While I was being encouraged to broaden my mind and
abilities, I was also being told that hemlines for women were a major issue.
The school nuns would hold a measuring tape and punish if the skirt ended
three inches above the knee. The adults at home would just yell if my underwear
showed. Keeping it hidden was a way of life; I have often wondered why the
dress could not be changed to something more accommodating rather than me being
more accommodating to the dress.
I happen to be a modern educated girl and belong to an era
where women like me are supposed to no longer feel like an endangered species
in a zoo.
All our growing years we were told that girls should
exercise their choices.
But we were also told what our choices should be. For
example - do not walk on that lonely road at night, you can get raped. Obey
Daddy, he brings in the paycheck. Wear your earrings - it makes you look cute.
Your bra- strap must never show. Don’t go out in the sun - you won’t stay fair.
Stay a virgin till you marry. Or whatever…
Even as a kid I watched my father, the sole breadwinner,
through his career in the government sector. Work life seemed so exciting then
- going to office, getting official calls even in the middle of the night -
that excitement of being needed on the job, the paycheck on the 1st of every
month….Oh –Yes! I wanted to work the moment I grew up.
Sometime while growing up I also became aware of the other
aspects of a job - the frustration, bad bosses, promotion anxieties, money
tightness…worry, worry and more worry…
It was then that I admitted that my mother had the better
deal.
I carry this dilemma even today. You see the women lined up
for their chartered buses or racing off in their cars to work every day, and you see the housewife waving off everyone
and then making herself a nice cup of coffee — who would you think has a better
deal?
That decided what I wanted. I defined my future scenario - A
successful man is one makes more money than his wife can spend – a successful
woman is one who can find such a man…
But what about that modern, educated, perhaps liberated
woman that I was raised to
become? The independent one with a strong identity. The one
who is not content with being an appendage or just a Mrs. So & So?
The role model is mother. There are only two kinds – One
that says be like me and the other that says don’t be like me. Either kind has
no answer to defining an identity - either way you are plagued with the dilemma
of choice.
The cues that are generic to females and not to males are
there from birth. Our idea about what is feminine and what is correct for girls
comes from such cues.
Research by Psychologist Lois Hoffman explains that the root
problem comes from how girls are handled. He says - “From birth there is more
parental protectiveness, less encouragement for independence, less social
pressure for establishing an identity separate from mother, less mother child
conflict, all of which results in less independent exploration of her
environment. As a result, she does not develop skills in coping with her
environment or confidence in her ability to do so. She continues to be
dependent upon adults for solving her problems.”
Exercising choices is rather unfamiliar terrain.
This is what results in the Bo Peep syndrome. She is the
shepherdess in our nursery rhyme who banks on external factors for solutions
rather than her own expertise. She believes, she wishes and she hopes that her
lost sheep, if you just leave them alone, they will definitely come home...
Somehow all problems will sort themselves, if left alone. Assertiveness is
alien to her. She is used to being helped and protected by others.
The Bo peep syndrome is widely prevalent. There is a
switched off stance when it comes to roles that are not related to her helplessness which is also considered feminine. She may be successful in a career, but she still seeks her applause
from what her world defines as her female roles and appropriate female
responses.
I have been a working professional right through the years.
But the dream of being a bored housewife still grips me with envious
fascination. When my baby was born I continued to do the breadwinning. I could
write an admirable thesis on the complications of integrating breadwinning with
breastfeeding, but not one word on why I still worried about what was the
correct thing to do.
That was all in the past.
Today, my role model is Kathyrn Janeway (of the TV serial
Star Trek Voyager). She is luckily not even on this planet.
But she fails to impress either my mother or my mother - in
- law.
She made her choice.
Then is it fair to blame the female captain Kathyrn Janeway,
of the inter-galactic spaceship Enterprise, for not knowing the recipe for
vindaloo or even bissi bele hulle anna? And why would her Mother- in- Law be
more impressed by her capability to shoot nuclear missiles to annihilate fully
populated planets, instead?
Copyright © 2014, Lima Sehgal
Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are
expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet
magazine & the Author
