1.

Let’s talk about the Proverbs 31 woman. Oh. my. word. I grew up catholic, went to a Catholic boarding school, and grew up with Christian precepts as the main source of my spirituality, hence the title. I remember not being able to stand this woman the first time she was introduced to me. Granted, I couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 years old at this point, with not enough “life experience” but that unbowed spirit in me felt unsettled by her. I felt the same way years later; the many other times she was preached to me as the epitome of womanhood. I remember being baffled by this woman and the spell-binding effect she had on people because as far as I was concerned, she was making other women look like they were incompetent and/or inadequate.

Then I figured out that as a grown up, or maybe I should say, I theorized that she may be one of the first versions of men’s “fantasy woman” like the first “build a bear” ever recorded in religious history. This woman came back to mind again in college when studying a documentary called Killing Us Softly by Ms. Kilbourne. Kilbourne explores, among many other things, the standards of beauty. There is a part where Kilbourne mentions that women are expected to be both “virginal and experienced, to be both naughty and innocent”. Colloquially speaking, “a lady in the streets and a freak in the bed“, as Ludacris said.

2.

I took this to mean that there are various standards women are intended to live up to, some unattainable whilst others mandated. It is almost as though women can actually become anything that society wants us to be. And so those women who can’t and/or won’t are the problem. I used to be infuriated when I was in Zimbabwe, at how men would get bent out of shape when a woman couldn’t and/or didn’t want to cook, clean, work, rear the children and then be magnificent at “servicing” him all the time. As though to say women are by nature better at surpassing human capability in terms of how much we can bend to society’s standards. (Historically women have in fact done things fabulously well, we may have fooled ourselves and other men into thinking we are not human lol). By the way, men have complained and continue to complain about the same expectations! How about choking on our vomit as I said in my previous blog, this is a perfect example.

It does make me sad to say that the torch is then carried on by other women, we end up being pitted against each other too. Because for every woman who can cook, there is one who can’t or won’t, and for every small breasted supposedly well-proportioned woman, there is a fat, curvy, supposedly not so-well-proportioned woman, etc. This conversation is still alive and well today, and I feel like there is a state of denial which induces a state of stuck-ness that both men and women are experiencing about each other. We are suffering because of the illusions and delusions we have created about each other, some inherited from our (often male) predecessors.

3.

There is a group of us who have gotten off the rollercoaster whilst others would rather hang on to the fallacy. The Proverbs 31 woman preceded the feminist movement. What that means to me is, that some men have yearned for this “perfect woman” for a while because she even exists in a book thousands of years old. This ideal “damsel” in their heads, is one they must rescue even though she reads like a self-actualized male with female body parts. Women (and men) have been bamboozled into believing the “rescuer” exists and that men want to be that man. But looking at current male/female relations, there are men who have secretly despised this “rescuer” man too. I don’t see “Proverbs 32” on this man though by the way so that’s curious. No full chapter describing who he is and what qualities he would possess as a high value man of God, but what do I know right?

There has to be some manual that existed all over the world that most men read from, and they have now conveniently forgotten that they, as the existing dominant group in most recent cultures’ histories, created that rubric they are currently choking on. The rubric around what they expected women to do or be so they could be and have what they wanted. And now that society, through globalization and modernization (a mostly masculine-driven system), is now presenting women with another way of being in this current reality, some men are stuck and in denial. Some men are scared of this change, as some are all choking on their own vomit and yet putting it on women. Instead of participating in reimagining and redefining, with a humble posture and a willingness to let go of the fantasy they created so they too could actually be set free, they hurl insults and assaults, how civilized.

4.

And as far as straight female relations are concerned, instead of being celebrated for who we are individually, we become each other’s vices. Every woman who tries to live up to these standards of perfection and maybe ‘succeed’ to some extent, probably has the pressure to maintain it (something aging and death will challenge). For the actualized Proverbs 31 woman reading this and you are happy about, good for you. This is for the other women who choose another path.

It is important I state that there is a woman out there burdened and harmed by society for not achieving this “model of femininity”. It’s eventually a cycle, where women are competing with other women, or degrading other women, and yet if we actually sat down and talked to each other as fellow sojourners, it’s almost as though we are still not good enough for this society. No matter which version of woman you become. Good enough for who though right? That is an important question. Because as long as the point of being “beautiful” and being “the prize” is about any of society’s expectations, the feat is and will forever be endless and unconquerable.

Life isn’t worth much for me if I cannot have full control over my own body, including my own perceptions of it.