Candid Observations On What It Means To Be Female

The series "Bridgerton" allows us to see vividly what it is like for the entire essence of a woman to boil down to one moment, the moment she becomes a wife.

Everything she does from young, every training she receives is primarily for one thing, being marriageable. 

We make the assumption that this does not happen anymore but I would think it does just a slightly less glaring form.

When your parents end every sentence with things like "is this how you will behave in your husbands house".

"You better learn how to cook this specific meal o, what if your husband likes it?" 

When you cook something or do chores and your friends begin to hail you "wife material" 

When they begin to tell you, "you are every man's dream" because you make good grades.

Aren't they indirectly saying that every thing and every good virtue a woman acquires, is to increase her prospects of getting a husband or to make her more marriageable?

Chimaamanda Adichie in her book "Dear Ijeawele" stated that she wished she had been told to bend down and sweep properly because that would clean the floor better and not because she was a girl. 

(And if I may add, invariably someone's wife)

 

                           . . . .  

When you begin to wonder deep within you when this sister who just finished NYSC will bring a husband home, don't you think the deep rooted cause of that thought is largely because you feel that everything a woman does is pending when she gets a husband?

Why doesn't anyone ask her what she wants to do with her life after university, her dreams and aspirations?

Society tells us what to do, when we should do it and how. Why?

These are some of the things that pressure people to:

1. Get married when they are not ready - because society has tied being ready to a certain age. Make this make sense

2. Settle for less than God's Best - because you're trying to meet the standards of people who are more concerned with the "status" of being married than the "success" of the marriage itself. 

3. Stay in abusive relationships- God forbid that you end a marriage even if your life and that of your children is at stake because in society makes it seem like it is more dignified to be murdered while maintaining the title of being a "wife" than alive with the tag "divorcee"

4. Think less of themselves because they are not married- As though single women of marriageable age are second class citizens of womanhood.

These to me, are the issues.

I realize conversations like this can be sensitive but they are necessary.  Do leave your thoughts with me in the comment section or through my contact form.

Thank you for reading and until my next blog post, Stay Happy!!!