The article I’m reading talks about the female code of goodness, the related maxim and the result of it. One of the code is to “be competent without complaint”, the maxim for this code is “a good woman does it all and never looks overwhelmed”, and the result is she “juggles everything and everybody and sets impossibly high standards.”
I’d like to make sure what “does it all”, “overwhelmed” and “juggle” mean here. (I guess I’m confused because I can’t see the cause-and-result relation between the three…)
I would suggest ‘does it all’ covers the idea that she is capable of everything/accomplishes everything. ‘Overwhelmed’ suggests that you are not coping because everything appears to be too much of a burden/problem and weighs you down. If you have a series of tasks that you have to complete instead of letting them take you over (overwhelm/overpower) you, you juggle them all. This indicates that you are dealing with all the tasks one after the other without neglecting any of them.
So…“juggle” has a pretty positive meaning here, meaning that she deals with everything and everyone perfectly with ease as if she can play magic? Is this the idea? (My dictionary says juggle could mean “to deceive”. So it has nothing to do with this definition?)
Juggle is an activity where you throw a number of balls in the air and catch them as they fall, then throw them in the air again and catch them so that not one of the balls falls to the ground. From this we get the figurative meaning of coping with a number of tasks at the same time.