Isla Fisher doesn’t believe she can have it all.
The debate over women balancing work and family consumes headlines as women strive for perfect work-life balance, but the Australian actress says that brand of balance is a myth.
The 37-year-old mother of two spoke of professional sacrifices she made when she became a mother in a revealing interview with Canada’s FASHION magazine.
“You can’t ‘have it all’ — it’s a total myth,” she said.
Fisher went on to hint that women striving to ‘have it all’ should be grateful with what they get.
“Whatever you are lucky enough to get should be fabulous enough,” she said.
“I have never met anyone with the perfect career and the perfect family life. Something always has to suffer.”
Here’s what other women think about ‘having it all’:
American writer and feminist Anne-Marie Slaughter‘s essay titled Why Women Still Can’t Have It All was widely debated when it was published last year.
Opposition leader Julie Bishop said there was one simple answer to the question over having it all: “No, you can’t have it all,” she told The Sunday Telegraph.
“[Women] can have plenty of choices, but at the end of the day, they choose something which means they can’t have something else.”
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says in her book Lean In that there is a difference between having it all and doing it all, and says women let themselves down by trying to have it all on their own.
“Women, as early as junior high, are worried about having careers and families,” she says.
“So, they enter the workforce almost looking for the exit — years before they have children.”
The incredibly successful career and family woman Beyonce has become a poster girl for having it all, but she has said sometimes she feels like she’s “pretending that I have it all together.”
Sarah Jessica Parker says it’s smart to fear having it all. On the publicity rounds for her film I Don’t Know How She Does It she was honest in admitting that women who aspired to have it all by looking up to celebrities like her were looking in the wrong place.
“I don’t think I’m the ultimate parent. I am always looking to other women who really do far better with far less resources than I have.”
Legendary Cosmo editor Helen Gurley Brown is said to have coined the phrase ‘having it all’ and named her booked accordingly: Having It All: Love, Success, Sex, Money, Even If You’re Starting with Nothing.
