Expecting Women to Exist for Others

Expecting Women to Exist for Others

 

Stand up straight, walk tall; and Darling, do not forget that you hold magic on your face and in your mind.

 

Remember the days when you were a young girl and you would stare at the mirror and smile? Or when you would smear on some lip-gloss, and fix up those eyelashes by coating them with a bit of mascara? By the time you stepped out of your room your mom would ask, “where are you going to? I hope you’re not dressing up for a boy!” Or, “do you have a boyfriend?” What about when you would visit the hair salon and sit there for hours to get that hairstyle you were thinking about for days. Immediately when you were done, the hairstylist or somebody else in the salon would say, “Wow! Your boyfriend is going to be so happy to see you. You look prettyyyy!!!”

 

Sounds a bit familiar, right? I think that in as much as we have all grown up with different experiences, we might all still be facing similar circumstances. Circumstances whereby we are constantly taught that women exist for other people or do things in order to make others happy.

 

We even see it in magazine articles from time to time:

“How to make him happy”

“How to tell if he is losing interest”

“Why he could be cheating!”

 

Headlines hardly ever read:

“How to make her happy”

“How not to make her lose interest”

 

It seems as though each and every woman is made to believe that it is her responsibility to make the next person feel content. Or that a woman cannot just find contentment within herself. It also seems as though she cannot do things for herself, or for her own satisfaction.

 

From a young age, young girls are taught to aspire to be somebody’s wife someday. Instead of young men being groomed to be good husbands with just as much emphasis. The pressure that society places on women is insane! It has created a society whereby most women are unhappy because they think that if they are nurturing themselves and feeding their own happiness and not running around and existing for others, something might be wrong with them. Or a heavy sense of selfishness may be present in them.

 

I hope that we can get to a point where we stop placing unrealistic expectations on women and genuinely begin embracing the concept of equality by holding all genders accountable in all areas of life.

Nomsa Motale

Twitter: @sasamotale