Yes, you can! Well, maybe ...

• Author: Puterbaugh, Dolores T.
• Position: American Thought - The myth of being free to be whatever one wants to be - Essay

FREE TO BE ... WHATEVER. You can be whatever you want to be, or do whatever you want to do, if only you want it badly enough. Sound good? Sound like the kind of affirming, encouraging message of confidence and self-esteem you ought to be giving yourself? How about our children? Don't they deserve to be reminded constantly of the endless opportunities that await only the flexion of their will?

Yeah, well. I would like very much to have been a professional athlete--a football player. They make tons of money and usually go on to another lucrative career. However, I am female and the approximate size of a jockey. I also have a heart murmur and asthma, so the whole professional athlete option is, and ever has been, out of the question. I want it, though, very badly. Shouldn't that be enough?

If you think that sounds silly, you have just faced one of the dangerous flaws in the modern American myth that you can be whatever you want to be, if only you want it badly enough. This myth has evolved over time, and now includes a few corollary fables.

Before the mid 1970s, the myth was: you can be whatever you want to be, if you have the ability, the will, and the circumstances. This is America; no one can stop you from fulfilling whatever is your potential. There are a lot of limiters in that myth. The trifecta of aptitude, desire, and external factors must converge. Of course, it was, at times, just a feel-good slogan because many people found external factors piled up against them.

My fifth-grade teacher, for example, told me (and my entire class of bullies and mean girls) that my scores on the standardized tests must be a mistake because, "Girls aren't supposed to do better than boys in math." This depends upon who is doing the "supposing." Three years later, our eighth-grade Algebra teacher undermined his female students by only letting the boys know when the before-school enrichment and review sessions were held. It was May before a boy slipped up and mentioned the study sessions in front of the girls. While neither teacher overtly prevented me from pursuing any particular career, they did not help matters. Those were the early 1970s. We were getting very mixed messages.

About one year later, the smiley-faced self-esteem movement reached our little rural burg. Suddenly we were Free to Be You and Me, and We Know We Are Special, 'Cause God Doesn't Make No Junk. Banks handed out I'm Thumbody stickers instead of lollipops. It is true that God does not make junk. Other aspects of the myth are less substantial. The myth evolved, and now everyone was free to be anything. Professional and Olympic athletes gave inspirational speeches to susceptible young people asserting that, if we only wanted it badly enough, we, too, could achieve anything we could dream of. If you can imagine it, you can do it. If you can dream it, you can have it. What bosh!

We already have alluded to one of the dangerous flaws in this myth: there are cases where the lack of facial validity is comical, as when a size-0 woman stamps her foot and whines about wanting to play pro football. Children briefly imagine they can do everything; this is supposed to be a brief period of narcissism, which makes it possible for toddlers to let go of Mama's hands. Afterwards, every sensible child is all too aware that she cannot do whatever she wills. The three-year-old would like very much to climb the kitchen cabinets like Mt. Everest, and breach the cookie jar, but, alas, the little step stool has been locked away since mama found her almost achieving this goal.

Remember that small children are concrete in their thinking. They are literalists. You tell...