Women seem to be the most vocal against stereotyping them in what they like to call “our mother’s traditional roles.” A woman’s place is not just in the kitchen anymore. Women can and should have careers these days while they share domestic duties with their husbands. I totally agree with all of the above.
There’s everything sexy about a woman coming back home from a tough day and her husband who happened to get home first, has already prepared dinner and serves her. You know he would be having a great night after that. The only problem here for me is that my kitchen skills are just about the same as Kim Kardashian’s skills in a music studio.
The problem for me is that at the other end of things, made up of those who constantly stereotype women in those traditional roles, are a whole lot of women too. Every time I tweet about being hungry or missing a meal, or eating out, the typical response is always; “It’s time for you to go and marry.”
Even more interesting is that the respondents are usually women. Outside the virtual world, it is pretty much the same; A female friend or an aunt sees me and talks about how skinny I am and the next thing they say is, “You need a wife in your life that will feed you properly” or something along those lines.
Trust me, I do understand this point very well. Most of my friends who get married always have a hilarious ‘before and after’ picture just about a year into the marriage. Thicker necks, rosier cheeks and bigger tummies, are pretty typical. So without a doubt, marriage does make a difference. What I’m not sure about is the politically correct way to go about it.
These days, we need to thread carefully. We can’t call overweight people fat. Certain African-Americans take offence to being called ‘black’. Mixed race people can only be called biracial, as most other descriptions are found offensive. So, I need to know how we can agree that women should be in the kitchen and rightfully so, without making it look like we’re saying that they belong there.
There’s a funny meme poster that went viral on the Internet recently with a group of women chanting, “What do we want? We don’t know. When do we want it? Now!” For most men, that’s how they see women, hence the need they feel to think for them. It’s even worse in our culture where even till date, many laws are anti-women or at the least non-representative of them. This makes it easy for us men here to stick to what we know and think is right.
But there’s also a group of us who are different. We do realize that the times have changed. We know that women are equally good and even sometimes better at performance, business wise and generally in the corporate world. This means that the domestic tag can only be placed on the woman (or man) who decides that they want it that way.
Yet we are really confused as to how to balance things out. Where do we draw the line between believing that you’re an independent woman and the fact that we cant go Dutch at a dinner date since the bill must be picked up by the man? Also, do we fight for equality between sexes like the women demand or be gentlemen and treat them like ‘the weaker sex’ by using the popular ‘Ladies first’ line? The questions are a lot and if you really care to know, yes they do keep me up at night…
