Struggling for definition

Increasing numbers of friends here at university are thinking about their plans for after graduation. A number of them (both third and second years) are applying for internships, work experience, interviews…

And I’m starting to feel a little left behind. You see, I’ve entertained the thought that I want a career. That I want to join a high-powered business, or even a low-powered one; enjoy networking, enjoy building contacts and going to meetings and perhaps making a career in publishing or some such business. At school, when asked to give a gender-related word as to how we saw ourselves, I refused. I told my teacher I didn’t see myself in terms of being a “lady”, a “girl” or a “woman”: I was a “writer” first and foremost.

Yes, I must have been insufferable, but the point is there. I refused to give myself a gender-word, because I thought too much about the stereotypes that went with these roles. A “lady” suggests sophistication and class – usually on the arm of some high-powered man; a “woman” implies a worldly femininity and “girl” has connotations of innocence and vulnerability.

I wanted none of these. I just wanted to be me, equal to any man, able to take on the world at his own game.

Except, my views have been changing for quite some time.

I’ve discovered I don’t want a career.

Or, at least, not a conventional one.

I’m no longer fussed about beating the men at their own game.

I don’t want to sit in business meetings, I don’t want to sell my soul out to corporations, sit in an office all day and never see the sky except through the glass window. I want to do something fulfilling– and if that’s being a house “wife” and depending on someone else for income until my writing career takes off then I’ll take that any day.

Because I can be a woman and still be me. They’re not the same thing, of course, but one can influence the other. I don’t have to be buttonholed by it – it’s just a word after all – but I can embrace it if I want to.

And I do.

I’ve always been told (by school, by the government, by certain acquaintances) that in this day and age, a woman shouldn’t rely – or want to rely – on anyone else to support her. It’s implied that we shouldn’t think of gender. That we should want to go out to work, get careers and stop worrying about our biological clocks so much.

But what they’re really saying isn’t “be less feminine”, learnt to be ignore gender and focus on yourself as people; it’s “be more manly”. Be more like a man, go to work like a man; set your priorities like a man.

Well, just because I hadn’t liked defining myself with feminine gender-words at school, doesn’t mean I wanted to define myself with masculine ones. It’s as though people are trying too hard to overcome the traditional stereotype, and instead of feeling pressured to start a home, I’m certainly feeling pressured to become the high-powered, highly-stressed cooperate woman I’ve always mistrusted.

Because I don’t want to drive myself to exhaustion trying to achieve in business.

It’s a harsh world, and if I wanted to be the best in a career (and trust me, I always, want to be the best) I’d have to run myself ragged to make it. I would have to make sacrifices of other things that I want and enjoy in life.

And I want to enjoy life and do what I want, even if it seems like an old fashioned dream. Even if uber-feminists can accuse me of giving in to the “patriarchy”, I’ll do what I like – and it won’t be a surrender, it’ll be a choice, thank you very much.

I joked recently that I wanted to be like a “1950s housewife”. I wanted to be in charge of a home, have a big kitchen, enjoy cooking and cleaning and doing a hundred and one things around the house while my respective other half (and yes, I definitely want one of those) is out at work. I regret my Home Economics classes at school didn’t teach me anything useful and look to my mother as the ultimate inspirational figure.

Then I remembered my mother does have a job. She goes out to work all day, then comes home and cooks and cleans and manages the family. I recently spoke t her on the phone and she told me all about her day; how she’d gotten up at eight, gone shopping, cooked a fry-up for my father and his friends, gone to work (on a Saturday) and then come home to start the washing. My day, in comparison, had consisted of fencing, a few hours of half-hearted essay work and a pub lunch. At the time of the phone call I was walking to a friend’s house to eat pancakes and watch The Big Bang Theory – and, for me, that was a busy day.

I felt a little bit in awe.

I feel as though I need to stop complaining about having too much to do, and just crack on with it. If my mother can handle a job on top of everything else, I can handle a degree and still have plenty of time for all my cleaning and washing and society work and personal relationships. And, if later in life, I decide to continue being a writer and trying to get published, I’m not going to let it get in the way of all those other things that I want in life. I’ll do both.

I can work and enjoy life and I’ll do it my own way.

So I’ve come full circle – I do just want to be me. Only now I’ve realised that being me doesn’t mean I have to reject my femininity. I don’t want to act “like a man”. I want to act like me, and if that means I risk being labelled with some stupid gender stereotypes, then that’s just something I’ll have to put up with.

But it’s a slippery slope. Because if I start upping my game around my student house, I’m pretty sure my male housemates (I love them, don’t get me wrong) would take the opportunity of doing nothing. I have too many memories or my dad and me letting my mum do all the work around the house by espousing the “I didn’t want to mess up your system” line.

Although, maybe I should give them a bit more credit. I should stop being stereotypical about men if I expect them to do the same for me. I have a male friend who absolutely loves cooking 9and he’s an absolutely amazing cook). He does his washing up and is one of the neatest people I know. It’s a sad state of affairs when, even in this day and age, he often laughs at himself for being “too girly”.

And it’s encouraging that when I shared these thoughts with my boyfriend; he insisted that if I ever had the urge to learn how to iron his shirts properly, he’d learn how to iron mine.

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