Role Models

By now I'm sure all of you know of my, let's go with obsession, with Agent Carter and I'm sure some of you are sick of it. I'm not sorry. At all. Not even a little bit. And the entry point for this post is, you guessed it, Agent Carter.

The show combines a lot of things I love: historical fiction, beautiful cinematography, excellent dialogue, and a plethora of other things. It also is something I connect with on a more personal level. Both of my grandfathers were in the Armed Forces in WWII, albeit the Navy and in the Pacific, and one of my grandmothers was a telephone operator, Carter's fake career. There are other similarities as well. There are also other differences. My grandmother was not a government agent, she wasn't English, she never lived in New York, she didn't meet my grandfather during the War, which he lived through. I'm not going to continue down this path, suffice to say, Agent Carter connects with me.

I was lucky enough to know my grandparents as I grew up and they helped make me the person I am. (I write this on my grandfather's birthday, he'd have been 103.) In high school, I was frustrated with a situation and feeling uncertain and unconfident and visited my grandmother, who was in the hospital at the time, and I didn't even need to explain, she told me she believed in me. Now, almost 7.5 years after she died, I still remember her saying that and it still helps.

Peggy Carter reminds me of my grandmother, as I'm sure you've already guessed. Both remind me that I am valuable, that I can accomplish whatever I set out to do, to be fierce. And it doesn't matter that one of them is fictional, because what is fiction really? Fiction cannot but be a version of "reality" and what happens in the real world informs and shapes fiction. So when I aim to be Peggy Carter, I am aiming to be like my grandmother.

And that's the thing about role models. We choose them because they live in a way we want to. I find that the people I try to emulate all have the same characteristics. So it doesn't matter whether they are fictional, all that matters is whether they inspire us.