I am not anything close to what I thought myself to be.
I am not a real woman because I do not willy-nilly shop for groceries by picking, gathering or harvesting foodstuffs that are growing along the pathways that I travel to and from wherever the hell I am going. Real women take whatever they like from fruit trees and bushes and vegetable plants, and revel in their cleverness are not having to pay for the free food they bring home. An important part of being this kind of real woman is to do your best to avoid thinking about who might be the owner of the properties where one does this kind of harvesting/gathering/shopping, and heaven forbid that real women ask for permission to do this harvesting/gathering/shopping from whomever owns the land. Not-real women like me believe that even public owned property deserves the courtesy of a bit of investigation and permission garnering, but even that notion further disqualifies me as a real woman. That there are differing standards for freely picking/harvesting/blah-blah-blah in different locations around the planet, and that there are different standards and rules for all of this is irrelevant in the face of how the practice of this makes one a real woman as apposed to those of us who live in a culture that implores us to be respectful of other people's property (even when the owner is unknown to us) and are thus not-real women. Just saying.
Real women have and maintain strict standards for exactly how the house cleaning, polishing, laundry and other housewifely tasks are performed. Real women make their beds with hospital corners, the proper coverings and stuff like that.
Real women bake and clean, cook from scratch, make their own cleaning supplies, garden organically, raise their children by the precepts of one religious book/practice or another, mend, sew, make their own clothes and household stuff.
No one ever says, as in actually coming out and stating, that if you do not do all of those things that you are not a real woman, but the message, the implication and the agenda is that if you do not, you are not a real woman. Perhaps, you are not even real. At the very least, you can be held up as a person to be found lacking when judged, criticized, ridiculed and minimised by the standards and practices of the real women. Worse, you are often thought of as significantly flawed, uninformed, uneducated, materialistic, commercial-driven, lazy, selfish, pampered, elitist, stupid, clueless and just plain, fucked up.
Please allow me to introduce myself.
Hello, I am Juds and I am fucked up.
I am also weary of being judged and found lacking for what I am unable or unwilling to do, especially when it is something that someone else believes is the only way to do something. Or practice. Or think or believe.
Oh Judsie, may I give you an enormous squishing hug??? Personally, I prefer a real woman who cleans just enough to keep her family from catching anything nasty (which is way less than cleaning every day, or even every week), whose idea of making the bed is to look at it occasionally but as long as the duvet isn't too unfluffed when she crawls beneath it, that's fine. Real women also don't worry about the state of the kitchen floor until they start to stick to it or are knee deep in vegetable peelings because there are so many other more important and exciting things in life to do, like writing or creating music or having mad, passionate sex on the sofa (with or without another person). Real women are too busy noticing how raindrops hang from hawthorn berries to make their own soap and sometimes their knitting needles are stilled as they listen to what their visitor is telling them. Real women come in all shapes and sizes doing all sorts of different kinds of stuff. They are solid and real and wonderful and if anyone tells them their reality has become fuzzy because of what they are doing or not doing, then they should "look" at the other person and wonder aloud how they can know such things at all.
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ReplyDeleteThanks, Sarah, a big, messy old hug is exactly what I need!! I have been away and just saw this, so please do not think that I ignored your wonderful and supportive words. I needed time away to think and hope that I have returned with an improved perspective.
ReplyDeleteRose, I am sorry to have missed your comment; you always have such a steady viewpoint, something I greatly appreciate.