After decades of putting down women, I have finally learnt to celebrate them
I consider myself a feminist. I am a woman who has always believed women have been mistreated for ages. Society has been cruel to them and they had to fight a lot with it, and their circumstances to get to where they are today.
That being said, I also accept that I myself have made assumptions about women, judged them for their choices, got jealous of them for being more pretty or better than me, made jokes about their driving skills, and favored male company over them. Basically, I am guilty of the age-old saying that “women are their own worst enemies” in some ways.
But now at thirty-seven years old, I have finally started to realize how beautiful, brave, and strong women really are. All these years I was just thinking and repeating what was being said to me and around me all my life.
From an early age, we start hearing phrases like “she is pretty”, “she is not pretty”, “she is more pretty than her”, while I don’t remember ever hearing two boys being compared for their looks.
For a girl, beauty is portrayed as a characteristic, those who don’t match the dimensions of it, are considered unlucky and unwanted. It is the society that has manifested such emotions in women, by constantly lusting after beautiful women and rendering it as a prized possession. Women have been pitted against each other for their cooking, house managing skills, child rearing capabilities, and almost anything and everything.
Men always wanted to have an upper hand over women. They have put them down by calling them physically inept, mentally not at par, and emotional fools all their life.
But it can not be more untrue.
Women have always been better!
Women have always been a better human being than men — more powerful, more determined and sincere. They have always been more capable, but are ready to sacrifice their career for the benefit of the people they love. They are emotionally stronger than men. They hold the family together with their compassion and empathy. While most men are unable to express their own feelings, forget about understanding other’s, women make emotional bonds with their spouse’s extended family as well.
They are the smartest creatures, who for the lack of opportunities, were not able to shine before. I am surrounded by women, who even if are not educated enough, are running their homes on their scarce household income pretty decently. Most of the women who are tagged ”housewives” are earning side income by selling daily meals, giving tuition, and running daycares. I have rarely seen one who is not doing anything extra to fulfill her life and her household needs. If educated and earning, they are holding good positions in their firms, running successful businesses, while taking care of their family’s needs and doing all the household chores at the same time. Can the same be said about men?
Then how in the world were these common perceptions made about women in the first place?
How does it all start?
I think it’s just that if you keep telling yourself a lie sooner or later you will start to believe it. We were told in so many ways from childhood, that men are smarter than women. We could see that around us as well, where the fathers were mostly the “earning” member while the mothers “just” used to clean the house and cook the food.
We were never shown the behind the doors reality, that most women were not even given the chance to study beyond a certain level, and even if they were, there were people around who never allowed them to work and earn a living!
We were always taught to follow the rules, be obedient, control our temper, and not be argumentative. Why do you think so? So that we could easily adjust and adapt after marriage, basically easily give in to the demands and expectations of the new family. And what happens when we see a woman with temper, a woman who speaks her mind, a woman who stands for herself and doesn’t agree with everything she is asked — we judge her, we feel that she is wrong, we put the onus of keeping peace on her lonely shoulders. And we do that as fellow women because these values were instilled in us from the very beginning.
To this day women are not trusted to make their own decisions. We are told by the men of the society how to lead our life. We are still identified by the man of the family, take their last name, doesn’t matter if it was a woman who kept the child in her womb for nine months and sacrificed everything to raise them. We had to fight our way out all these years and are still fighting— for the right to vote, to drive, to study, to dress up the way we want, to marry whom we want, to give birth to whom we want, to not give birth if we want.
In fact, the societal pressures are to such an extent that women who are lucky enough to get a chance to get an education and pursue a career, are encouraged to choose one which they can easily follow while carrying out their family responsibility. So it’s better to become a physician or a dentist, than a surgeon. No matter how talented one is!
We need to come together!
And through all these teachings, rules, and customs we are still figuring out things for ourselves. Many of us are still confused, about what is really good for us and what is just laid out, as a rule, to suppress us, to not let us reach our full potential. But we are getting there.
The only way to get there faster is by supporting, respecting and uplifting each other as fellow women. By not falling in the trap of the age-old adage laid by this patriarchal society that we are only good if we are better than the other woman. By questioning all the rules and customs — are they meant for our benefit or someone else’s?
We are all strong, powerful, smart, honest, beautiful, loving, kind and amazing women. We just have to realize how amazing we are, and there will be no stopping us!
