Yesterday’s News

Yesterday’s News
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 2, 2014

The three of us, former work buddies, were ensconced in a Mexican cantina in Northbridge. It was so dark we couldn’t tell our duck tostadas from our chicken tortillas. But no-one cared. We were absorbed in a discussion about generations.

One of my girlfriends, a senior executive, was recounting how a week earlier, she’d called an underling into her office for some constructive criticism, only to have the young woman burst into tears.

We two listeners were taken aback: “She cried in front of everyone?”

“Yep! All the girls in the office were hugging her and I was suddenly the Wicked Witch of the West!”

“I don’t ever remember crying at work,” I announced. “I’ve fled the newsroom and sobbed in the loo. I’ve cried in the car park. But I’ve never let anyone see me upset in the office. I wasn’t into career suicide!”

“That’s the point,” said my other friend. “We were always trying to prove we were just as good as the blokes. We weren’t about to handicap ourselves by crying!”

We decided office protocols must have changed and we’d failed to notice. Maybe we’re entitled to a group hug and a good howl at the coffee station when the boss berates us for missing a deadline? We launched into a muddled debate about whether the coming generation has been over-indulged. We traded stories about our pampered young colleagues, born in the 80s and 90s. Are they more driven, harder working, more ambitious than we were at their age? “Impossible!” one girlfriend said.

At 46, I’m old enough now for the next generation to dismiss me as yesterday’s woman. But from now on, I will co-exist, (uneasily I expect), with those up-and-coming aspirants I never dreamed could one day supplant me.

Sliding towards 50, it’s sobering to realise that more of my life is behind me than in front. I can look back and see the turning points in my life, the happy accidents, the mistakes averted, not because I was smart or prescient, but by dumb luck.

As a skittish Uni student, what if I’d never sat down next to that beautiful woman in the library cafe? She told me her husband was the boss of a radio station. What if she hadn’t urged me to try out for a voice test? Rigid with nerves, I flunked the test with my breathy falsetto. I swallowed my pride and agreed to mind the switchboard instead.

In 1988, when Gen Y’s were playing Donkey Kong on their Game Boys, I was making endless cups of Maxwell House for disc jockeys with voices like velvet. I put my hand up when they needed a barrel girl to draw the weekly winners. I was told to act ditzy. (There was no acting required). I practiced rustling envelopes at home. And then the boss called me into his office again, and I figured my envelope-rustling career was doomed. But instead he said: “The newsroom’s looking for a cadet reporter. Wanna give it a shot?”

Two decades later, I’m sharing my line of work with newcomers who think they know it all. Just like I did once. To me, they’re kids; such eager recruits with their sharp fashion sense and the smarts to match. I admire them: they already know what they want. I was 30 by the time I’d grown their kind of confidence.

Will those Gen Y’s look down on my generation the same way I’ve pigeon-holed my mum and her friends? She still teases me about the day I was cradling my first-born son and I said to her: “I won’t do the wooden spoon or the naughty chair – I’ll just talk it out quietly and calmly with him.” How did she restrain herself from laughing out loud? Instead she replied: “Never say never to the naughty chair! You sure spent enough time on it!”

I wrote last November about how women are tormenting themselves trying to ‘have it all,’ aiming for perfection and arriving at frustration. In response, I received a polite letter from a woman in her seventies, a mother-of-five who’d worked for forty years as a school teacher.

“Do you really think you’re the first women on earth struggling to manage work and children?” she wrote. “For goodness sake, you young ones need to get over yourselves!”

In the Mexican darkness, we middle-aged youngsters hailed a waiter, put generational rivalry aside and spent five minutes trying to divide the bill.

We waved each other goodbye and I walked to my car, wondering how history will paint my generation. As uptight overachievers? Or overworked and underrated? And then I remembered there’s no loo paper at home and we’re out of milk.

A Woman’s World

A Woman’s World
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday May 17, 2014

We met in the rice cracker aisle. I hadn’t seen him in 25 years. We’d worked in radio together when I was the bumbling cadet and he was the news editor, sure-footed and velvet-tonsilled. I’d been in awe of him – or scared of him – one and the same thing to a 21-year-old feeling hopelessly inadequate. I can remember how he’d grow more and more frenzied as the clock sped towards news hour. He’d pound away on his IBM electric, a gravity-defying stub of ash dangling from the cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth.

Now he was barefoot shopping in Coles and I was loading up on Saos for school lunches. We made small talk about radio days before he announced matter-of-factly: “You chicks have got it made. The media’s biased towards women. I should know – I got the sack for being male.”

“You don’t mean that!” I said, taken aback.

“Yes, I do. I was a man and they only wanted women. Attractive women, of course. I tried to grow breasts, but all I grew was resentment.” He laughed, but I could hear the indignation in his voice.

I wasn’t sure if he wanted my sympathy or a comrade in arms. Our conversation limped to a farewell at the checkout. Walking home, my arms strung with shopping bags, I tried to picture my career from his point of view.

I remember when alpha males ruled radio newsrooms. In the late 80’s, hardened newsmen with gravelly voices would sub my scripts then give my right cheek an encouraging pat: “Have another go, sunshine!”

Anxious to impress, I worried they’d peg me as the dumb blonde. (More often than not, I was). So I put my hand up to do the graveyard shifts, reading news bulletins til midnight, and fumbling out of bed at 4am, just as friends were staggering home. I thought hard work would make up for lack of talent.

One summer, desperate to be taken seriously, I took to wearing pretend glasses to work. They were Lois Lane style with square black rims. I thought they made me look intelligent. My girlfriends said they made me look hilarious.

By the time I’d crossed the divide into television, female reporters with big hair and pastel suits were as much in demand as their chain-smoking male counterparts. To me, gender was irrelevant: a scoop was a scoop. We never questioned that our news directors were all male: the corridors in management were awash with testosterone too. Women reported the news, they weren’t in charge of it.

For the next eighteen years, I had only one female boss. She grilled me once: “Are you wanting to get married? Are you thinking about children?”

“No interest in either!” I replied proudly, aged 27. Three months later she was gone, emptying her desk after a dip in the TV ratings and complaints about her abrasive ‘management style.’

Feminism didn’t do young female reporters any favours either. It told us we needed to be ball-breakers, to be strident and brash. But the one thing despised in a newsroom more than a bimbo, was a woman as aggressive as a bloke.

Sure, there were perks for women in telly. I got $2000 to spend on clothes. Staying blonde became a tax deduction. But the night a male rival got sloshed, I discovered his salary beat mine by $30,000.

I returned to one job after baby number two, feeling crushed by the conflict of motherhood. On Monday mornings, I’d race out my front door in tears, my small son howling in the arms of his babysitter.

The newsroom had moved on in my 18-month absence. Young, fresh-faced reporters eyed me suspiciously. I was intimidated by the new computer software and embarrassed to ask for help. What if I was outed by my childless colleagues as less competent? Or less committed? In the afternoons, I’d make a flurry of whispered phone calls to make sure 6-year-old son was safely home from school, that he was dressed for Tae Kwon Do, that a girlfriend was still good to take him, that my toddler had woken up happily from his nap.

Three months into that job, I fell pregnant again. It took me a week to work up the courage to ring my boss in Sydney: “Ben, I have some news you’re not expecting…” I couldn’t decide whether to sound euphoric or apologetic, as though I’d connived to deceive him.

He took my announcement in his stride. But I was floored by the glamorous young reporter who griped: “But didn’t you get pregnant last year?”

So, in answer to my former male colleague at the supermarket, the one feeling downtrodden by the effortless rise of women in media? Don’t complain to me buddy! I’m tired of talking about sexism. Ageism’s my thing now!