Do you know that Ally McBeal is depicted as a 28 year old single woman? 28! This will come as a shock to those of you who are born 1987 below. Yes, we are older than Ally McBeal.
From pride and prejudice, to sex and the city, to bridget jones, the story about single women in her 30s is somehow fascinating, funny, sad, a perfect romantic comedy background story. Sometimes though, unfortunately, it feels like a disease. Like, when you are with your extended family and they started saying "this is why women shouldn't pursue a too high of education.. don't tell me you are pursuing a phd now?" or "don't be too picky.. just use your logic".. disease.. now, i don't mean to belittle anyone with this point of view, i do get where that view comes from.
First of all, and perhaps i am speaking only for myself, I DO want to get married and have kids. I am not "avoiding" it, I am somehow just not there yet. I DO open myself to people, meeting new friends, have an open mind etc etc, but as life sometimes is, it's just not clicking yet. And unfortunately I feel surrounded by a culture of it's better to be unhappily married than happily single.
Second, human beings have been known to connect things that are in fact have no connections (Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt). For example, if your parents do not agree of your relationship with your spouse, and you get married, if something bad happens and you get a divorce, people will automatically say, think, and even believe that the divorce is imminent and even guaranteed. Yet when your parents agreed to your marriage AND you get a divorce, then it's just "wasn't meant to be". Now I come from the culture of parent's blessing is very important and you cant even marry someone without their blessings, but i also came from a divorced parents who had a bad marriage and thus really hard to get their blessings so you see my predicament.
I had an interesting conversation with a female friend of mine, she's happily married, have 2 kids and is half way through her phd. I thought she wouldn't have to handle all that questions, but as it turns out, her family asked her when she was in applying her phd: "what would your husband feel?" and as we were talking, we were like thinking: mmm,, i dunno, proud? no?. So apparently a "too high education" doesn't only strike us single ladies, even married ones have them too.
I really can't help but wonder, why do we teach men they have to be superior to women in everything? money, education, wisdom? does superior mean you are a better human being? one of the default answer I hear often in Indonesia is: it's to protect women. Protect us from what? from trying to contribute to society? from trying to do some good in this world before we are dead? from trying to help our family by doing good in our jobs? It's very unfortunate that men's sense of self worth is from comparing yourself to somebody else. Shouldn't you be comfortable in your own skin that you can lift up and support another human being? I really do wonder..
From pride and prejudice, to sex and the city, to bridget jones, the story about single women in her 30s is somehow fascinating, funny, sad, a perfect romantic comedy background story. Sometimes though, unfortunately, it feels like a disease. Like, when you are with your extended family and they started saying "this is why women shouldn't pursue a too high of education.. don't tell me you are pursuing a phd now?" or "don't be too picky.. just use your logic".. disease.. now, i don't mean to belittle anyone with this point of view, i do get where that view comes from.
First of all, and perhaps i am speaking only for myself, I DO want to get married and have kids. I am not "avoiding" it, I am somehow just not there yet. I DO open myself to people, meeting new friends, have an open mind etc etc, but as life sometimes is, it's just not clicking yet. And unfortunately I feel surrounded by a culture of it's better to be unhappily married than happily single.
Second, human beings have been known to connect things that are in fact have no connections (Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt). For example, if your parents do not agree of your relationship with your spouse, and you get married, if something bad happens and you get a divorce, people will automatically say, think, and even believe that the divorce is imminent and even guaranteed. Yet when your parents agreed to your marriage AND you get a divorce, then it's just "wasn't meant to be". Now I come from the culture of parent's blessing is very important and you cant even marry someone without their blessings, but i also came from a divorced parents who had a bad marriage and thus really hard to get their blessings so you see my predicament.
I had an interesting conversation with a female friend of mine, she's happily married, have 2 kids and is half way through her phd. I thought she wouldn't have to handle all that questions, but as it turns out, her family asked her when she was in applying her phd: "what would your husband feel?" and as we were talking, we were like thinking: mmm,, i dunno, proud? no?. So apparently a "too high education" doesn't only strike us single ladies, even married ones have them too.
I really can't help but wonder, why do we teach men they have to be superior to women in everything? money, education, wisdom? does superior mean you are a better human being? one of the default answer I hear often in Indonesia is: it's to protect women. Protect us from what? from trying to contribute to society? from trying to do some good in this world before we are dead? from trying to help our family by doing good in our jobs? It's very unfortunate that men's sense of self worth is from comparing yourself to somebody else. Shouldn't you be comfortable in your own skin that you can lift up and support another human being? I really do wonder..
Comments
Post a Comment