To Be A Woman

There's a status that's been making the rounds on Facebook lately; at least, I have to assume it's been making the rounds, as it's shown up in virtually every female's status message lately. I try never to actually keep track of what is making the rounds on Facebook. In fact, when something shows up more than once, my eyes tend to automatically glaze over and skip ahead.

However, this one caught my attention.

"Can you carry a 9lb baby in your stomach for 9 months and survive hours of labor? Can you cook, clean,and talk on the phone all at the same time? Can you bleed for a week and not die? Can you walk in 5 inch heels? Can you cry all night then wake up the next day like everything is okay? Remember guys, women are only helpless till their nail polish dries :) Put this on your wall if your proud to be a woman !!!"

I know. Ignore it, Susie, ignore it, Susie, it's only a Facebook status, it's not worth working yourself up into a froth about. At first, that was what I kept saying to myself, too, so I posted a few snarky responses and let it be. 


MY RESPONSE:
"If I walk around in five inch heels I will kill myself and probably a significant number of innocent bystanders. And if I try cooking and cleaning and talking on the phone, the lasagna will have dishwashing fluid in it, the dishes will be washed with ricotta and the person on the phone will think I am DEAD because of all the SCREAMING, followed by sudden silence. I never have to wake up after crying all night and pretend everything is fine, because I don't cry all night. Nobody cries all night. They'd die of dehydration first. Furthermore, when my nail polish is wet, I am not helpless; have you ever gotten nail polish in your eyes? It hurts. Like hell. So honestly, I question the validity of this entire status."

And I do. Let's take it sentence by sentence. A woman, according to this status, can be broken down into the following categories:

•  Giving birth
• Running a household with some measure of competence
• Having her period
• Wearing fashionable shoes at the expense of personal comfort
• Having emotional breakdowns that last all night
• Wearing nail polish.

Overall, the picture painted by the implication that this is what all women have to be proud of is disturbing, if you consider that it takes feminism and pushes it back by at least fifty years. 

Okay, so giving birth is cool. Mind you, it's something that, to judge by some of my classmates, any drunk sixteen-year-old girl with three IQ points to rub together can do, so I'm not as impressed as perhaps I could be. 


Simultaneous cooking, cleaning and talking on the phone is equally cool. In fact, I think that should be elevated to an Olympic sport. I have since conducted experiments to see if I could do it, and it wasn't pretty. Does doing laundry count as cleaning house? Because if it does, I can at least say I can cook and clean at the same time. Talking on the phone while cooking is, for me, a terrible idea; the last time I tried it there really was screaming going on, and then I abruptly hung up on the Meerkat (do you remember that non-conversation, Meeks?)


Having your period is not something to be proud of, nor should it be listed as a point of pride for all womankind. It's biology. Interesting biology, I'll admit, but it's stupid to take pride in an inconvenience. I'm not going to reward a dog for biting my leg, I'm certainly not going to give my uterus cookies and assure it that it's a good girl when all it's doing is causing me pain. 

WEARING FIVE-INCH HEELS IS STUPID. IT IS STUPID. IT IS STUPID, DO YOU NEED ME TO SAY IT AGAIN, IT IS STUPID. I've met women who can pull it off, hell, probably I'm a woman who could pull it off, but all you want to do when you're done pulling it off is PULL THEM OFF. And then pull off your feet. And then NEVER WALK AGAIN. All for the sake of a fashion industry that is actively out to make all women think they want to be Barbie. 


Crying all night, if you put aside the physical impossibility of it, is a sign of a serious emotional problem. That's my first problem with that bit. My second problem is the implication that it takes a real and proper woman to not only have whatever severe psychological problem that would lead to crying all night, but also to COVER IT UP. Because female emotional problems are what, not worth getting into? Not worth talking about? Not worth working through or even acknowledging? They are, in fact, only worth suppressing and pretending everything is fine? That's something to be proud of? Fuck that. 


And finally, we come to the icing on the cake. Let's quote this directly, this one is worth quoting directly:


"Remember guys, women are only helpless till their nail polish dries :)"

How do I even start? What is it that offends me to my very core about this statement, is it the smiley face? Is it the lack of comma between "remember" and "guys"? Is it the implication that all proper women wear nail polish? 


Well, yes, but also no. No, the operative word in that sentence is "helpless". Helpless, because of nail polish. It is, much like the woman in question's nails, brushed over with the thin veneer of "only" and "until", it's tricked out to seem empowering, but the disturbing and somewhat diseased heart of the statement is this:


If a woman is attacked and she has a choice between defending herself or waiting until her fucking nail polish dries, she will wait until her nail polish dries. Because it is more important to look sexy than to stand up for yourself. It's more important to be a sex toy than a human being, it's more important to keep up appearances and the standards that have been forced onto you by an outside party than to stay true to yourself, it's more important to have your period or cry all night than to be a free, upstanding, proud and dare-I-say-it mighty individual in your own right.


This is what Facebook wants me to be proud of? This is what gets Liked, this is what gets reposted, this is what we think of ourselves? This is what the suffragettes fought for, this is what generations of women have stood up for, this is what we've evolved to as a society? 


How can I not get angry? 

The thing is, I am proud of being a woman. It's just, my woman is not a nail-polish-wearing prancing little princess whose great prides in life are doing the dishes and walking in terrible shoes. I know that woman, I've met that woman. She's not proud.  She's not happy. Truth be told, she's not much of anything. I wonder what that woman sees when she looks in a mirror, I wonder what she thinks when it's three o'clock in the morning and she can't sleep. I could never imagine being her. 


To be a woman. much like to be a man, is to be an eternity's worth of possibility. Did you know that? Did you know that the definition of any one being, regardless of gender, is to stand on a cliffside staring out at an infinite horizon full of things to be, definitions to rewrite, boxes to outgrow? I think that's why I get so offended when I am stuffed into a box and labeled with a black marker and taped tight and stuffed into a corner. 


It's feeling more and more these days that that's what society wants to do to each and every one of us. 


They box us in, and they call it pride.