My mother didn’t raise me to be a wife. She didn’t sit me on the counter and teach me how to be a quiet girl. My mother didn’t teach me how to appeal to the masses- she didn’t tell me how to become someone’s dream girl. I’m not wifey material and I truly and honestly do not care.
We live in this strange social media time-warp of sexism. I am bombarded with photos of women in aprons cooking half naked and all I can think about is that time I tried to make fried dough and got hot oil on my hands. I see pictures of girls “staying in” because that apparently makes a girl more valuable. I see celebrities being compared to one another- one worthy of the title “wife” and one who somehow is not.
Wifey doesn’t go out- she shouldn't be allowed to have fun even when she isn't with you. Even when she is a nameless ideal you’ve painted up your head, she still shouldn't be out without you. Wifey doesn’t party- she doesn’t drink or participant in activities that the same man who is dreaming of her is. Wifey doesn’t date around- she should be committed to a faceless man who she isn't even with. Wifey doesn’t enjoy herself- she works and goes to school and drinks tea at night. Wifey doesn’t talk out of turn- she isn’t a feminist or a scholar or a loudmouth. Wifey is not real.
I read through the rules a man I don’t know created about what it means to be someone’s girl and I realize I am not any of these things. I am not some figment of imagination that somehow finds the perfect balance that makes me desirable to men. I go out and I party on weeknights and I write feminist prose and I sit in the front row of every class and talk to loudly when I raise my hand and I don’t cook steak in a mini skirt and I wear too much makeup sometimes and I date boys and I lie to boys and I like my friends more than the guys I go out with- I’m not wifey material. I don’t care one bit. Do you think my mother carried me for nine months, my father pushed me through twelve years of school and college, and my sisters taught me how to be my own woman so I could be someone’s wife? Do you think I was brought onto this earth so I could be someone’s? I am someone. Not someone’s.
I’m not wifey material. I’m hardly dateable if I’m going by these standards some dude put on Facebook. But that is not my goal. We need to stop teaching young girls that it is somehow a goal to be a man’s dream. We need to stop teaching girls that it is a goal to be a man’s. Period.
My mother didn’t raise me to be a wife. She raised me to be a heavy-handed writer with more opinions than breath in me. She taught me how to say “no” and tell people when they are stepping on my feet. My mother did not raise me for twenty one years so I could be someone’s ideal. She raised me to be a poet, a feminist, a friend, a sister, a good person. My mother didn’t raise me to be a wife- she raised me to be me.
