the very fairy doctor

Dr. Susan Mahler

When my daughter was four or five years old, she would often beg me to read her

the book, “A Very Fairy Princess,” at bedtime. I don’t know how this book made it

into our rotation, but she was apparently enchanted with the idea that a child

could make believe she is a fairy, carrying her wings about with her everywhere,

even to school, and that the adults in her life would tirelessly participate in the

fantasy. My daughter was always compelled by the world of imagination and

willing to suspend disbelief in a way that I perhaps had not been at her age, and

so I supposed I indulged her.

I would have preferred to read “The Paper Bag Princess,” in which a real princess

discovers the prince she hopes to marry is a lame pretender; she has to save his

pathetic life and then outsmart and defeat a dragon on her own, finally traipsing

off into the distance donning a singed paper bag. I made this already funny book

as funny as possible when I read it, and my daughter enjoyed it. But she preferred

the fairy book.

There was a particular part of this book that really got to me, and I struggled with

how to handle it. In this scene, the would-be fairy princess, her brother and

parents are assembling for breakfast in the morning. Dad is depicted in a suit and

tie with a briefcase resting by his chair. Mom is depicted in a pink bathrobe,

standing at the stove, holding a frying pan. One night, when we arrived at this

page, I said to my daughter, “Why isn’t Mom dressed? Isn’t she going to work?”

My blue-eyed, blond child looked up innocently and said, “Maybe in this family

the Mommy doesn’t go to work.”

“Of course she goes to work!” I thundered, a little too vehemently. A furor rose in

me. The book is authored by Julie Andrews- yes, that Julie Andrews- and her

daughter, certainly people who should know better about depicting female role

models. As for my daughter, her mother is a doctor with two advanced degrees,

nine years of post-graduate education and training, who also, because her Dad

and I were divorced, was responsible for paying monthly child support.

So of course the damn woman goes to work!

Now that my daughter is older, I think she’d have a far less innocent reaction to

the roles depicted so blithely on that page. She’s begun to wrestle with the

different ways women and men, boys and girls are treated. And, as I see her try to

come to terms with this, I am pained by the fact that, despite the fact that I am

potentially over-educated, I am not a terribly good role model for her in this

regard. Because I sometimes find myself caving in the face of sexist behavior.

My father developed Alzheimer’s, and in his last years lived in a facility not far

from my home. One day, I pulled into the parking lot; I was stopping in only

briefly, to bring an item he needed. As I stepped out of my car, a man idling his

vehicle along the side of the parking lot called to me: “You’re parked in two

spaces.” He said it with utter conviction, as if he were in charge of the place,

although his car bore no insignia and he was clearly waiting for someone. He had

rolled down his window, and his elbow sat in the crook of it.

There were at least five available spots in the lot. I checked my car: one tire was

on the white line, not across it. In the 40 years I had been driving, I’d encountered

plenty of cars parked more askew than I was.

I got back in my car and moved it inside of the white lines. And I fumed, all that

day and the next day. I thought about what I should have said to him. I could have

said nothing, just left my car and gone inside. I might have asked whether he was

in charge of parking at the facility. But I did neither of these things, because I was

struck dumb. Because, when confronted with comments from men that seem to

come from a place of such presumed authority, I seem to freeze.

When I graduated from medical school, I assumed patient would call me “Dr.

Mahler.” A quarter century later, I am noticing that many people address me by

my first name. According to a Jama Open Network study (1), women doctors are

twice as likely to be addressed by their first names compared with male doctors. I

brought this subject up in a Women’s Psychiatry group on Facebook. It turns out

quite a few of us, having earned the same degrees, worked the same hours and

passed the same exams as our male peers, have noticed this discrepancy.

I was born in 1966, at a time when things were promising to change for women. I

remember being aware quite early of the different roles men and women played.

One night when I was about six, my father had put a basketball game on the

television. It was a Lakers game. I asked my father why there were no women on

the team, and I suppose I found his answer unsatisfactory. I then wrote a letter to

the Lakers, which my parents told me they mailed, asking why they had no female

players.

Unsurprisingly, I received no response.

I knew from an early age that I had opportunities not afforded my mother, an ace

Scrabble player and crossword wizard who quite graduate school when I was

young. I was bound for college and a career, not an early marriage and children. I

have a younger brother, and I recall no differentiation when it came to my

parents’ academic and career expectations of us.

But in other ways, we were not moving in parallel. Growing up in the 1970s, there

were no sports teams that allowed girls. I loved baseball, it was the only sport my

father really knew, and both my brother and I developed a passion for it. But I

was not allowed on the Little League team, could only keep score at my brothers’

games.

When it came time for my Bat Mitzvah, I was told that girls in my Reform

synagogue could not read from and carry the Torah.

I balked at this. I became the first girl to perform the Saturday service. I read from

the ancient-looking Torah, beset with silver, the parchment under my hands so

crisp and cool. I performed perfectly. And then, the rabbi reached into the ark and

removed a baby-sized Torah, for me to carry through the aisles. A baby-sized

Torah, for a weak girl. I was not a weak girl. This was a cruel trick.

In college at U.C. Berkeley, I took to Women’s Studies and Sociology. There was

strength in at least verbally dismantling the patriarchy. I never let a man hold a

door, pick up a check, carry a bag for me. I am single, independent, I run my own

business.

And now, I re-parking my car because a random man told me to do so. I am failing

to correct people when I prefer to be addressed as “Dr. Mahler.” I have a

daughter whom I’ve been unable to protect from implicit sexism (Damn it, Julie

Andrews!). Despite my degrees and feminist roots, there is something in me that

still whispers, “weak girl,” when I’m caught off guard.

Next rime, I’ll pull out my singed paper bag and blow the guy off. Or at least I’ll

try.