Womanness: Consciously rebellious and totally rogue
I bought The Women DVD movie some weeks ago, simply because it had a fantastic female cast: Jada Picket-Smith, Eva Mendes, Annette Bening, Debra Messing and Meg Ryan and it had the caption “Gorgeously entertaining! Hilariously flat-out fun”. It was entertained, but I disagree, it was not funny. This is a movie about Women of course, an adaptation from a 1939 movie of the same name. It’s about the usual women’s struggles and balance like marriage, infidelity, friendship, class, the haves and have not, generation and generational gaps, child birth, motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood “love” having it all and wanting it all, almost everything except about female self consciousness and self empowerment.
Since I bought the DVD, my son has played it over and over again -at least 3 to 4 times a day. What can I say, he is a healthy heterosexual. So I have breathed and live it to the point that I started analyzing it. It was all I could do to stand it. What quickly becomes clear is the subtle socialization message I have had to grapple with all my life – that a woman cannot have it all! This is not to say I agree that women can’t have it all, it is about how we as women have imposed this social conditioning idea on each other that you can’t have it all. I found out a long time ago it’s the women who actual define how other women are ranked in the perking order of things – they decide you can’t have it all – in fact they will create labels for you if you decide to go rogue and refuse conform to pre-established and prescribed roles and categories:
You can either have a successful husband, you have to shrinks to fit into this image of a “trophy” wife, home maker and swallow your own ambitions so you stay at home, take care of the home front, prepare power dinners and charity events, manage the domestic workers (and be so thankful you can afford them) and rear the children or token child! Or that once you find your successful husband you also have to accept sacrificing the lack of companionship as a result of for his long working hours to afford you the suburban life you want;
On the other hand, should you choose to become a career barracuda with a power job, high income you are doomed to forego all the “fringe benefits” of a marriage – you have your freedom, liberty and a Chiwawa or some delicate dog like that, but you cannot have a sustainable relationship, no man and no children; In some cases you are allowed by the invisible universal female fraternity to become the other woman, with a lover (male or female)and a laisser-faire party life style – in other words the gypsy girl with no status, respect or accountability but the trade off is you do what you like when you like and not much is expected of you!
To say the least all these stereotypes annoy me! I was raised by men (a fact I discovered in my thirties after much psychological self-evaluation and diagnosis) – my grandfather and my dad taught me to think contrary to any of these stereotypes. They believed a husband is number 2, and education is number 1 for a girl child. The rational my grandfather always gave was, when you have the means to provide for yourself, no one can take it from you, hence education was a means of production for a girl child. But putting a husband at number 1 was not a sustainable plan according to them, because he could die, divorce you or become disabled such that I either case he could no longer provide for you. With the girl child’s burden of the uterus, you were always left behind with the children! The paradox is they also believed in the institution of marriage. However, my world growing up from this perspective made lots of sense! Till I started dating in my teens and my approach to relationships seemed to create contradictions.
I would always hear guy saying slight remarks like “Why are you so aggressive” when I did not back down in a debate, or say “You are such a know it all” when I confidently expressed my opinion or “You are going to do what you want to do, isn’t it” when I refuse to back down to a stupid idea; or as I got older I would hear “ No man wants to come home to a confrontational woman” when I questioned or demanded accountability. The best one was “You are not acting like you want to get married!” and I asked, how does a woman who want to get married act?” and the responds was absolute “By not asking such a question first of all!” Thank God by then I was in my thirties and had found my power. Had this been said to me in my twenties I would have shriveled and tried to shrink to fit into this “definition “– never mind I had no clue what this definition was – i.e. fitting the hole of this woman who wanting to get married! I have felt so sorry of my sisters who, no matter how many years they have been married they are still trying to fit into this hole! Their symptoms are exhibited in many ways – hysteria, calmness, neurosis, invisible nervous breakdowns, incessant complaining or talking, alcoholism, shopping, misdirected aggression, purposeless project pursuits….I am sure you have seen these symptoms and you know everything is not OK. I must admit there was a time (in my twenties) I used to envy them because I wanted to conform and fit so badly, but now I just feel sorry and empathy. At this age, I am totally, consciously rebellious and totally gone rogue. It makes the women in my life nervous to say the least! Sure, I do want to get “committed” but for purely different reasons than I had when I was younger. I also want to be number one – and if I can find a man who is okay with that – hey I will get hitched!
But back to the movie – The Women – (screen written and directed by Diane English) I also notice how the casting tended to favor the stereotypes of which and what women should be privileged. Jada was the lesbian-cum writer in a rut, Eva was the mistress/perfume sales girl, Annette was the high powered career girl, Debra the married gypsy girl and Meg was the pampered suburban wife with the rich but cheating husband! Really? What happened to feminist movement? In the original movie the cast is all Caucasian women. But how did I get from there to here where I had to write about it - this afternoon I watched parts of the Color Purple as it was Martin Luther King holiday. I have watched this movie so many times over the years and I started comparing how the black women in that movie were portrayed versus the Women movie I have been watching everyday for the last 4 weeks. I decided I did not like the Color Purple! I also realized that the movie about The Women was also bothering me and I did not like it either. I started thinking about other movies and how both Black, Caucasian and Hispanic women have been portrayed. I realized that in most of these movies the narrative has a common: thread- the hard-core, exploited , strong Black woman, the sexually provocative calculating Hispanic woman and the privileged, protected, delicate Caucasian woman. Don’t black women deserve to be privileged? At least portrayed in movies as privileged, protected women. The black women I grew up with covered the whole spectrum – some were privileges and/or protected, some were strong, or hard-core, some were exploited, some were seductive and calculating to survive, but they were ALL black women and there was no predominant slant! They were JUST WOMEN IN DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCE!!!! That’s why the Western, (but in all fairness) rather the Hollywood portrayal of women bothers and irritates me!
Copyright @ January 17, 2011, Dr. Tendai Ndoro (DocNdoro) – Founder, SLIPPA/Brighten The Corner Foundation; CEO EDCTrainers, LLC
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