That's me. And I prefer doing whatever I like be it going on trips or hitting the gym or doing my office work or cooking.
1. Cooking - Assumption that women must cook despite having busy careers.
Dont get me wrong. Infact, I love trying out new dishes occasionally. But the phone call I had received from my relative the other day made me question this. They were constantly interested in what Im cooking or if I learnt to cook the dal gravy.
I faced a similar incident at the gym. Our trainer asked me to cook more protein rich food for my husband and feed him regularly.
Though meant in a humorous way, the underlying meaning kind of made me feel sad. The fact that nobody would say this to a husband made me question.
Cooking is a life skill. It is a choice. We can always hire someone. We might develop interest in cooking once we start living on our own. We must also stop judging someone for their food choices.
When I say I make protein pancakes or wheat semiya or masala oats I know how my relatives might react.
2. Bring stuff only from your parents home - This is also a sad expectation people have from women. Everything she brings to a new house she moves in with her husband must be from her parents money or their home. It is a sick mentality. Some relatives are also proud that they got a car or a house or stuff for their daughters wedding promoting this materialism further.
Curating a house where two people live must be their choice. Pieces they collect and the stuff they buy must adhere to their lifestyle. My mom also got a lot of things before my wedding. But I preferred to leave most of it behind and bring the bare minimum. My husband also collected stuff from his house when we moved to Bangalore.
Vehicles, vessels and other things are just items. Never let any person attach your worth with the stuff you possess. In fact most of the items I bought here were old ones.
Other wedding gifts are actually lying in the cupboards in our hometowns. My mother finally realised that it was a mistake that she bought all that just because I was getting married. Peer pressure made her acquire materialistic possession so that nobody questions my worth.
I urge we move more towards no materialistic marriages with no stuff involved. The girl and guy can get their own stuff after they move alone.
3. Women is responsible for keeping the house tidy - House is a space where an entire family resides. It not a womens sole responsibility to constantly clean the house and keep it tidy. Men must be taught basic etiquette to keep their surroundings clean. Only then the children growing up in such environment will learn.
4. Kids are womens responsibility - Feeding a kid, putting him/her to sleep and cleaning the babies poop is not only a women's job. Parenting is a two person job and sometimes also involves help from the kids grandparents. So it's really important women are not forced into constantly taking care of an infant when they themselves need someone to take care of them because they spend 10 months of their life raising a baby within them.
I hope when we meet a women we see her more than a wife/daughter/mother and more as a person with dreams and aspirations who can have her own free time, who deserves her own trips, who deserves her own social circle and me time.
And girls next time you meet someone who questions you about these silly things prefer to either ignore them or give the answer they deserve. I usually laugh when I get questioned about these things because I don't think its worth spending energy making them understand because even if I do they pull me into long unhealthy conversations which I prefer to stay away from.
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