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SOMEWHERE
OVER THE HILL
Facing 30: Women Talk about
Constructing a Real Life and Other
Scary Rites of Passage
by Lauien Dockett and Kristen Beck
New Harbinger Publications, 1998
163 pp.; $12.95
Since I was 12, I've thought that by the age of 30 there
wouldn't be much left to look forward to. I would have already
traveled, bought my house, wntten my books, married and had
children. I would be old. Now that I'm two years away horn the
milestone, things aren't quite as I had pictured. I've yet to fulfill
one of my childhood expectations. Instead of feeling as though
it's almost all over, I'm still wondering when is it going to start.
At least I'm not alone. Lauren Dockett and Kristin Beck, two 30-
year-old Bay Area writers, have turned their recent birthday anxi
eties into a wry and witty self-help book, Faang 30. In their quest
to find others in the same dilemma, they prohled women across the
nation who where facing the big three-oh and freaking out.
Facing 30 examines
what it means for a
woman to enter her
fourth decade, the chal
lenges shell face, and the
difference of turning 30
today as opposed to gen
erations before. In an era
where an immense
amount of importance is
placed on youth — cou
pled with a generation
seemingly suspended in
adolescence — its easy to
understand why so many
women might need to
read this book.
No one could under
stand my anxieties —
especially not my mother
or grandmother. When
they were my age they were "adults": they had husbands, houses,
and children. But. as Dockett and Beck point out, the generation
now turning 30 operates on a much different time scale, and with
good reason. We watched our parents get laid off. divorced, and
face many an ugly mid-life crisis. According to statistics, begin
ning in 1974 more than one million children annually saw their
paients get divorced.
The scars we suffer from witnessing oui parents' lives have led
to trepidation in making major life decisions. As the authors
write, "It's not that we've shied away from a full order of adult
trappings because we're lost.' We knew about adulthood early on.
Its fallout invaded our youth. It's natural that we'd be stepping
carefully through it and around it."
Even if a woman escaped childhood unscathed, it's likely that
the decisions shell face will be dramatically different from her
mother's or grandmother's. Women today have a wider variety of
decisions then any generation previous. The women Dockett and
• Beck have interviewed come from all walks of life and have very
different aspirations. They are women like Kate, a single mom who
owns an organic clothing store; and Rumi, a single computer pro
grammer. One thing remains constant: they all feel as though they
have fallen short of where they anticipated being at 30. This is
because many of us have not updated our expectations of 30 since
we were twelve years old. Facing 30 sets out to reconstruct those
expectations. The authors interview women who have not only
lived through 30, but also discovered their 30s as a period of self-
confidence and perspective.
Iff not much comfort to know that the transition into one's
30s is traumatic enough to warrant a self-help book. Facing 30
offers some poignant answers as to why the current generation
has a hard time easing into adulthood. And, although the book
has a tendency to repeat its major themes, it's nice to be reminded
that you're really OK and certainly not alone.
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Featuring
Winter
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Boh Fernandez provides a benefit sneak
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