I come from a family of very strong and very stubborn women.
My grandma is notorious for insisting she can fix the plumbing herself, even when sewage starts backing up into the bathtub of her house. My mother was adamant that she and I could load all of the furniture from our living room onto the moving truck with no help from the plethora of very willing neighbors. My sister played a good year and a half of competitive soccer with not only a torn ACL, but an ACL that had been torn for so long that it was literally missing by the time she had surgery and that is just the tip of the iceberg. My mom has two sisters. Between the three of them, they have five daughters, and every single one of us is painfully stubborn.
I always felt I needed to prove my competence. My self-sufficiency. My strength. I’m pretty sure that this translates into me carrying on the family legacy of being stubborn as hell. It has been pointed out to me, however, that, as a result, I may have a teensy little problem with accepting help. Go figure. In the past month, for example, the following ill-advised (if hilarious) decisions have proved testament to my obstinacy.
“I don’t need to call maintenance. I’m sure I can unclog the sink drain by myself.” – Me, three weeks ago, prior to fishing a trashcan full of unidentifiable black, hairy slime from the pipe beneath our sink. Our room smelled like rotting fish for the rest of the day. I almost puked.
“I don’t need to wake someone up to give me contact solution. I’ll just use the nasal spray – it’s saline, right?” – Me, last weekend, prior to spending the remainder of said weekend blinking fire out of my eyeballs.
And finally, “I don’t need help waxing my eyebrows. I’m sure I can do it myself.” – Me, twenty minutes ago, prior to ripping out half of one eyebrow and balding a part of my face that was never meant to see the light of day. I’m about to become really good at makeup.
Now, help has always been available to me. I doubt, however, that faced with any of the above situations above again I would ask for it. The truth is, I am capable of waxing my own eyebrows and sleeping in my contacts, and snaking the sink drain. I just probably shouldn’t. It’s not really in anyone’s best interests, especially not mine. And it’s pretty normal for the awesomely tough women in my family to act completely, blindly, stupid about some of this stuff. We think we have something to prove, and if we’re being honest, we do.
We want to prove our strength in a world that denotes female strength very strictly. We want to prove our independence in a world in which female independence is viewed as somehow revolutionary. We want to be capable in a world where asking for help is synonymous with admitting that we are incapable. I, like most of the women in my family, want to be tough. I want to prove that women are just as capable as men, but I’m going about it all wrong.
Being strong is traditionally equated with being masculine, while being weak is traditionally associated with being feminine. As a woman, I feel compelled to refute the idea of femininity as weakness. I do this by not asking for help. The fact is, however, that by not asking for help, I am enforcing the very gendered stereotypes that I am trying to refute. If I don’t ask for help simply because I am a woman and I don’t want people to think I am weak, then I am inadvertently saying that I’m the exception. I’m saying that women are weak and I am not when what I should be saying is that womanhood does not equal weakness. Period. I don’t need to separate myself from the definition of femininity. I need to redefine what femininity is.
So, to all the powerful, stubborn, bossy women out there, keep doing what you’re doing. But remember that you aren’t somehow un-feminist when you asking for help; you’re redefining what it means to be a woman. You’re saying to the world that you are a strong woman who needs help from time to time and that is what femininity really means.
