Women are born ignorant about what it takes to be a woman in this world. If women followed the media version of womanhood, women would be a ditz or bossy. They would be video vixens or scheming corporate climbers. They quite frequently might be a poor parent with a party-going penchant who was responsible for their children’s disappearance or the recipient of a neglect charge.
Rarely does the American public show women in traditional roles. While women fought in the 1970s to remove the stigma of the bra that women are all forced to wear at some point in their life, removing the bra does not remove the trappings of the sex – that includes cooking and cleaning, finding a partner in life, bearing children and raising them.
While women are taught in the Millennium to be strong, to work jobs, to pay bills and be independent, they are not taught the things a woman should know to interact with others in their lives. Many women are missing the ability to function in key areas of life. Knowledge of life is passed on from generation to generation and most women seemed to have missed the proverbial day when the keys to womanhood, i.e. the knowledge to survive, were passed on from one woman to the next.
Making fun of grandma
My grandmother was the matriarch of my family. Every family has one with quirky tendencies and rules that the family would just as soon not follow; rules that we made fun often.
I learned the first keys to womanhood from her when spending time at her home weekly, during spring break and during school breaks in the summer. I spent my time reading books with my grandmother.
She taught me how to fry catfish in the skillet and drink a small glass of juice daily. We played Pokeno and cleaned up her house weekly. She taught me how to sew up pants. She taught me to take vacations with a set of panties for every day and an extra set for just in case.
She taught me to always step out in nice panties because you never know when something would happen and an ambulance man might see your panties and they must be clean. She taught me to brush my teeth twice daily and to bathe well and completely, taking my time. The point is, every family has someone passing on life lessons that women should learn if they expect to function later on in life.
You didn’t need Steve Harvey
Why in the world did you need a man to tell you what you should already know about being a woman? Some woman in your family cooked a meal every night. Some woman in your family protected all the children and raised them with proper expectations.
Some woman was big mama, ma, ma’dear or whatever you all called the woman you loved. She was the person that you did not want to disappoint.
You could not walk past that woman with a skirt up to your butt. You could not be flunking out of school and chasing the boys with that woman around. Women have lost the keys to womanhood.
They might have been dropped on the pass like men in football. They might have been stolen by the man, because the media replaced the keys with the foolishness we are bombarded with daily.
They might be hidden in the recesses of overburdened minds of women who work daily. None of you needed Steve Harvey to tell you to cook, clean, raise your kids, and accept nothing less than manhood from a man. Steve just pushed the “I forgot” button in women’s brains.
Women were emancipated from traditional roles by working for a living. Working for a living does not mean that you don’t have to be superwoman, even if you never thought you wanted to be superwoman.
However, knowing how to make your own meals instead of living on take-out makes a woman a different breed. Women who know how to raise their children instead of expecting a flawed system to do it for them are a stellar brand of women.
Women that embrace the role of woman and pick up the keys that were lost in the gap have the ability to change themselves, change others and gain true independence.
Angelic Jones is a freelance writer for Austin Weekly News.
CONTACT: ajoneswrites4u@excite.com.
