For my friends who have known me for a long time and are close to my heart, they know that my past relationships can be pretty much written into a 50 volume-long novels (yea, comparable to Days of Our Lives), possibly captivating the readers with acts of suspense, violence, love, romance, travel tales, adventure, family tragedy, psychology and detective works.
During the conversation, I suddenly remembered and brought up a conversation I had with my Mum regarding someone we know. Mum commented that sometimes men do cheat on their wives and putting up with their acts of infidelity (and disgrace) is a very womanly or wifey thing to do.
'Look at Uncle Dave and his wife! He used to cheat on his wife too but she put up with it and look how happy they are now?'
With all due respect for the traditional streak in her, I cannot and will never agree with that statement/opinion.
Women have transformed a lot over the past century into strong, independent individuals who can fend for ourselves, with some doing even better than men. We are no longer financially dependent on men and sitting at home waiting for them to bring the dough home, nor are we the shielded fragile porcelain dolls voided of all social networking and exposure to all elements of economical stress or treachery of the materialistic world anymore. The existence of numerous female entrepeneurs like Estee Lauder, JK Rowling and Oprah Winfrey are examples of women with courage, foresight and business mind.
Having said so, while we were relating our own stories of strength, courage and strong-mindedness, I thought I caught sight of small wells of tears at the corner of her eyes, whilst I myself was honestly trying to contain and suppress the sadness in me as the memories forced itself out of the dungeon in my mind, diving into the pools of emotions in me.
'Are we transforming too fast for our own good?' was the question which occupied my train of thoughts subtlely for the rest of the day.
Could we be using the unyielding and sovereign facet to hide our emotions, soft-heartedness and those tiny weeny bits of fragility still existing in us? We crave for equality with men and social status over the last decades and have since nurtured and edged ourselves towards autonomy and masculinity but have we evolved as well from our emotional side, so much so that we can easily move on from pain and memories as quickly as most men can do?
Despite being commented upon as 'masculine', 'strong' and 'domineering' by my friends, they also cannot deny the fact that I am just as emotional and sentimental and often find it hard to move on from a phase or memorable episode/chapter of my life.
While most women are seen as being near to equal to a lot of men, are we really so?
Are we trying to transform too fast as we seek for women's rights/equality, that we decided to bury the true side of us and lock our femininity and compassion in, in fear that letting them show would endanger our establishment/social status?
There is no universal answer/truth to this but one thing's for sure:
When women do some self-reflection/soul searching on this, we will have a higher tendency to admit/show our weakness in this aspect compared to men, who are usually born with bigger/more undestrctable balloons of ego.
Agree?
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