women from different contexts beyond the author’s. Wonder Women has a similar issue, despite being published in the 2010s. However, alongside the Strong Black Woman trope, all three bring awareness to gender roles and societal expectations of women. They also hold certain women to a higher standard compared to other women, creating a clear distinction between who gets to be super, wonderful, or strong — or a “do-nothing bitch.”