Why I'm Tired Of Being Called A Strong Woman
A short note on why I hate adjectives, especially the ones used to describe women.
A bunch of useless adjectives:
Writing rules hate adjectives and adverbs as much as they hate your darlings (Stephen King said: “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.” A pretty shoe is as ew as a brightly colored shoe and sentences where you wax poetic.
I'm not strong. Maybe my mum is or my grandmother was. Maybe you are. But not me. Let me be political and say for one sec that when people refer to women as strong, it's a silly romanticized thing: women are strong because we are homemakers, sole child raisers, workers in the labour market, victims of all sorts of sexual/domestic abuse, etc. Think of all the gender norms we’re trying to kill or bury alive. Yup. And to cap it up, our bodies do the most. No breaks from the first time you get your period till you die. Forget everything you heard about menopause.
Imagine doing or being all of these things and not being ‘strong’? — The societal definition of the word that is, the one used by men to keep women grounded in misogyny or to pander. Impossible. Throw an adjective behind your identity and allovasudden, you're a strong woman. Excuse me, I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Read this for some context. The problem, the problem with romanticizing a thing, is that the thing becomes appealing (when ideally, it shouldn't be). Being a strong woman and everything it connotes stresses me; I don't see myself strapping on all these different hats and feeling funky while at it. I'm therefore not a strong woman. This is a whole-ass essay that brings down corporate Nigeria and all they did on IWD 2020.
Other adjectives are guilty; everything from bossy to curvy. Banning ‘girl child’? Then you should consider banning ‘working moms’ too (not the show, I love it). They're good words on good days or as standalones. But if every women's day, you're praising only the strong women, it makes me curious about us — the other women who aren't strong (or those other adjectives). Food for my thought this week.
Can you teach people how to love (you)?
Have I mentioned how much I hate self-help books? I've always felt — or wondered what they had to say that common sense, real life experiences and conversations couldn't tell or teach me.
These days, I find myself consuming a lot of self-help content online. Maybe it helps that they're not masquerading as self-help. It's like this one: A Lazy Person's Guide To Happiness which is essentially a conversation with a happiness expert.
Anyway, I've been reading a lot about relationships, taking a lot of interest in all the different kinds of relationship dynamics. One thing I learned this week is that you can teach people how to love (you). Should you? That’s a different conversation. This conversation interests me because we come from different backgrounds and worlds. Then we end up falling in love as friends, lovers, etc. And when that happens, our expectations in relationships often differs. Luckily, they could be the same. And this isn’t far fetched. But what happens when they’re not?
You're not alone, take care of yourself.
The world is wilding. I thought I was having a wild year then I saw a couple of tweets about other people's experiences. I’m not alone. 2020 Q1 ehn. Think about everything from the possibility of a naira devaluation to the coronavirus pandemic. Everyone is lowks in panic mode.
Having fallen sick this week, my first instinct now is to take care of myself - in spite of it all. Eat well. Wash your hands. Don't hug nobody. Buy yourself something nice. Stay safe. The world still needs you.
Have a lovely weekend, dear one.
