Friday, October 15, 2010

Independent Women

Radical feminism has served just as much to poison our society’s thinking as anything else. It sickens and saddens me to no end to see young girls who boast about how they can’t or won’t cook and clean and who are basically good at nothing but trying to look cute and spreading their legs. They bear this misconceived notion that in order to be “independent” women they must eschew all convention and free themselves from the so-called chains of domestication. That seems to include proper child rearing too. Yet, these are the very same women and girls that religiously consult magazines like Cosmopolitan for tips on how to please a man or keep one. These kinds of articles are right next to articles about how to starve themselves, how to party all night, then how to apply makeup in the right way to hide how much they partied the night before.


If these magazines ever do mention or acknowledge women who are actually married with families, it’s usually in a negative light, about how much the woman wants to go back to being single or how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and that it’s a life sentence that must be served wherein she’s hoping to be paroled or let off for good behavior. Or, it’s the other side, where the married women with the children is so incredibly fabulous and manages to jet here and there, yet you never quite hear what she does with her kids while she’s busy running all over the place or where her husband is for that matter. If he matters, that is. There never seems to be any happy medium. A regular, REAL woman, who is married with children, and is quite content with the life path she’s chosen, who actually works in CONCERT with her husband to raise their children and handle their household. No, marriage is never all it is cracked up to be. It is never what you imagined it would be, even if you’re highly analytical and maybe even anal retentive enough to crunch numbers to come up with statistics on what marital life will hold. And I feel I must add, married celebrities and the like who have been married maybe like all of nine months or have just popped out a baby and feel some sort of societal obligation to dispense any kind of domestic advice DO NOT count.


I have had many a conversation with my mother and brothers about the state of womankind these days. My brothers openly lament that they are having an extremely difficult time finding a “quality” woman out there. It seems that so many are so damaged, and to make matters worse, have so few qualities to redeem them. They shake their heads at the girls who swear in their minds that they are too cute yet whose hygiene is questionable, who can’t even boil water for an egg, or don’t keep their homes clean. These are not gross exaggerations, these are actual things we discussed. My brothers and I are Southern. They, as well as I, know how to cook, clean, and take care of things in and around the home. I highly doubt my brothers would ever really be happy with a girl who couldn’t do at least what they are able to do if not more.


Another thing about which they lamented was about how uneducated so many young women are. Despite being college students or graduates, they come away knowing next to nothing and are still incapable of having intelligent and in-depth conversations, something we had grown up having with my mother. My brothers, especially my younger, come off as womanizers, but they admit that it’s becoming exhausting and at times depressing to go through so many women yet not find the right one for them. My brothers want good women, they really do, but they are very frustrated that so many out there complain that they get no respect all the while not respecting themselves. What do they expect?


Don’t get me wrong, my brothers are not saying that they want women as pure as the driven snow or completely free of baggage. In my opinion, baggage is actually a sign that you have lived and experienced life and met obstacles that you’ve overcome which helped form you as a person. I’ve always said, it matters not that you have baggage, but it’s all in how you carry it. Now, would you rather have it all in ripping plastic bags carried sloppily on your back, only to ask others to hold some of it for you? Or would you rather work it out to where it fits neatly in a personalized Louis Vuitton or Samsonite with swivel wheels and a handle so you can pick up and keep going?


Ladies, young women, I really hope you alter your way of thinking. Not bothering to learn how to properly cook, clean, and tend to other various domesticities does NOT make you more independent or any more woman. If anything, you are denying a part of yourself that makes you genuinely woman, that makes you more attractive to men. Do you not realize the POWER you have by being able to cook, clean, keep a good home, AND having a good job? There is POWER is being able to be intelligent, creative, loving and being able to make things beautiful and comfortable.


Being independent does not mean giving up traditional roles and assuming the roles of a man thus eliminating the need for one at all save for physical companionship. Being independent is more about being able to do everything for yourself yet also having the ability to let others in your life to share in your gifts and for you to partake of theirs. Like it or not, ladies, we do in fact need men in our lives, and for more than just sex. The sooner we accept and embrace that, the better off we’ll all be.

7 comments:

  1. You are so right - this society values women who are independent, self-sufficient, etc. and treats motherhood or a life as a homemaker with total contempt. One of the biggest challenges I know myself and other women of my generation face in marriage is not being ashamed to live the lives that our mothers, grandmothers, etc. lived proudly.

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  2. A-MEN! I think this is why I don't have many girlfriends. I can't take the vapid conversations and the lack of respect for women that value keeping a home, cooking, etc.

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  3. This is so true! A few weeks ago I was in a discussion started by a woman who is a huge fan of feminism and a liberal who found chivalry funny. She shook her head at the notion that the man constantly asked if she needed help hanging lights (theatrical), climbing ladders, and that he dared to walk her home at night even though it's in the opposite direction of where he lived.

    I don't get that line of thinking. Sure I can do the same things she can, and yes I'm not afraid of walking home at night, especially in a bad neighborhood, but I'm not stuck up enough on a notion that women are gods, to laugh at a man (even married) who is chivalrous like that.

    There's nothing wrong with that. Just like there is nothing wrong with women being women and knowing how to do things we did for centuries, cook, clean, keep house, tend to family, etc.

    I don't consider myself a feminist because of that kind of mentality. I consider myself a woman that can cook and clean, keep a house, even though I'm single, have had bad luck with jobs and live with my folks well past the age of 30. Yes I can do things men can do, like use power tools and build things, but I'm equally feminine and I don't know a guy that would want to be with a woman that was all butch.

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  4. I agree. I think all the women's movement has really done is shift us from a place of respect to a place of enslavement. Women today are expected to do everything AND support a man. We have no respect, we have no dignity and are even more objectified than before. All these so-call feminists or Hollywood/music industry tarts can do is look good, try to look good, complain when someone else looks better, and have sex. Women complained that men were having affairs and they needed sexual freedom. HA. Now women are WORSE than men were and everyone is suffering for it.
    Young girls are sexualized from toddlerhood. Hooking up is the substitute for real relationships. Families are abandoned by both mother and father alike and children are raising themselves by phone cuz their parents are too busy to spend time with them.
    We are in a terrible mess. I feel sorry for your brothers and my sons. There are few women of quality around today. I know many lovely God-fearing women who can’t find a man because they won’t have sex and let the man take advantage of them in any way. WOMEN have created the environment for men to have these expectations. Women are allowing themselves to be sex objects. Women are losing any femininity they have in order to be just like a man. Wake up, women, before it is too late.

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  5. It really frosts me to see women of my generation treat the idea of staying home to tend the house and raise a family with contempt. Since when, exactly, is it in any way pro-woman to deride the things that are our traditional strengths? No, it doesn't need to be ironclad - sometimes situations need a different approach - but to devalue the things that keep families whole and culture thriving? To treat hearth, home and children as simply things to do when you're not doing anything "important"? Please. That's not feminism, that's misogyny. Things are pretty messed up when even women are misogynists.

    I take pride in what I do now, and I also take pride in knowing that, when my children are grown and off into the world, they will know how to cook, clean, bake, and sew - and I will be able to pick up my now-part-time practice to fill the financial gaps.

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  6. So glad to see you approach this topic with such intelligence and finesse. I've spoken on this may times on my pages and have had tremendous support from women. I see you're no stranger to social trends. Many women really are selling themselves short by moving away from domestic behavior. We live in a culture of "anything you [men] can do I can do better..." and it's tearing us apart at the marrow.

    I have something I'd like to interject. Good women are out here and many men have found them--this is a fact. My question is..when a man does find a "quality" woman, why does he often cast her to the side for a courtesan? Your brothers might see the elements of women fading, but what I see is most men who have the opportunity to date a woman of substance, yet, they choose a harlot. I wonder if they can add some insight on this.

    Asia Reeves

    --Diesel Lady

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  7. Excellent piece. I am an Italian woman working in concert with my (Southern, ex soldier) husband to take care of the home and family. Happily!

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