A dear friend posted a blog asking us what out 16-year-old self would think about our lives now. My 16-year-old self wouldn’t think anything about my life now. She would be seeing red, steam pouring form here ears busily hating on and writing off my life. No, I am not kidding.
My 16 year old self was a feminist & punk. I happily sported a leather dog collar, totally clueless as to its BDSM symbolism of submission (something in my naivety I would have considered anti-feminist). I was a card-carrying member of a radical political organisation, who believed that ‘awareness’, achieved via protests and the liberal use of soap boxes, was the answer to all life’s ills. I despised the suburban life and the ‘white picket fence’. I flatly refused to cook believing that is was a shackle that kept modern women attached to the feminine mystique and preferred to be addressed as ‘Conrad’ because it was genderless, and as such freed me from gender stereotyping.
I was convinced that I would never marry. Not only because I thought of the institution of marriage as unnecessary (we at least some things never change), but because I aspired to running my relationships the way ‘men did’ – all satisfaction and no commitment. After all the feminist way is to live my life the way a man would, only better. Right? I intended on adopting one child later in my career orientated life. Adoption, because there are plenty of orphans that require love and care, and also because I believed the pain of labour and the inconvenience of pregnancy to be an unfair burden on women.
In short my 16-year-old self was wrong in so many ways. She simply didn’t have the references or framework to apply her feminist views to the real world. She thought feminist was to be devoid of femininity and to shun inherently feminine experiences.
She would disown me now. She, like many a young woman, wanted true equality in life but had no role-models to show her how. She would judge my choice to marry, to have a baby, to exit the work force to raise my son, to live in the suburbs, to cook daily and whole heartedly support my family. She would say my choices are not my own, that I have allowed society to dictate my role and thus devalue my true worth. And she would be wrong. But she earned me my freedom. Her investigations into the power dynamics of society bestowed me the room to make my choices consciously – the real gift of feminism.
Tags: Feminist, Judgement, Motherhood, Motivation, Youth
