How to Win at Instagram, But Fail at Life
If you were to name the most beautiful woman of the 20th century – Anita Ekberg would be in the running. Anita won Miss Sweden in 1951 before coming to Hollywood in the 1950s. She would star in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), stamping herself into the popular zeitgeist with her infamous Trevi water fountain scene (see here). She single handedly invented the stereotype of the Swedish femme fatale.
My grandmother Muriel was from the same area of Sweden as Anita and also made her life abroad in America, but she ended up having a very different life arc than Anita.
While Anita spent the 1960s being feted throughout Europe as the new Merilyn Monroe, Muriel was busy becoming a quiet housewife in the upper Midwest.
While Anita went on dates with Frank Sinatra and sailed around the Grecian islands with the founder of Fiat, Muriel clipped coupons and shopped at Sears.
After she achieved worldwide fame following La Dolce Vita, Anita had her pick of projects and men, but she had a hard time choosing. She got passed over to play the first Bond girl because she was too difficult. She famously tried to shoot a photographer with a bow and arrow.
By the late 60s, her career had slowed. She cycled through men and smaller roles and settled in Rome. Over time, her looks and her celebrity faded. She never had children.
While Anita’s career was dying, Muriel’s family was growing – she eventually had five children. Her husband who started out as a traveling light bulb salesmen managed to save money and buy Walmart stock. They grew wealthy relatively speaking. While neither she nor her husband were college graduates, her children all attended college. They would have children, and those children would have children. Today, Muriel has 40 descendants.
Muriel died in 2012 – literally rich and figuratively rich.
That ironically was the same year that Anita would be back in the news for the first time in decades.
She became a viral story because she had broken her hip and a reporter discovered that she was living alone and destitute in Rome. A charity was raised to pay her bills. She died three years later – a few of her remaining friends held a small funeral.
Despite being the most sought-after woman of her time, she died without children or anyone to care for her.
I think of the contrasting story of Anita and Muriel when I doom scroll and see many of my female friends out there living their best life on Instagram rather than dealing with the monotonous (and less instagramable) routines of motherhood.
As falling birth rates and family formation attest, the route that Muriel took is increasingly rare. According to Morgan Stanley, around 45% of women between the ages of 25 and 44 are expected to be childless and single by 2030 – the more educated you are, the more likely this will be the case.
A whole generation of literally our best women are trying the Anita route – they are having an amazing time and putting off the whole settling down and having kids thing indefinitely.
I know that we are supposed to affirm their life choice and tell them that they are doing the right thing. We can’t say anything that triggers any sort of cognitive dissonance lest we open ourselves up to accusations of being rude or patriarchal.
But that said I would just want to ask this generation of women one question – how do you imagine your life ending?
Because when I see these beautiful and intelligent women living their best single life, I can’t help but think of Anita old and destitute hobbling around on a broken hip…
