To Admire

tophaloaf:

That moment when a friend you really like mentions that she “hates feminism because it’s all just bullshit”. Yeah. Fun times. It’s hardly a reason to cut and run, because there is always room and a need for dialogue. Setting up shutdown words is only shutting oneself off from reality. Still, not a great realization to have to deal with.

I’ve got to say, I’ve had about a handful of romantic-type relationships come clattering to a halt when the other person states they hate feminism, they find gender studies or any gender-related issues to be bullshit.

Like you say, it’s hardly a reason to cut and run, and indeed it prompts dialogue, but oh, I am so unsuccessful in persuading others. When a loved one doesn’t at least generally support my interest in gender studies—even considering it may not be his or her personal favorite choice of conversation, and that is fine—I find it difficult not to take personal offense.

I have no schemas in my mind for what working a “real” job actually entails at all. My dad is an engineer for a less-than-interesting corporation, and he loathes it. I have no concept of how his work day is spent. My mother taught Greek and typing (ha!) briefly at a private high school before I was born, as well as a stint at Frito-Lay in accounting, but for most of my life, she has been a stay-at-home mom, returning to work when I was in middle school at a department store as a salesperson (while my dad was unemployed for two years.) Now, she is a cafeteria lady at a public middle school and works as a server for a catering company  from Eastern Kentucky University. My mother is 53. She has a B.S. in accounting and an M.A. in Biblical Studies (her primary focus were ancient languages—Greek the most, Hebrew, Latin.)

a. I don’t want this to happen to me. At 21, I am already strongly aware that I do not want a job that is constantly physically demanding (hello, waitressing.) I want to really make use of my degrees.

b. My mom was a hella good stay-at-home mom. And her mom didn’t work when she raised her children as well.

c. I have no mentor to help me navigate to a particular chosen career, or any examples in my immediate family of this.

d. Some days, I kind of just… want to be a housewife. It’s what I know. I am utterly clueless about what any sort of other job takes, besides taking care of a house and children and working in the food industry. The latter is certainly not where I want to be bound the rest of my life. The former is more pleasant, more secure, and gives me a jumping-off point for pursuing hobbies and volunteerism and… it’s not at all out of my comfort zone.

oof oof oof.

growing up? it’s hard to do.

my cousin-in-law, who is bloody obsessed with her drooling whatever-month-old, posted this article to her facebook. why do i even?

“The truth is that years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.”

God, I need to rage a little bit. GREETINGS, ARE YOU GETTING ENOUGH OXYGEN?

I think most of my followers are pro-choice, and I’m sure you would know where I would go with all this hullabaloo. I hate this ignorance and supreme privilege so hard.

The thing is, too—I hate how deciding to have or not have children is framed as ultimately sorting women into two camps: the good, selfless, visionary mom; the selfish, greedy, spiritually empty, childless woman. What gives? Why can we never trust women to make their own decisions about their lives, passions, energies? How do we not see that both women with children and women without children (AND EVERYONE!) are intimately bound together in our communities in ways that (hopefully) support and sustain us all? I am sick, sick, sick of the language which drives stakes between women like this, and the isolating effect it has. I am sick of the glossing over of so many of women’s personal situations: infertility, miscarriage, the threat of high-risk pregnancies, the privilege (or lack thereof) of social and financial security, healthcare, rape, mental conditions, partner support—for starters! You draw a line in the sand, you do not even comprehend how many people have agonized through this issue, who experience pain from your ignorant ways.

“One of the most basic marks of feminine beauty is thick, lustrous hair. When my hair started falling out, I felt a little like I was being punished for some unknown sin. The sin of writing a body image blog. The sin of eating cookies all the time. Something like that.

The only thing that made me feel better was imagining shaving my head. Just getting rid of the shame and the awkwardness and the waiting. The waiting for it to be beautiful. Enough. Just shave it off. But then I’d look around, and there are no young women with shaved heads, and very few with crew cuts. The only ones who can do that are the ones who are rebels for specific causes of which I’m not a part. Or the occasional model, with the long, slender neck.

There are unspoken rules here, too. You must be stunningly gorgeous, and have the sort of features that can “carry” the look, or you have to not care at all, and have a stunning number of facial piercings,or you have to have cancer. Those are your three options. But what if you just want to cut all your hair off? What if you just want to shave your head? What if you are just anemic? Or just tired of shampooing and brushing?”

-“Rules About Hair and How to Be a Good Woman” Via.