Hello folks. I could ramble on about who I am - background and whatnot - but I don't think it really matters. If it does, I'll include that in the relevant post and move on.
What does matter is what I'm planning to do with this blog. My goal is to rediscover the art of making a home. Nay, the very art of what it means to be a fully realized Woman. For some reason which utterly eludes me, most modern western women have decided that being a woman means ... acting like a man.
"Did she just say that??"
*chuckles* I did. We've had a few centuries of some rather major shifting and western culture has been trying to muddle through, figuring out how to function as we move from Agricultural to Industrial to Post-Industrial life. This is painting with an awfully broad brush, but the entire process of Industrialization has been very hard from a cultural point of view. One has only to look at poor India and China as they try to rush through 200 years of social evolution in a single generation. No wonder fundamentalist religions are taking off! That's too much change, too fast. Even in our society, the result of this transformation is that the relations between the genders has become a War of the Sexes.
That's ... horrifying! I recall a story in which an anthropologist was living with the Bushmen of Africa. She asked them who was more important to the well-being of the tribe: men or women. The Bushmen laughed at the absurdity of the question and replied "neither." They spoke of the lion pride, asking which was more important: the lion, or the lioness. Their jobs were different, but both were required and vital in order to actually BE lions.
With that story in mind, I look at my own culture and see way too many lionesses wearing false manes. I've had to wear one for too long and am now fortunate enough to have a lion who supports my desire to be a lioness. I know there are a great many other women who are uncomfortable in their fake mane. I'm not alone on that one. But I don't think that trashing the choices others have made is an acceptable way to change things. Instead, I'll just share my journey with you.
I'm still a working woman, my current job is as a software analyst. The goal is to leave work at the end of this year, and that time frame is approaching very quickly. The preparation time has been used to establish the post-leave budget as well as sussing out what it MEANS to be a home maker. We don't have kids, and have no plans for kids. That means my entire focus will be on the welfare of this home, my husband and myself.
In this post Feminism era, there are an increasing number of women staying home to raise the kids. Almost all of my peers that I went to high school with have done this and it has now become largely acceptable. But the keyphrase here is "to raise the kids". Like my own mother, once that job is done they are expecting to have to put back on their false mane and get out there to earn some money. I hear conversations like "before the kids, I did this" and "after the kids, I plan to do this." As if life has to stop to raise the kids, as if while doing that quintessentially feminine role, they don't really count. That time, though well spent, is not socially acceptable in terms of how we define ourselves. I can only imagine the blank stares I'll get as I say "I don't work outside the home, and I don't have kids". In middle class America, this will make me a non-entity to other women. They'll have pictures of me sitting at home watching day time soaps and whiling away the hours uselessly. Afterall, they manage to work and maintain the home just fine (ignore the hairballs, or the haggard expressions, or the fast food dinners, or the ever expanding girth from eating so much crap).
That is also a perception I will have to deprogram within myself. I keep hitting the insecurity that by leaving the working world, I'm making myself dependent on him. What if something happens? There'll be a break in my resume! Am I willingly crippling myself?? It'll be hard to spin "homemaker", won't it? But knowing this is a possibility, and having all the wonderful legal rights we now have thanks to the fighting of our forebears, I can include independence in my work. True the lion serves to protect the pride, but even without him the lionesses are hardly wimpy! But the lionesses have their sisters to help them. Our insular family structure isolates us. Considering this, my plans have to include how to protect my capacity to earn a living in this modern world.
In essence, I won't be throwing away my false mane. It'll be there, in my closet, should I need it again. Hopefully, it won't. Journey with me as I learn the pitfalls and joys as well as face the fury that I've somehow 'betrayed' womankind, all in the effort to reclaim what it truly means to be a Woman.
-- the Lioness (in training)
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