That Time I Tried To Pass Myself Off As A Childless Man
Regrets, I’ve had a few… It’s healthy, I think, to look back on some of the choices you’ve made and have a little tut-tut at yourself. This is how we learn, how we avoid repeating mistakes, and make things different for the ones coming after us.
Second paragraph and the rest… In the spirit of “I’ll tell you about a dumb thing I did so you don’t have to”, here’s a trio of regrets I’ve been thinking about this week.
First up, I regret that time I wore an underwire bra on a long-haul flight. If you want to stress-test the fit of a bra, there is no more efficient way than to wear it for eleven hours while trying to sleep in a sitting position wedged between people you don’t know.
If they could replicate this experience in a fitting room, none of us would own that $80 dollar bra which never comes out of the drawer because it hurts after ten minutes. Comfort all the way, sisters. I have soft-cup bras even for short domestic flights.
Last week I broke my own heart when I left one of my favourite jackets – vibrant blue with an embroidered floral heart on the back – in a café in Noumea. Working on a cruise ship, I’d disembarked to find coffee and pastries, took the jacket off in warm winter sunshine and forgot it was there.
There is a special kind of regret you feel as your ship pulls away from the wharf just as you realise your jacket is missing and there’s no way to go back for it. I stood on the promenade deck and waved it goodbye. I hope someone in Noumea is finding joy in it. Watch me now as I leave any space and you’ll see me stop, look back, and check for abandoned clothing.
My third regret is that, as a woman working in male-dominated industry, and as a parent surrounded by men without kids, I once tried to pass myself off as a childless man.
In the 1990s when my daughter Holly was very new, I was collaborating on a new television show. There were meetings and writing sessions – all unpaid but exciting and hopeful.
“We’ll meet again later this week,” the producer had said. I’d asked when, and the boys agreed maybe Thursday or Friday? See how things went, work it out later.
I wanted to tell them I needed to know because I had to arrange childcare. But I also didn’t want to tell them because I didn’t want to be the only one insisting on a formal plan. I thought it would make me less employable, less easy to include. This is probably true. Instead, I secretly managed the juggle. Which is fine, but not helpful for the next woman in comedy with a baby.
Later, my parents would move closer and I could say yes to freelance work at short notice because my mother would say sweetly, “Of course, darling” when asked if she’d take Holly that very afternoon.
Thirty years later, we have evolved – not all of us, but that’s how you measure progress. It was the upside of the recent Stuart Nash story – his characterisation of a working mother who took parental leave as “lazy” and “ill-suited to the rigours” of her job as an MP was shot-down from all corners of parliament.
We have absorbed the idea that most workers become parents and we must make space for this.
Also, have you met a working mother? The last thing she is, is lazy.