women

WOMAN

Whether it is due to my age or my recent entrance into the world of motherhood/marriage, the meaning,opinions and appraoches to the varying ideas of femininity have been presented to me more so than any other period of my life. I am constantly being drawn into conversations and even debates on what it means to be a woman. Even when the idea is not blatantly expressed, but hinted, the discrepancies on the subject of femininity and female roles in society become more and more apparent.

I have a few friends that are staunch feminists. This does not mean that they are hairy, man-hating lesbians or single, asexual, childless women with cats. They are mothers who stay at home with their kids, have professional careers on the side, which they persue from home, they breastfeed, and yes- they wear lipstick. They encompass the feminine ideal; the nurturing mother, the individual woman, the equal. They don't feel obligated to scrub toilet bowls or take full responsibiity for the children. They are married to men who know where the diapers are and which kid is allergic to nuts. That does not make a man masculine, btw, its wimpy...They are the arch-enemies of the chauvanism that saturated the 1950's.

I do think, however, that the majority of people have become extremists when it comes to feminism. It's rather unfortunate that mainstream feminism defies femininity. It's quite a paradox actually. Afterall, is it really "feminine" to put on a business suit in the morning, and hand your children over to hired caregivers who feed them chemically infused formula, while your breasts leak suffocated milk-flow through a blazer of corporate power? why is feminism so utterly contradictory to femininity?. Shouldn't we embrace, naturally, what makes us women? We don't have to fall to either extreme, because extremes are always the same. Women should not have to choose between supressing femininity to prove a point nor should they become so painted into a "role" of the frumpy housewife. Both extremes seem phony, pre-conceived, told...
Both extremes scream "slave slave slave" and whether you are a slave to corporations/money/power or to a gender-fied role that assumes subserviant quialities expected of you because you are a woman- they are both ridiculous ( that's the only word I can think of right now)

Thank God my husband is not a chauvanist...we wouldnt be married
I hate when people make remarks about cooking, cleaning or other tedious, tasks when refering to my marriage...it's condescending. Because I gave birth to our child, does not mean that I earned the "right" after 60 hours of labor to scrub toilet bowls and fold his boxers....is that what I want my daughters to do? no. Did my husband think, when he fell in love with me "wow, I want HER to be the one to scrub the bathroom" Does this mean that I have to be glamorous, sexy, and scrubbing bowls all at the same time? That's a bit too much for a gal! I feel sorry for women like that.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think that women should go to the other extreme and refrain from any form of house-work just to prove that they are not slaves...What I do think is that they should not be EXPECTED based on gender. A woman should be feminine, but it's tiime for the ladies to truly learn and think about what being feminine really is....because I am starting to see how few people have a grasp on what it means to be a woman....
Any thoughts?