Typing in the Google search engine ‘What women want’ would
most definitely tell you what women don’t want! In the hope of drawing
inspiration from a few good write-ups,
to understand not only what I but women as a collective whole, felt about
themselves I typed the following words only to be disappointed to know that
what women wanted out of life was synonymous to what women wanted in a man.
Similarly in articles on what men wanted, their desires were equated with what
they were looking for in a girl. I think there are both men and women like me
who want to be liberated from this regressive one directional heteronormative approach
of the always-already need to be in a romantic relationship. The entire thrust
of a man completing a woman’s identity is retrogressive in the least and
humiliating in the worst.
And why should a woman
be ‘behind’ a man’s success? His own hard work and sacrifice must be behind it.
A woman wants to be ahead of a man’s success! This common English phrase of a
woman being behind a man’s success not only fragments the identity of the man
but the woman as well who is an individual having her own narrative of success.
A woman does want to find her Mr. Right, (though it can be a Miss Right too). But
one can’t assume that she is incomplete and can only be regarded as a whole
once she is united with a man. A woman wants to be loved, to be respected and
recognized for her own worth. She is complete in her own selfhood and has a
spirit which cannot be constrained, except only by the teachings of her mother.
Surely the intimate space between two lovers can be enabling, can make her
agentive and realize her own self better. But that's not all we want folks!
A woman, to me is an institution by her own right. She does
not simply want to be equal to men as the feminist propaganda would have it. She simply wants to be herself. She has aspirations of breaking conventional gender norms set deep in
the patriarchal setup, which are engendered by both men and women and
effect both the sexes alike. For
instance the trope of the ideal woman being the perfect householder demarcates
stringent gender roles within the house not only for the woman but the man too,
who is considered to be effeminate if he does the dishes or washes the clothes.
There's an advertisement of Ariel washing powder https://youtu.be/xogBz71IHAo which celebrates the dauntless spirit of women as
multitasking the home and the world, uncomplaining and unperturbed. The
narrative of the advertisement reads a touching letter of a father to a dual
worker daughter, apologizing to her for never lending a helping hand to her
mother, thus re-instating stereotypes of the gendered division of labour which
has turned his daughter’s household into a mirror image of his own. However he
realizes that its not too late. After all, if he couldn’t become the ‘king of
the kitchen’ he could atleast do the laundry. With an enthusiastic vibe of
reform, the father makes amends for what he and her husband’s father had done,
washing their hands off housework. Tracing the seeds of gendered division of
labour in childhood days of ‘playing house’ where the little girl would always
cook and her brother would read the newspaper, emulating the reality of their
parents, is the most powerful, silent truths having left unspoken until this ad
was made.
The
winning streak: A comment by a viewer of the video: “After seeing this I
started to help my mother.”
Until the world becomes gender sensitive and men want to do
the dishes, she would be forever burdened by the home and the world...
