Maybe you had this thought yourself, or someone hinted at it. You go from a relationship to another, but you struggle to find a partner. When friends insinuate that you may be too picky or too demanding or that simply you don’t want it enough, you object: you want to be with someone that is worth it, you don’t need to settle, you enjoy your freedom, you have so many friends, etc. But deep down, you can’t help but think- is it me?
On the surface, the idea that a woman has the power to attract and keep a man could be seen as quite flattering: it confers women the superpower of having control over men, but one doesn’t have to scratch the surface for long to see how harming this prejudice is, both to men and women.
Any idea of power is based on an imbalance, where one side is stronger than the other. Deep down behind the idea that women have power over men lies the idea that one can reduce men to certain simplistic traits. Often, the cliché that men are less emotional and mainly driven by their basic instincts and career aspirations. Partly this is why women are seen as responsible for attracting and keeping a man for what they are, while men are perceived to attract women with what they have.
The antidote to this, women are told, is to be perfect, that is, perfect to men. What perfect means is subject of heated discussion amongst women. Funnily enough, women spend a lot of time thinking about what men want, while men seem to spend quite a lot of time thinking about what they want (maybe we could learn from this). What I find specially interesting about this dynamic is how at some point this becomes totally independent of men themselves, and in turn it becomes a competition where women are competing against other women.
“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself…From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually…She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another…”
Ways of seeing, John Berger
What about men? I have never heard anyone tell a man that he cannot keep a woman, it must be that men lack that superpower. Men, however, are often accused of not wanting to commit, of being too selfish or even immature. Because many men think that women (above all women of a certain age) only want to tie the knot, they have to defend their freedom with the same fervor as some women their virginity. Behind this belief also lies a cliché about women, where women are perceived as being essentially clingy and nagging. This huge concession, not wanting to “lose” what is precious with anyone, makes some men confused and unable to decide. At the same time, this exacerbates the feeling in women that they are never enough.
It is high time we reviewed all these beliefs, we need to have a serious conversation. If clichés are clichés it is for a reason: there is some truth to them. However, the societal changes that have taken place in the past century have turned traditional roles upside down. As long as we keep these simplistic, inaccurate beliefs alive we will continue to misunderstand each other; isn’t it a shame?
