It was a typical day; my mom had been out of the country for a couple of weeks by then, and my dad, brother and I had actually been managing to clean the house, feed ourselves, and maintain some semblance of a normal life. (If your mom also runs your house and keeps it functioning on a day-to-day basis, you'll understand why this is such an amazing feat for a suddenly mom-less household.)
But the one thing all of us neglected to remember was the laundry. We all simultaneously remembered this crucial fact when we all realized our dirty clothes piles were far larger than the clean clothes pile. Both my dad and my brother came to me separately at two different occasions to bring up the laundry issue; okay, no big deal. They both work, and I haven't found a summer job yet so I had a lot of free time. So on Friday, in addition to cooking dinner, washing dishes, and vacuuming the living room, I did the three loads of laundry we had allowed to pile up for weeks. Again, no big deal. I'd set aside all day for chores anyway.
The big deal arose later, when our dryer decided to spontaneously combust and refuse to dry our live's wardrobes. My dad, in true dad fashion, tried to fix the dryer but only ended up making it worse, so our last resort was hanging up a clothes line in the basement old-country style in a poor attempt to dry our clothes by the next day. (Seriously, how did any of us survive without electricity?) My food was cooking, so I only hung up half the laundry before I had to go tend to it. While I was up there, I asked my brother if he could go hang the rest of the laundry, since it was still sitting wet in the basket. With a horrified look, he turned to me and responded in a tone that implied I had just asked him to hand over his first-born son to the old lady down the street we were all convinced offered weekly sacrifices to the Dark Lord:
"But your.... girl stuff is mixed in there."
My "Girl Stuff." By which I assumed he was referring to my bras and underwear, not the tampons, hair spray, birth control, Bioré nasal strips, and Q tips that usually encompasses the general phrase "Girl Stuff." I was, very obviously, taken aback, so I stared at him for a good few minutes before I found my voice long enough to say: "But I just put all your boxers on the clothes line, what's the big deal?" My dad, in his infinite wisdom, chose that moment to emerge into the kitchen, usually no-man's-land for him, and said: "He's right, it's not proper, Ci."
Now, this is not a criticism of my dad or brother; they're actually pretty chill and progressive guys, my dad for being raised in a conservative Iranian home, and my brother for being raised by that same conservative Iranian. They're both usually pretty open about gender roles, and are never purposefully sexist. But that does not mean they are immune from falling into the normative stereotype. For example, right now. So I went downstairs and finished hanging the laundry, because I decided the argument wasn't worth the effort. But why did I think that? That argument should ALWAYS be worth the effort.
Why is it ok for me to hang my brother's disgusting boxers on a clothes line, but god forbid he has to touch one of my bras or panties? Why do I have to hide my pads and tampons in ever-increasingly original places around the bathroom because God forbid, my brother finds one on accident and learns that his sister menstruates like any other human girl? Why do I have to hide my birth control by calling it my "medicine" lest my brother and dad be faced with the possibility that I'm a sexually active young woman? Why is he allowed to walk around in his boxers and no shirt on a particularly hot summer day, but if I have shorts and a sports bra on, my dad gives me a pained look and tells me to "put a shirt on, your brother is home."?
Why the stigma surrounding women's bodies? Why am I hiding my body's natural functions from my male family members in order to maintain this illusion that I am, in fact, comprised of bunnies and rainbows and unicorns, rather than bras, periods, and birth control?
While I was hanging my dad and brother's wet dirty laundry on that clothes line, (neither of them had seemed troubled I was handling their delicates, mind you) I realized I had been changing and policing myself to adapt around them and their lives, so they wouldn't have to be uncomfortable or inconvenienced by me and my truths. I opened my pads or tampons in my room beneath the covers before going to the bathroom to switch them out so they wouldn't be able to hear the annoyingly loud wrappers through the wall. I drop off and pick up my own birth control prescription, even if it's inconvenient or they're going to pick up their own prescriptions anyway. I wash my own laundry separately from theirs, I always have perfume or deodorant on, I'm always fully clothed in the house (against my will) and my legs and underarms are always shaved.
But no more. Not to say I'm going to turn into a smelly, hairy, caveman who leaves tampons hanging in the kitchen, but I don't think it's fair to continue to hide my own daily and personal hygiene rituals to appease my brother and dad. It's definitely time they woke up and smelled the laundry, and also actually did that laundry for once.
Because the truth of the matter is, gentlemen, that women bleed once a month. Sometimes, they even accidentally bleed through their underwear if it's a particular heavy month. They wear bras and underwear. Sometimes they take birth control pills and sometimes they miss a spot shaving. You know, sometimes, they just want to walk around the house in a sports bra and not worry about being shamed for it because it's "not proper."
Women have been taught from a young age that they must hide these "unpleasant" things about themselves, that it's not appropriate to parade these things around in public. So young girls are left to fend for themselves, figure everything out on their own because menstruation isn't shown in mainstream media; there aren't movies that feature a girl getting her first period and freaking out about it to assure us it's normal when it happens to us. There are no movies about girls "finding themselves" and learning about their own bodies, even while there is a plethora of young male "coming of age" movies that teach them everything they'll ever need to know.
It's time to end that ridiculous precedent that teaches girls to be ashamed of their bodies while boys are allowed to celebrate theirs. I hate my period as much as the next girl, but it's no more embarrassing than a boy's wet dream or morning wood. My birth control pills are not a source of shame, and neither are my brother's condoms. My dirty underwear is no more disgusting than my brother's boxers. ...Okay, actually, that may be wrong. Everyone knows that guy's dirty boxers are the most disgusting thing on the planet. But I digress.
It might be too late for me to change my brother and dad completely, but it is not too late to change the way society views women's bodies and bodily functions. With all this talk about who controls a woman's body and what they control about it, the discussion about what those bodies even do has fallen to the wayside, and has been left there for decades. It's time to stop pretending that girl's bodies are some mythical land that cannot be discovered or studied, or even outright ignored. My body is just as important as my brother's body. And my laundry is just as important as his also.
