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Post by Miss Brightside on Apr 13, 2010 20:49:36 GMT -5
To compete with Ayra At popular request, I'm putting up my English article thingymabob as well. I think it's laughable, I just rambled for five hours.
You Can’t Live With Them, and You Can’t Live Without Them That’s What Society Tells Us, At Least
What was that? I’m sorry; I was busy reading my teen-pop bubblegum Cosmopolitan-wannabe magazine. You see, there’s this article I really want to learn from. It’s about flirting techniques so I can “hook the man of my dreams” at any time, in any situation. Because, you know, I’ll have to be prepared for when Mr. Right walks through the door, or I’ll be alone forever, and that’s a fate worse than death. I mean, didn’t you watch Thelma and Louise?
The more I look around, the more I’m noticing the desperation of women when it comes to falling in love. Whether driven by loneliness, jealousy of others, or a lack of self-worth, it seems that a woman is nothing without a man.
This belief stems back to the dawn of time. Women were once considered the property of men, and once they were married, most of their life was over. All they had to do now was cook, clean, sew, give birth, and raise the children. An easy life, right?
Unfortunately enough, this was the mentality of everyone, including most women, until about the 1920s when WWI hit and women really started making a difference. Despite our fight for suffrage and equality in the workplace, women still aren’t up to the same standard as men in society’s eyes – in fact, not even in the government’s eyes. If you look, you’ll find that there is nothing in legal document stating that gender equality is a law. So what’s stopping us? Why don’t we march up to Capitol Hill and right this?
The answer is that we don’t believe it ourselves. When asked what a woman wanted her daughter to have the most in her life, fifty-six percent said “a happy marriage and children.” A similar poll told that forty-six percent of women would feel they didn’t have a “fulfilling life” without marriage or at least a relationship. Women don’t seem to find themselves to be much of anything without a man to tell them how pretty they are and how special everything they do is.
Not to say I haven’t been there. I have. My main approach to life is one of independence, yet hypocrisy plagues me like it does every other human being. Back in the fall and some of the winter, I was in a very fulfilling relationship. I was euphoric when he was near, thanks to hormones and endorphins. It wasn’t love, but it was at least severe “like.”
After he and I split paths, I was reduced to nothing. I was a pile of self-pity. In order to remedy this, I began rebounding time and time again on different guys, leaving a wake of destruction in my path with every heart I broke. Why? Because I needed a man to tell me that I was worth something. In time, I healed, and I can’t believe I ever felt that way. I let him define me, let him control my actions indirectly, and that’s not cool.
Ladies, stand up. Don’t listen to Pride and Prejudice’s opening line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Pay no mind to the obsessive need in Fiddler on the Roof to marry off daughters as quickly as possible. Stave off the desperation brought on by the women in He’s Just Not That Into You. The key to success is not in a man, it’s in you. Significant other or not, you can do anything. Don’t let society’s stereotypes tell you otherwise.
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