• CHAPTER TWELVE •
Life is on the wire, the rest is just waiting.
—KARL WALLENDA
Day Seven: Thursday, August 29
Shelter in place, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
“All women are beautiful creatures, by virtue of their gender, their grace, their femininity. They were all created beautiful. Thus, none can be ugly.”
So goes the sex-discrimination thinking at the heart of the Uglies, an all-male association made up of some of the most successful motorcycling men in the world. This exclusive posse includes rock-and-roll celebrities, producers, actors (including the late Larry Hagman), visual artists, and Fortune 500 businessmen. According to the group’s website, the Uglies claim brothers in almost every state as well as France, Switzerland, Finland, Spain, and Germany, “along with a gaggle of Nomads that might turn up anywhere, usually when it’s time for dinner.”
The Ugly logo shirt—a skull and crossbones on a field of black—has been proudly worn at major Hollywood events, on stage at giant music venues, in the boardrooms of multinational corporations, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, not to mention barrooms and brothels from Hamburg to Honolulu. “Beneath that swag is a seething Ugliness that unites what otherwise appears to be a totally disparate amalgamation of riders,” the website boasts. And though I’ve been warned that this is a rabidly all-male club, and that women are never welcome except as compliant arm candy, I am still dying to get my hands on a T-shirt.
I’ve met some Uglies back in Los Angeles, but I’m about to get to know more of them. We’ll be spending much of this weekend with the club because Rebecca’s father, Oliver, is an Ugly. If we’re with Oliver, we’re golden. Over the past two weeks, Oliver chartered a more casual route to Milwaukee, meeting up with Ugly brothers along the way. More Uglies are arriving in town by the minute.
Of course the question arises: How do I reconcile the fact that this is a gender-excluding society? Their motto—“Beauty is only skin deep, but Ugly is to the bone”—seems an odd contradiction to the exclusion of women. Yes, I know that the world of motorcycling is unapologetically sexist and certainly doesn’t need me to help support it by yearning for its emblem of oppression. And yet, I find myself here, curious as to the macho mystique of this tribe, wanting to better understand the hormonal bonding.
We won’t be meeting with the Uglies until later this afternoon, but thinking about such things spurs questions about how we’re different, men and women, and how our experience of risk and life shape us, questions that have been with me since day one of this journey. While we’ve explored the reality that men tend to be bigger risk takers than women, I wonder about the benefits we sacrifice by remaining risk averse, just like I wonder what I’m foregoing by being excluded from the Uglies. My research and ongoing conversations with scientists provides key clues. “The Confidence Gap” in a 2014 issue of The Atlantic by journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman is particularly informative.
Androgen hormones are part of the answer. The male body pumps more than ten times the amount of testosterone than a woman’s body, benefitting men with advantages in speed, strength, muscle mass, and a zeal for competition. This hormone also ties into risk taking. The Atlantic article cites recent studies at Cambridge University that linked high testosterone levels with an appetite for financial risk. Using saliva samples taken twice daily from high-income male traders at a London hedge fund, researchers found that on days when the men’s testosterone levels started out high, they made riskier trades compared to days when the levels began low. This became a self-perpetuating cycle: When those risky trades paid off, the traders’ testosterone level surged even more. One trader demonstrated a 74 percent rise in testosterone over a six-day period of gains. Thus, taking risks and seeing them pay off means a person is much more likely to continue taking risks.
Though I’ve read that women show an increase in financial risk-taking behavior (such as competitive bidding) during ovulation—they also perform better at sports, demonstrate improved visual acuity, score higher on tests, and display enhanced cognition. Still, they do not generally demonstrate the same levels and type of risk taking seen with testosterone-fueled men. If they have children, the desire to nurture and care for their offspring may be part of that equation, tamping down any risky inclinations. Still, that doesn’t mean that risk of some sort is not good for them, only that they’re not as biologically compelled to take the more hair-raising kinds of risks that men do.
But one thing seems certain: Avoiding risk altogether is actually an unhealthy state for all of us, male and female alike.
When we opt for security and risk-free choices, the likelihood diminishes that we’ll take future life-enriching risks when they present themselves. If you’re not used to stepping out of the controlled life you’ve built, the chances shrink that you’ll do so today or even tomorrow. We accustom ourselves to staying small and contained. Just as the men whose levels of the neurohormone surges when their risk taking pays off thus creating a drive for still more risk, those who take fewer and smaller risks may see their lives contract, our desires shrink. Remember what you dreamed of when you were younger? Do you still have those dreams and desires that thrill and impel you? Or has life taught you to accept what you’ve been given and to ask for no more?
The cultural milieu in which we were raised, and the one in which we now operate as adults, shapes our reluctance. This tendency may play a bigger role in our hesitation to fully inhabit our lives and dreams than even biology. I’m personally fascinated by the findings of Kay and Shipman in The Atlantic. While their examination focuses on women in business, their conclusions shed light on women as a whole and our relationship with risk as seen through the lens of confidence.
Kay and Shipman report that, compared with men, women in the business world generally don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions as their male counterparts. Women predict they’ll do worse on tests than men predict of their own performance, and women regularly underestimate their abilities. Yet objective evidence points out the fallibility of these impressions. Women make up half of the global workforce, and studies demonstrate that companies who employ women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every level. Still, men get promoted faster and are paid more than women. So what’s going on?
A tilted playing field is part of the equation. A 2015 study by the American Medical Association examined the nursing profession. Though women outnumber men by more than ten to one, male nurses still earn more. Even after controlling for age, race, marital status, and children in the home, salaries for males surpassed females by nearly $7,700 per year in outpatient settings and nearly $3,900 in hospitals.
What Kay and Shipman found at the heart of this disparity was that while women may be equally or even more competent than men, due to their lack of confidence they often fail to capitalize on their abilities.
Studies looking into this confidence difference in business found surprising statistics. Among business school students, for instance, men initiate salary negotiations four times as often as women. When women do negotiate, they ask for 30 percent less than their male counterparts. One researcher, Marilyn Davidson at the Manchester Business School in England, asks her students each year what they expect to earn five years after graduation. Every year she finds consistent differences between male and female students. Male students value their worth at $80,000 a year while female students expect $64,000.
Why this discrepancy? It’s simple. On some deep level, we don’t think we’re worth it. We don’t believe in our own abilities.
In particular, Kay and Shipman looked at a 2003 study by psychologists David Dunning from Cornell and Joyce Ehrlinger from Washington State University that measured the relationship between female confidence and competence. The psychologists were following up on a previous finding, called the Dunning-Kruger effect, that demonstrated a tendency for some people to substantially overestimate their abilities. In other words, less competent people are actually more likely to overestimate their abilities.
This is ironic for women, because even being fully competent, it turns out, does not mean a woman will feel more confident.
In the Ehrlinger-Dunning study, male and female college students were given a quiz on scientific reasoning. Before taking the quiz, they were asked to rate their own level of scientific skills. The psychologists wanted to see if students’ impressions of how they perform in science (a general perception) is shaped by a specific impression—did they get certain questions right? Getting a particular question wrong didn’t affect their perception of their scientific skills—unless they were female.
Women rated themselves more negatively than men on their overall scientific ability (6.5 on a scale of 10, compared to 7.6 for the men). When it came to assessing how well they did in answering the scientific questions, the women thought they got 5.8 out of 10 questions right. Men, meanwhile, scored themselves at 7.1. Yet they posted almost identical results. Women scored 7.5, men 7.9.
Then the students, with no knowledge of how they’d performed on the test, were invited to participate in a science competition that offered prizes. Only 49 percent of the women chose to participate while 71 percent of the men signed up. Because women did not feel confident in their abilities—even though they scored on par with men—they backed off from the opportunity. Without that overwhelming sense of confidence, they didn’t want to go further even when they presented comparable skills.
The reason this is important, Shipman and Kay argue, is what it shows us about this female-specific lack of confidence. When women don’t believe they’re going to be successful at something, they simply won’t try, which forces me to recall my own retreat from the dance audition as a young woman.
This is not all just intellectual speculation of scientists. It’s about the forces that shape our choices in the real world. Women, the scientists see, are frequently contained by a desire to be perfect and will not venture into pursuits at which they are not sufficiently sure they will succeed.
Several years ago, executives at Hewlett-Packard observed a similar phenomenon. The corporation launched an initiative to promote more women into top management. (Women like Carly Fiorina, I suppose, though she is not on record as being confidence-deficient.) Kay and Shipman explained that a review of personnel records found that women working at HP applied for promotions when they believed they met 100 percent of the prerequisites for the job. Men, on the other hand, felt qualified if they met just 60 percent of the qualifications. In “study after study, the data confirm what we instinctively know,” state Kay and Shipman. “Underqualified and underprepared men don’t think twice about leaning in. Overqualified and overprepared, too many women still hold back. Women feel confident only when they are perfect. Or practically perfect.”
So what can we do about this? Understanding the roots of this confidence deficit can go a long way toward creating solutions.
As children, boys are more socially conditioned to compete. When competition gets tough, the playing field turbulent, or the schoolyard rowdy, they’re taught to accept those conditions. “Just rub dirt on it,” is heard on playing fields after boys fall, a rallying cry to get up and try harder. This kind of programming makes them more resilient, teaches them to shrug off negative comments and to celebrate their victories while putting the losses aside. Girls, especially those who don’t compete in sports, miss out on these lessons. Young women often nurture and support each other—wonderful traits—but they seldom encourage jumping back into a fray. This becomes a negative feedback loop. Kay and Shipman observe that girls lose confidence, so they quit competing, thereby depriving themselves of one of the best ways to regain that confidence. Because the bottom-line is this: Action is the key to confidence.
Taking a risk and finding out we can do whatever it is we endeavor, even if we fail on the first or third or sixth attempt, shows us that tenacity pays off. Eventually we will nail it. We must develop embodied wisdom in our own abilities; we must trust that even if we’re not good at something right out of the gate, that we have the ability to learn and develop and grow. We must feel the muscle memory that can come only from hard-won experience. From that place of visceral understanding of our own potential and abilities, our confidence takes root and begins to bloom.
Any bookstore sells countless books on how to develop self-esteem, and women consume these tomes like Skittles. But confidence doesn’t come from a book, any more than self-esteem, self-love, or any of the traits that make us into whole and strong people can be achieved with our intellect alone. We simply cannot think ourselves into that space. If we could, I would have mastered self-possession decades ago. Confidence develops organically out of our lived, embodied experience. We must act our way there.
If I want to gain self-esteem, I need to perform esteemable acts. If I want to feel brave, I must do things that scare me. If I want to develop confidence and I engage in an activity in which I have not yet developed self-assurance, I get to watch as my poise takes root and then begins to grow.
But I have to be prepared to wade through the fields of failure first. My wish for all of us, but for women in particular, is that we learn to let go of the perfectionism that teaches us to spell correctly, to always be on time and polite, to take care of the emotional needs of others, to avoid conflict and errors, to be “good girls” who get along with everyone. Enough! Those skills are not serving me, are not serving women.
Do you know women who reflexively apologize all the time? If you step on their feet, they apologize to you? They take on an overwhelming sense of responsibility and make it their business to make sure everyone is nurtured and cared for. I’m tired of being that woman. What about my own desires? My own unique self? When does the real me get to come out and play?
Never—unless I make time and room for play and lightness and begin to treasure my true self. And when I make that room, I learn to take myself less seriously. To laugh and make fun of my own failures. To embrace the flawed nature of my humanity. I still have trouble with appearing more conciliatory than I really am in order to not make waves, and with my excessive punctuality. My dad used to joke that I’d be early to my own funeral. But I don’t want to be perfect like that anymore. I want to be fully alive.
And failure, I’m finding, is the path there.
But the side benefit of this aliveness, one I didn’t even realize I was pursuing, is the ever-expanding well of confidence inside of me. Learning that I can handle this macho motorcycle machine gave me the courage to confront my spouse. Discovering I could backpack through days of rainfall and treacherous terrain emboldened me to ask for a raise. “Taking action bolsters one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed,” Kay and Shipman write. “So confidence accumulates—through hard work, through success, and even through failure.”
You don’t have to backpack or scuba or rock-climb to learn these lessons. You don’t have to be a woman either, as men struggle under similar crises of confidence at different times in their lives. You have only to act.
• • •
Before our rendezvous with the Uglies, we have breakfast and meet up with Donna, a friend from L.A. who flew to Chicago yesterday, then rented a bike so she could ride into Milwaukee and join us for the weekend. On first impression, Donna fits the prototype butch biker chick. She’s a large woman by any definition—big personality, huge laugh, always accompanied by the throbbing sound system on her bike. She favors a leather vest with chains, baggy jeans, a bandana wound around her forehead. Tattoos wrap almost any exposed bit of skin, a cigarette never far away. Large also describes the size of her heart. When Rebecca and I decided to undertake this trek, Donna stepped up as our leather-clad godmother. She accompanied us to the Laughlin River Run, suggesting that we take turns leading the ride while Donna hung back to assess our road-handling skills. She reminded us to keep a steady pace, to watch out for our sister rider, to ride whenever possible in the number-two lane and coached us on how to be a good partner when riding two by two. After Laughlin, she invited us one evening for dinner, rolled out maps, and reviewed every possible route to Milwaukee.
Now that Donna’s arrived, the first stop will be the Harley-Davidson Museum. George and Edna join us, and with Donna, we point the bikes toward downtown Milwaukee. The syncopated roar of our five bikes seems a rude intrusion on this peaceful Thursday go-to-school-and-work morning. I want to get out of the tranquil neighborhood as soon as possible so as not to disturb the quiet people who make their lives here.
Though this kind of neighborhood would have been where I belonged when my kids were young, I’m not living such a retiring life any more. I have settled into my little guest cottage in Los Feliz and taken on outings like motorcycle journeys, backpacking treks, white-water rafting, and marathon runs. I wrote about many of them in essays that eventually showed up on Facebook. Friends in unhappy marriages contacted me in private messages. “I’m afraid I’m going to be exactly where you are in five years and I don’t know how to change things.” A cousin in Ireland wrote: “I so understand what happened with you. The same is happening with me. And I’m afraid. I don’t want this path to unfold.” Few of these conversations took place in person, or even by phone. They seemed safe only when mediated by a computer keyboard, kept in the realm of the hypothetical, kind of like Googling “deteriorating marriage” to see what shows up.
I never aspired to this position, the one people seek out when pondering a divorce or dealing with life difficulties. I’m also held at a distance because embracing my life somehow threatens others’ peace and security. But here I am.
The feeling echoes my high school pregnancy and being ostracized by my peers. When my pregnancy became known, my older brother Frank was away at college and wrote me a deep and thoughtful letter. Frank is laconic. Getting him to say much more than hello sometimes requires a cattle prod. But in this letter, he told me of his own experience being adopted, how he loved our family and felt an integral part of it and believed that I could give that same opportunity to the child I was carrying. There was no pressure, just information. I could certainly have chosen to have an abortion, but this option made sense to me in a deep way. I was still burdened with the Catholic guilt/saint stigma, and believed that by having the child, I would somehow repay the gift that Frank had been to my parents, my siblings, and me. It made me feel that my difficulties were worthwhile, that my struggle mattered. Some thirty-two years later, I still think the choice to give my baby up for adoption was the best decision for me.
But it was a decision that antagonized my peers, my pregnancy all too visible and maybe causing others to question their own choices. Some friends told me I was brave, as if I were choosing to be brave and not just trying to survive.
Looking back on that experience now, I’m grateful. I learned from that social exile how to make my own life and that my decisions were mine alone and did not need to be vetted by my peers. And though I have spent the last twenty-five years making a stable, quiet, and in some ways falsely secure life, I know I can craft a new one. I am doing so at this very moment as I ride into Milwaukee, acknowledging signs welcoming home the adopted sons and daughters of the city by virtue of our Harleys.
This 110th Harley anniversary is a point of self-respect for this city, the name Harley woven into Milwaukee pride. People wave. A bed sheet, spray-painted into a banner reading welcome riders, hangs from a freeway overpass.
We weave through an unexpected maze of road construction and wading pool–size holes in the asphalt. The directions we’d gathered before leaving the house quickly become useless. We wind and wend our way as the streets fill with motorcycles. The bikers we pass signal greetings to us. Eventually, the density of bikes grows until we’re in a sea of motorcycles. I’m fighting back my own nervousness. What if I stall the bike now or put it down? Make a wrong turn and lose my group? Then Donna signals a turn to the right. We follow onto a large grass lot filled handlebar-to-fender with bikes. Parking attendants hand us plastic guards to place under our kickstands to prevent them from sinking into the grass and setting off a domino effect of tipping motorcycles.
I think this must be the main fairgrounds, but no. It’s the overflow parking for the museum. All these bikers have come to pay their respects to the evolution, artistry, and iconography that is Harley-Davidson.
“Good thing we got here so early on the first day,” Donna says. “The line will be a block long soon.” It already looks a block long to me. We tour the museum, taking in some 450 motorcycles, dating from the early 1900s to the present day. Stories about the history of motorcycles, the people who have ridden them, and Harley culture line the walls. The museum overlooks the Milwaukee riverfront, with views of the city. I find myself hanging out near the windows, escaping as best I can the crowds of people exhibiting contemporary biker culture. I’ve never been comfortable in large gatherings. Outside, there’s a gift shop filled with Harley paraphernalia as well as temporary structures in which to buy 110th anniversary T-shirts at inflated prices. Yet bikers keep buying and buying. We stand in yet another line to get our HOG chapter pins saying we’ve made it to the 110th. This is another ritual of this world I don’t quite get. Donna tells me I absolutely must claim my pin; it’s valuable. Sitting on the lawn, we eat bratwurst and popcorn, mandatory Milwaukee nosh, though not exactly suited to one-hundred-degree heat.
Rebecca tells us that we need to go to Harley headquarters a few miles away to pick up our parade passes. I don’t quite understand the logic involved with who does and does not get a parade pass allowing us to ride in the huge pageant Saturday morning. But from the numbers of bikers showing up at Harley corporate headquarters, it looks as though there will be more people riding in the procession than watching. We meet up with some other female bikers we know from home: Marie and her friend Liz. We’re now a group of six women bikers, plus George, a good sport, even when Donna starts calling our group “George and the Pussy Posse.” We take a photo outside of Harley headquarters to mark the occasion.
The day is more of the same—bikers in sporting their “colors,” drinking beer, getting sunburnt, wandering the Summerfest grounds. Riding back to Sue’s late that evening, we get completely lost, Donna and George taking turns leading us farther and farther astray. We’re trying to find the Dairy Queen that Google tells us is near Sue’s house, but we keep ending up going the wrong direction. Eventually, we settle in with ice cream cones, happy.