“Behind every successful man stands a
woman telling him that he’s wrong”. This saying was engraved on a plaque and was
hung on the veranda of my ancestral home. The pearl of wisdom was an enigma to
me since it was displayed on a prominent position in a house where a mother single-handedly
raised four sons and one daughter, after the early demise of her husband. Who put
it there? My grandmother? Or one among her sons? What could it mean? Is it that
every successful man has a nagging woman who finds fault with his every move?
Or is it that there is a woman who motivates the man to strive hard?
The saying was supposedly coined even
before World War II. It, most certainly, was not appealing to the early
feminists. But nobody knew who said it or when. The internet says that the closest
resemblance to the saying is found in the sports column of a newspaper, The
Port Arthur News, in its publication of February 1946 under the heading
“Meryll Frost - 'Most Courageous Athlete of 1945”. Mr. Frost apparently said as
he received his trophy, “They say behind every great man there's a woman. While
I'm not a great man, there's a great woman behind me.” The feminists certainly
used it to their advantage. Meryll Frost’s line “Behind every great man there's
a great woman” was adopted as a slogan for the 1960/70s feminist movement.
Like how the meaning of the saying on
the plaque puzzled me, there are lots of interpretations of it. People rationalized
it as it suited their own personal ideology. While some said that great women
are often taken for granted or ignored, others humoured that there is a woman
behind every successful man because women do not run behind unsuccessful men.
Maybe it was said by some
well-meaning guy who wanted to acknowledge the unsung hero, the woman, in his
life. We never know! What if it meant that the chauvinistic men do not let
talented women come forward, and hence women are always behind them, and never
ahead of them?
However, times have
changed and there are a lot of talented women in the forefront now. So maybe I
should put up a new plaque at my house now. Should it be “Behind every woman
there’s a man telling her she cannot succeed” or should it be “Behind every
successful woman stands a man telling her, go ahead, I’ll support you.”? Or, do
we really need a man anywhere in the vicinity? How will you have it on your
wall?
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