“Saturday Night Fever” was a 1977 film starring a disco-dancing John Travolta. You know the one.
Back 
in the late 1990s, theater producers morphed the movie into a stage musical. I saw it when the show came through the town I lived in ten years ago.
In one scene during the show, protagonist Tony Manero (the Travolta character in the movie) asks Annette (the Donna Pescow character in the movie), “You a nice girl or a slut?”
She replies, “I dunno. Both.”
Tony tells her, “You can’t be both. You’re either a nice girl or a slut. That’s something a girl’s got to decide early on.”
This dialogue bugged me because it’s sort of true and sort of false.
I do think women are expected to choose between identities, and not only sexual identities. They’re expected to choose between being an ambitious employee and a nurturing mother. Even if a woman holds a wage-earning job, society forces the “mother” identity to dominate over the other.
How many times, too, have people been shocked when they find out a father has full custody of kids after a divorce. Well what’s wrong with the mother, people ask.
A question to ask is how gender roles have been perpetuated in society. Gender and communication researcher Julia T. Wood writes in her book “Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture” that individuals learn through observation, experimentation, and responses from others. This is social learning theory. The social learning position assumes that children are rewarded for behavior consistent with their gender roles. “Children notice how others behave, and imitate the communication they see on television and in parents, peers, and others,” Wood says.
And yes, men for sure have the same challenge. Remember 
“Everybody Loves Raymond?” That was the long-running sitcom with Ray Romano as the sports writer and his adventures with a loving but overbearing family.
The main character Ray was portrayed as bumbling and incapable of communicating effectively with his wife and mother and, frankly, all women. He repeatedly says the wrong things at the wrong times. Deborah his wife is also often angry with Ray because he does not clean the house or help with the children. So Ray is the fella lost in his own home.
Real-life men are not that one dimensional.
Really, no one is that dimensional and thus no one should be expected to “decide early on” they have to be one thing or another.
“You can’t be both. You’re either a nice girl or a slut. That’s something a girl’s got to decide early on.”
I hope that was the play’s writer’s attempt to create a personality for Tony, and not an example of how men think. Maybe the distinction between professional and parent are becoming terminology of the past. I’m a single father with custody, and a working professional. Two parts of my life I am very proud of. Life is a juggling act. The trick is choosing which objects are up in the air.
In as much as the file helped launch the “Disco Era” it was also a reflection of how people thought in those times, and in that area of the country. Also, that same choice existed for guys. Were you going to be a “stud” or a “wimp”? Did you push yourself to excel in the physical arena, or did you sit on the sidelines? “Studs” were heavily sought after by the “sluts”, “wimps” were not sought after by anyone, even the “nice girls.”
The world we grew up in has changed, and as much as they try, only a very few “studs” now out-earn the “wimps”, most of which have gone on to become “Geeks.” This drives the “studs” crazy inside, but they hide it well. My spouse figured out that the “Geeks” were a better catch, and I’m happy about that.
In the end, we have to make ourselves happy. Whether we choose to is a totally different topic…