DATE: Monday, August 18, 1997               TAG: 9708160029

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B13  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: ANN SJOERDSMA

                                            LENGTH:   82 lines

OBSESSIVE CARTOON CATHY SENDS THIS "SCW" RIGHT UP THE WALL

Her 46-year-old creator is getting married in November, but our cartoon gal Cathy - she of the food, fashion and fat obsession - will stay single. Why?

Because, says newly betrothed Cathy Guisewite, ``There needs to be that voice for single, childless women. I lived in that state for a really, really long time.''

Speaking as a ``SCW,'' who made choices and never once thought I was in any sort of ``state'' except my own life, which is comic anxiety enough, I have only this to ``voice'': AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!

Where are Brenda Starr, Wonder Woman, the ``girls'' in Apartment 3-G, even Tillie the Toiler of the 1920s, when you need them?

I grant you, being single is an incontrovertible fact: It means one can't easily pick oneself up from the mechanic's shop, and preparing dinner can be less than inspiring. But it also means blissful privacy and solitude, independence and autonomy, wide-open fun and adventure, and - yes, I'll say it - ultimate control.

Just ask Winnie Winkle, unmarried fashion executive, who retired from the funnies in 1996 without having aged in more than 75 years.

But ``childless''? Oosh, is that word loaded. Loaded with emptiness and longing. The big void.

The only time I've ever heard my ``biological clock'' ticking has been when some well-meaning, but presumptuous person pointed it out. And then I panicked. My response: ``Children are lovely, but that (choice) hasn't been my life.''

Of course, I've thought about having children. What woman hasn't? Alas, I never could figure out how to clone myself. (Sheep have better luck.)

But many people, including Cathy Guisewite, still believe it's women and children into the lifeboats, forever joined in identity and fate. For them, a woman without a child is like a bird without wings.

My opinion: They only ground themselves. And Cathy, the cartoon character, is a prime example.

Fat, fat, fat, fat, fat - 20 years of low-fat, no-fat, fat, fat, fat. Sends me right up the wall. And I was even fat once! A ready-made sister. I remember the chafed thighs and the swimsuit shopping trips from hell. But then I figured out what Cathy hasn't: Lower caloric intake plus exercise equals weight management. Liberation from self-defeat.

Cathy prefers obsession. Ack! Regression. Ack! Fudge brownies.

Since the ``fat-is-a-feminist-issue'' 1960s and '70s, we're supposed to have learned something. For example, that media images of ``beautiful'' women - too thin, too young, too passive, too dimwitted - bear little resemblance to true beauty, and that Cinderella is indeed a fairy-tale character, one who, as far as I'm concerned, is far less interesting than her ugly stepsisters.

Who wants itsy-bitsy feet anyway?

The female life traps have been exposed. The self-help books have been written. Today, it's to each her own. Family, career, job, a combination thereof, whatever works. Life doesn't hold just one game plan for women or for men. Only attitudes restrict.

So why can't Guisewite make that ``each her own'' occasionally confident and secure, even happy? Must Cathy forever be an emotional basket case, badgered by a passive-aggressive mother with a black belt in guilt? And a mass-marketed emotional basket case, at that.

Over the years, I've watched Cathy, loving and hating her like a nonconformist, younger sister loves and hates a conformist, older sister. (Which, coincidentally, I happen to be.) I can tell by the number of words in Cathy's bubbles whether I'll be able to stomach the day's strip. When it's not about the 3 F's, I sometimes laugh. And relate.

But lately, I find myself identifying more with the triangular-haired chick in ``Dilbert.'' And since sumo cat showed up on Mother Goose's doorstep, blasting the unmarried ``catwoman''stereotype to pieces, Mother's even more appealing.

Guisewite, a ``voice'' heard worldwide, could say so much about what it means to be a woman alone - alone, not lonely. She could be profound in her humor, instead of just neurotic. She could take Cathy places - on business trips and solo vacations, to a car dealership or a gym, even to a therapist.

Shrink: Aaah, Cathy, I see you've named your dog ``Electra,'' after a woman who, in Greek mythology, killed her mother in revenge for her father's murder. Is there some significance to this?

If Guisewite really wants to do us single women a good turn, she'll marry off Cathy to the feckless Irving and not change her character one bit.

Cathy's in a ``state,'' all right. But it has nothing to do with marriage. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma, an attorney, is an editorial columnist and book

editor for The Virginian-Pilot.

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