"Bimbo-limbo is where I've been, I know you know that it's wearin' me thin. Things are changin', and it's about time. I'm rearrangin' all the guilt in my mind. I'm lookin' for smart woman in a real short skirt..." Jimmy Buffett
I was a worried child, freckled brow furrowed over my Saturday morning bowl of Apple Jacks, alarmed over the limited roles allotted to Velma and Daphne, the two female characters in the Scooby Doo cartoon. Velma, the small, dark, bookish one with glasses she was always losing, invariably solved the mystery by dredging up some little known scientific fact. Daphne, a poised, polished, titian-haired beauty routinely won hearts and charmed innocent passers-by. At eight years old, I could not understand why Velma never got to nip off to the Mystery Van for a bit of fun with Fred. Or Shaggy. Or Fred AND Shaggy for that matter. Further, why didn't Daphne ever get to solve the mystery? I found this unfair. I sat quietly in my living room, Yorkshire Terrier Coco at my side, and contemplated this. Years later, I have walked in the platforms of both Velma and Daphne, and have more perspective.
Being Velma has certain advantages. You are never bored. Everything is interesting, life is rich and amusing and beautiful and meaningful in so many ways because of what is going inside your head, and your heart. Colors are brighter, smells more intense, music and paintings and well-composed gardens and meals and conversations can send you into flights of physical ecstasy unequaled by any drug.
Being Daphne also has advantages. People do lots of nice things fore you, which makes life quite lovely and a lot easier. Doors are held, umbrellas appear in the rain, cups of coffee, pastries and compliments are brought to your office door. Lunch tabs are picked up, extra charges are dropped, an extra discount is found. Suitcases are lifted, workmen go the extra mile. Wishes are granted, pupils dilate, faces soften, hands fumble, and you get the nice seat by the window with a free appetizer or dessert sent out by the chef. All, apparently, because you showed up and smiled.
There are, however, disadvantages to being Daphne. Sometimes one can feel rather under the microscope, and this can chafe like an ill-fitting thong. People you hardly know will feel quite free to press you for details about private things, like your stockings, and your hair color, and how your feet feel in those high heels, your exercise routine and the composition of your lunch, leading you to dart around corners and duck under counters to avoid them. If you are a tiny, youthful looking Daphne, some people will try to parent you, which will get on your very last nerve. Overall, sometimes thoroughly well-meaning people can over-do, which can get a tad annoying and claustrophobic, and were one less well-versed in etiquette, one might actually find oneself shouting "STOP! Stop hovering! Stop helping! Stop explaining! I appreciate your concern, but REALLY, I'm GOOD!"
A disadvantage of being Velma is that people can get a little too used to you having the answer, having the plan, making the decision, learning difficult things with no help whatsoever, whipping out projects in ridiculous time frames. People of lesser motivation or capacity or work ethic will sometimes expect to piggy-back on your work. You may end up intellectually visible all the time, leading almost every group, even when you don't mean to, or want to. This can be an incredible amount of pressure, leading to increased margarita consumption, and severe performance anxiety over the smallest things, such as picking out a cheese for your sandwich at Subway. So many ways to fail, so little time! "Did I pick the RIGHT cheese? Is my answer RIGHT here? Because if I choose the WRONG cheese, there could be consequences."
A further disadvantage of being Velma is that men often shrink up when you enter the conversation. A further disadvantage of being being Daphne is that women often purse their lips when you enter the room. Both will often say you need to be less something. "You need to be less..." NEED to be less? Need to be LESS? For whom, exactly? If one happens to be in full Velma/Daphne bloom, wearing one's black leather thigh-high stiletto boots and discussing Tolstoy at oh, say, church or a cocktail party, with all that shrinking and pursing going on, sometimes you don't even know who you are rooting for.
Neither Velma nor Daphne is anything like a full, real, dimensional woman, they are representations of how our culture divides us: you are the smart one, or you are the pretty one. You learn which one you are expected to be very early, and woebetide the woman who foolishly attempts to be both at the same time, as this is often seen as being greedy, and as we all very well know, there is only so much good to go around the universe. This is the "Who Does She Think She Is Phenomenon." The subsequent psychic split can take a lifetime of work and a revolving account at Crabtree and Evelyn to overcome. If one's Daphne is driven underground, it can lead to a series of very unfortunate clothing choices, wrong turns involving easy-care fabric, sensible shoes made entirely of cork, and a long twilight of earnest conversations with women with shadowy upper lips trying hard to convince themselves that looks don't really matter, even though thousands of years of evolution argues that it most certainly does matter. These women will end up on your dissertation committee. If one's Velma is driven underground, one runs the distinct risk of becoming the president emeritus of the Cute-But-Lazy Afternoon Social Club, and routinely saying things aloud like, "Well, I WOULD have finished so and so's latest novel, but as you can see, unwanted hair removal consumes so much of my time..." These women will end up in the suburbs.
I think history, and certainly herstory, cries out for an integrated Velma and Daphne. Fred and Shaggy, still panting from the trying to integrate the Madonna/Whore split, may feel momentarily befuddled, but they are good guys, they will catch up. Daphne needn't be so polite and opinion-free to apologize for her beauty. Velma needn't be so gender-neutral and non-descript to make her intelligence less threatening. That limits both and denies them full humanity. How tiring to have to be either one, all day, every day! How frightening to fear you are really neither.
We can hear Daphne's eloquent request, "Grant me the dignity of the occasional unpleasant emotion, even if it happens to be inconvenient for you. Hear me, as well as see me." Daphne can have a bad mood, a bad hair day, a bad-ass opinion and a few thoroughly unapproved, unsanctioned and mother- and priest-shocking bad girl habits and still be quite lovable. She can be more dimensional, less of a blank canvas. We can hear Velma's battle cry, "I am more than the left hemisphere of my brain! See me, as well as hear me!" Velma can stop covering up her body and her carnal nature and still do the math and solve the mystery. Or she can dare to NOT solve the mystery once in a while, the bigger challenge for her. She can take a break, have a smoke with Shaggy and hit it again tomorrow, fresh and interested. Each can take a walk on her wild side, try something new, step out of the roles they have been assigned and rewarded for playing their whole lives. Daphne has won attention and "love" by being pretty and well-behaved, Velma by being smart and ever-competent. If you don't recognize and expand beyond your patterns and roles, whether assigned, learned or chosen, you won't ever know your own possibilities. It's a scary thing to try something new, to risk failure, to risk rejection and derisive snickering of every possible sort. But without risks, without taking chances, without trying something new, life becomes as flat and predictable as a 2-D cartoon character.
One question remains: What exactly was going on under that big orange sweater of confusion? Velma, for her own pleasure as well as the viewing pleasure of others, really should take a moment to explore the French cut t-shirt options available nowadays. What Velma said may have been, "The square root of x is clearly y, and in this instance that means the answer to the mystery is..." But she was also thinking "Give me five minutes in the sub-sub-basement of the graduate science library behind those dusty botanical journals from the British Science Museum and honey, I guarantee I could make you forget your own name." Never underestimate a Velma.
If you have to choose whether to be Velma, or Daphne, say YES. Choose both. Free your inner Velma. Free your inner Daphne. If one looks closely, there is a Daphne inside most Velmas, and a Velma inside most Daphnes. And while this can get a bit crowded, you do end up with four breasts, and how can that be bad? Twice as much fun for everyone involved.
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