On Becoming a Woman: What Does That Mean?

I have been thinking about writing this post for a long time. That means that I will write something that is very long and still not say what I meant to say.

What does it mean to be a woman?

I mean, we seem to know as a society what it means to "be a man," even if we disagree about some aspects of the definition. Little boys hear about how to be a man from the time they are babies, and what we often don't realize is that little girls hear that too. And when we collectively discuss "being a man," we mean so many things:

Being strong, responsible, secure, determined, aggressive, stoic, smart, handy.

Now the more enlightened among us might say, whoa! That's not what being a man is about! Men could be those things, but they could also be sensitive, kind, goofy, contemplative, etc.

OK, maybe that's a step up. But my point is this: Being a man MEANS something.

Growing up, I would internalize these messages, and I remember thinking, but I will never be a man. So what will it take for me to grow up? What does it mean to be a woman?

I felt like I knew a lot of men, and that a lot of them were actually...women.

They were grownups. Adults. People who took care of themselves and anyone else who came along. People I trusted, looked up to, admired. But the only thing I ever heard SPOKEN about what it meant to "become a woman" seemed totally ridiculous to me: Getting your first period made you a woman.

Nope, impossible. I got mine at age 11.

Having babies made you a woman.

But how could that be? A lot of women couldn't have babies or didn't want to have them.

All of the things that "made you a woman" were physical things or things that happened to you, not things you did, things you made, things you decided.

I could get into a long tirade about misogyny, down to the kind of deep and disturbing misogyny that is involved in our ingrained rape culture. But that line of conversation will make me too depressed. What concerns me, now that I have both a girl and a boy to raise, is how we are so casually misogynist, ALL OF US, and how we don't even realize it. And because we don't recognize it, we don't admit how it effects our children. We use misogynist language as if it is NORMAL language. I do it too:

Man Up. Take it like a Man.

And then, little boys at such a young age learn to say things like "Ew, I don't want to do that. THAT'S FOR GIRLS." And you can practically hear them retching from the very thought. What bothers me about statements like that, or things like "you throw like a girl," "stop crying like a little girl," and even the concept of "girl power" is this:

When people say these things, they are speaking of something that is inherently less. Little girls might say they don't like something because "that's for boys," but you don't get the implied disdain with that statement. They are saying I'm a girl, and therefore I'm not interested in that. We might take issue with those thoughts. But when I hear boys saying "that's for girls," even my own son, who just learned that idea maybe in the last month or two, these boys are implying that being a girl isn't as good as being a boy. They know at three years old what we pretend isn't true at 30.

I feel like I am somewhat of an authority on this topic, and here's why:

When I was very little, I was just a little ball of crazy. I wore my brother's clothes and had my hair cut in the same style as him because my parents were broke and lazy about style. Then, I was still a little ball of crazy, with the affectionate nickname "little shit," but I wore patent leather shoes and dresses all the time (bought for me by my grandfather). Then, I became a tomboy--a really serious tomboy, for several years. I cut my hair very short. I wore the same two pairs of sweatpants with holes in the knees every day. One day in sixth grade, my best friend took me to her house before school, lent me a skirt and put some makeup on me and put a ridiculous bow in my hair and I went to school like that, literally as a joke. Some boy told me I looked pretty and I chased him around the classroom trying to get in a fight. It wasn't long after that that I told my mom I didn't want to be a girl. She asked me if I didn't like who I was and I said I did, but that I didn't want to have to do girl things. I told her I wanted to wear a suit to the prom. I told her I wanted to change my name to Keith.

She took everything but the name change in stride, telling me that was all fine, but I should keep my name, because it was the name she gave me and I should honor it.

You might hear this story and think it's funny, or quaint. I will ignore the reality that a boy wishing to be a girl would not be seen in the same light. I will also ignore the fact that it is easier, in some ways, for little girls to try on all different types of gender roles, because the gender that is opposite of them is the preferred one. Being a tomboy is cool. It's funny. It's quirky. Being a girl who acts like a boy is, you know, BETTER. Boys don't get the same message about acting like girls.

What concerns me about those phases I went through is this. What, exactly, was I rejecting? I never, not for one minute, ACTUALLY wished I was a boy. I was comfortable in my body and my own skin. I was very straight, and knew that even then. I just didn't want to have to ACT like a girl, whatever that meant. I had this vague feeling of unease about being female in the world. I wanted to be the one in charge, the crazy one, the independent one, and somewhere along the way I learned that girls could not be that.

I wanted some practical things. Back in my boy phase, I did things that are in some ways the essence of what it means to be a guy. And no, I'm not talking about playing sports or laughing too loud, though I did those things too.

I took up space.

I sprawled around, took up room, threw my clothes (what I had of them) around the house. To this day, I will be the lone female who chooses to sit next to the adolescent boy who is all sprawled out over two seats on the train. I have actually on a few occasions sat right on one of these kids' legs, just to make the point that he didn't pay for two seats so he'd better move the hell over. They are always so surprised that they just sheepishly say "sorry, my bad," or something to that effect. I still feel that one of the great mysteries of marriage is why, when we have a king sized bed, I am forced to fall asleep with Gabe's knee on my ass.

I was small, but I didn't want to have to ACT small. I was pretty, but I didn't want to be TREATED pretty. What's sad to me today is that there should be nothing in the world wrong with being small and pretty. What's funny to me today is that at 11 years old I envisioned a world where a straight 17 year old boy wouldn't mind going to the prom with a girl in a suit.

We shouldn't try to convince ourselves that everyone should be strong because strong is better, or that everyone should be tough because tough is better. But we also shouldn't tell ourselves that girls who are strong and tough aren't girly or that boys who aren't aren't real boys.

I grew out of my boy phase into whatever phase I have been in since about age 14, hovering somewhere in between, choosing boys and later men who could accept my backwards ways and even appreciate them. I have gotten used to guys initially liking my "feisty" ways and then realizing that I am not actually feisty, I am opinionated and stubborn and terrible at backing down, and losing their interest for that reason. I have chosen a man who is sensitive and nurturing because I am not, and I feel that those are useful traits.

And I still feel somewhat gender-confused, somewhat adrift. I often don't fit in to groups of women or groups of men. I told a friend last night that I am 37 years old, and I still don't know what women talk about when they go in groups to the bathroom. I have never gone to a bathroom with another person, not even in high school. And I envy the girl-power of the close-knit groups of women I see who know something about being a woman that I just don't know, because I never learned it.

I mean, you can't know what you don't even know you don't know.

I never knew that I communicate like a man until I took this "Efficacy for Women" development course at work a few years ago, which was supposed to be empowering, and I learned that for all intents and purposes I speak and act like a man, which is supposedly preferred in the workforce, but has never gotten me anywhere, to be honest. I was what, 35 years old? And finally learning why I didn't know--really, I didn't--why other women or girls had been mad at me in my life. Realizing that even when I understood, I didn't. Oh, you were mad at me because I said something that hurt your feelings? But why would that hurt your feelings? I don't understand why people get sensitive, or cry, or feel hurt in some situations, and therefore I am a woman acting like a man, supposedly, but I am NOT a man, so no one forgives me for it. And believe you me I have ALWAYS been treated as a woman at work. I've never been invited into the boys club.

I'm not complaining; it's just odd. I am as curious about women as most men are. I see how they flirt, or toss their hair, or laugh, and I wonder why I can't do those things. I see mothers talking to babies in lilting voices and I feel like there's something wrong with me as I talk to my children and everyone else's as if they are just very small versions of adults. I have a hard time inserting myself into groups of women because I'm not sure what to say, what to talk about, and I am not saying that to say that I am somehow better than other women. I am truly envious of those things I never internalized. Because men don't think I'm one of the guys either, so sometimes I feel just adrift. Gabe has this problem too. He can have trouble being around guys, because he doesn't like hoppy beer or talking about rock bands or fishing or chicks, and yet he feels weird being the only guy chatting up the women. I always tell him that the guys we know can talk about a lot of different things, but I know where he's coming from--he never learned the cues, and he doesn't know how to use them. I get it.

This friend I was talking to last night told me that she has always seen me as very feminine...just not girly. She said I look feminine, I dress feminine, and I agreed. I said this: "I guess in some ways that made it easier. I looked like a girl, and guys liked me, so I never had to learn to act like someone else."

And that's the truth. I could give people shit and make fun of them, just like I did with my older brother, and they would decide I was flirting because that's what they wanted to believe. Inside I would think, no, I am actually making fun of you. REALLY, I AM. But it didn't matter. When I was 14 years old and some friends dragged me out of the house one Friday night, looking chagrined when they saw me with no makeup on, hair in a ponytail, jeans and knee high black leather boots and a Rolling Stones tshirt with the huge tongue on the front (sounds cool, huh? Well, not for a girl in 1990, NO SIR), I learned something. That cute boy everyone liked asked me out anyway. And I literally said to myself, at age 14, "Really? This is good enough? Well, I guess there's no need to ever play myself out."

The lesson was worth learning, but the message is still odd. That same boy broke up with me because he "didn't like my personality." Specifically, he told me that I didn't take him seriously enough and I was always cracking too many jokes. I guess I was supposed to be sweating him all the time, feeling his biceps or something, but I didn't know that, so I didn't do it, and he was telling me that there was some massive disconnect between my appearance and my behavior, and I assumed that was true.

I don't know. I feel like I am feminine because I am female. I feel like my husband is masculine because he is male. And maybe, for some people, it's the other way around.

When I had my head shaved for chemo, after the tears had subsided, I took a good hard look at myself in the mirror and told Gabe that I thought I looked like a boy. Like a male twin of myself. He sounded exasperated and told me I looked beautiful, that I couldn't look like a boy if I tried. And whether that was true or not, let's not lie: He was required to say that in that situation. Breast cancer can make you question the entire nature of femininity whether or not you were so inclined to question it. But the point is this: I did look feminine. Because I looked like myself. And I am female. That look in my eyes is all me, for better or worse.

I just don't want to raise kids who believe what I believed as a child, that being a man was worth more, that the things men were and did were more important. My mother didn't teach me that, so I think it's a societal thing, not a personal one. She never wore makeup and had little to no clothes and wore glasses and did most of the manual labor and I never saw her gossiping with other women or having coffee with them or whatever and I never, not for one second, thought she wasn't the most feminine person in the world. Because she was female and she was my main role model for what it meant to be a grownup who could never be a man.

I think we need to rid ourselves of the notion that there are things and traits that are male or female, not because it is untrue, but because we have not evolved to the point where all of the things that are "feminine" are lesser. I remember being in a Women Romantics class in college, and reading the poetry of the few female authors of the Romantic age. Other students thought their poetry was pedestrian, boring. I argued that they wrote about their lives, and their lives were different from the lives of men. So, they were writing about marriage and children, and Keats was writing about becoming one with fire. Perhaps that was because him mom did his laundry for him. Perhaps he was the one who wasn't fully grown.

A few days ago, Augie had a horrible cut on his finger. We have 57 different types of kid bandaids, and I asked him what he wanted. He said "well, I like Cars and Muppets and Lenny likes Dora and Disney Princesses." The kid was crying so hard I didn't get into it at the time, so I asked him about it today when I was checking to make sure the wound had healed.

I asked him why he had said that about the bandaids. I said, you love Dora. You love Snow White. Lenny doesn't really like princesses. You have never seen the Cars movie. You both like muppets. Did you think you should like those because you're a boy and she's a girl? And he said yes. So I asked him this:

But what's wrong with that? What's wrong with being a girl? Can't you think of any girls whom you would like to be like?

He immediately said, "Lenny."

I was proud of him. As he tumbled headfirst onto my lap by vaulting himself over the arm of the couch and proceeded to threaten to bite me all while wrestling me, I asked him this: "Can't you think of any other girls you'd like to be like," teasing him, baiting him, showing him that Katy kind of love. He said no, and laughed. I asked what about me? And he said:

No. You're a boy.

I was stunned, but played it off. I'm not a boy! What am I?

He was cracking up: "You're a boy. Mommy, you're a boy."

I tried to get serious, and looked at him: Augie, really. What am I? Am I really a boy?

No.

Am I a girl?

No.

Well what am I then?

You're a grown up.

And SHH, don't tell anyone, but I turned my head away and cried. But just a little.