Colleen Dowling "The Cinderella Complex"

Throughout her text, Dowling had some very interesting quotes and opinions about "The Cinderella Complex." For example, she says that women suffering from this complex believe, "Only hang on long enough, the childhood story goes, and someday someone will come along to rescue you from the anxiety of authentic living." She says another symptom is believing your life would be better at times if you weren't in charge of it. For example, Cinderella's claim, "I'd do virtually anything to manipulate someone else into taking over when things got rough." More distressing even than this though, is that these women are unable to be truly independent without a man. For example, Dowling states, "What I hadn't anticipated - what I'd had no way of foreseeing - was the startling collapse of ambition that would occur as soon as I begun sharking my home with a man again... There was nothing compelling me to rise."

I think this is definitely true to life for women today. I've always been told by my parents that we should be independent and have the college experience because you have your whole life to be married. But that's just it isn't it? You have the whole rest of your life to be married; it's supposed to be the ultimate happy ending, the goal, the thing everyone does because it makes you happiest. Also, being single now, I've noticed that almost everything in the media points you toward relationships. Rarely do you see a strong single woman not looking for love, except maybe the women in "Sex and the City." Once you find it, there are certain roles, the care-taker and the money-maker. I don't think they're inevitable, but it can slip that way pretty easily. I think that there needs to be mutual taking care on both sides, of each other and of yourself. Not that I have to be taken care of, but I definitely wouldn't mind.

This article points out that there can be masculine and feminine gender roles that we are almost completely unaware of. According to Dowling, there are rules as well as unconscious assumptions about them to which we are bound but over which we have no control. This puts pressure on both men and women in society that is actually unrealistic and unattainable. It puts pressure on women to be just like Cinderella, skinny, kind, sad and lonely, and puts pressure on men to be just like Prince Charming, rich, handsome, and willing to risk his life for a woman he met yesterday. It all seems a little too fairy tale for me.