Today, I would like to focus my blog post primarily on the essay Because You're a Girl. While reading this essay, I felt bad for Ijeoma A., I felt angry toward her family, and I felt frustrated for other African girls like her, who were raised with a strict set of rules based on the fact that they are female.
While Ijeoma was describing her "duties to the family," I thought about my role in my family. I am the youngest of four girls, so I cannot speak of an experience where my parents treated my nonexistent brothers any differently than they treated me. However, I can say that my parents never expected my sisters and me to be the woman Ijeoma's parents expected her to be. Sure, my parents always made us clean up after ourselves, but that wasn't because we were female; it was because we needed to learn to be responsible and sanitary. We each cleaned up after ourselves, meaning that my father cleaned up his own place setting after dinner.
Additionally, the "Four Commandments" that Ijeoma must follow would make my parents cringe. "Her office is the kitchen." My father would hate that. He has always encouraged my sisters and me to be independent, intelligent, and hard-working. He wants for all of us to have an office as nice as his or even better. "She is responsible for all the chores in the home." Someone has to do them, but the responsibility should not solely lie on the woman.
The discussion of marriage in this essay, as well as in Chappals and Gym Shorts, was also irksome to me. The expectation that women should get married and have children is considered so highly. This is obvious because Ijeoma says "being a woman in her late twenties with no suitors to pop the Question seemed the greatest shame a woman could endure" (p. 217). First, this highlights the importance because it is considered shameful otherwise. Second, Ijeoma's capitalization of "the Question" gives it more power and prestige, as though "the Question" is an achievement. Marriage is also deemed significant for Almas Sayeed, as is seen through her father's constant attention to it. Her dad said things like "I have met a boy that I like for you" and that he wanted to "arrange something" (p. 205). This in addition to Almas' father's "two-year marriage plan" drove the point home that marriage was necessary, and a matter of the highest significance. There was such a sense of urgency around the topic marriage which I have never personally experienced, but I can only imagine wanting to bang my head against a wall if my parents ever brought it up, especially in the aforementioned ways.
This whole essay made me recall The Cult of True Womanhood and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Both discuss the woman's role in the family, in society, etc. The Cult of True Womanhood is a similar guideline for women as the Four Commandments, but it is worse because it attempts to trick women by glorifying their domesticity. The Feminine Mystique came to mind because Friedan called the feelings of dissatisfaction in the home "the problem that has no name." Ijeoma didn't know what to call her dislike of her "duties to the family" just as many women did not know.
What struck me most about Because You're a Girl, was the last sentence of the essay. Ijeoma wrote that she was searching for a happier life, "one in which I am allowed to love myself, and not sacrifice that love in favor of a society's values." This was really sad to me. Ijeoma felt so constricted, so miserable, and so gendered that she didn't love herself.
Never in my childhood have I heard "because you're a girl" from my parents, grandparents, etc., and I would hate it if I had. In a way, it makes me think of the "because I said so" reasoning, which we all know and despise. I was happy to see that Ijeoma moved to the United States and now describes herself as "an independent woman working" here, and that she is happy and more fulfilled than ever. However, I still find it bothersome that there are so many women outside of the United States who are still subject to the Four Commandments. There are definitely still many expectations for women in the United States, but I feel grateful that there are not so many as there could be.
Lastly, I'd like to include a video that came to mind while reading all the essays today. It is applicable to them all because it is about how girls are constricted and told to do this, not that. I'm sure this has been posted at least once by someone throughout this course, but it is still applicable nevertheless.
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