When I first dated my future husband, there was a revealing encounter regarding his mother. My boyfriend’s mom used to visit him in his apartment and also helped to clean it even though it was a drive of 3 hours from her place to his apartment. When I stayed more frequently at my boyfriend’s, he would let his mother know that her frequent visits would not be appreciated anymore. He told me later that she didn’t like that she was uninvited and that she asked him, “Does Karin also clean the staircase sometimes?”

Ugh. (It was only a one-story apartment with no staircase inside, so she must have meant the staircase outside the apartment but inside the building.)

No! Of course, I would not clean the staircase. I had a full-time job and my own apartment to care for. Why would I want to clean the staircase in my boyfriend’s flat?

Obviously, she had always cleaned the staircase in the house for him. And now, when she couldn’t come as often anymore, she wanted to know whether I would take over that duty. And if I didn’t, then her son should better grant her access to his space so that she could clean his stairs.

That incident told me about the gender stereotypes my future mother-in-law had in her mind and also about the environment my boyfriend had grown up in. It would require some encouragement to get him to take over some household chores.

I like my MIL, and we get along well. She is a kind and generous lady. She just has some old-fashioned views about gender roles.

***

This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

In this series of posts, I reflect back on what it meant for me to grow up as a woman. So far, I have covered the experiences of physical aggression, sexual molestation, sexist career and dating advice, romantic relationships, and body image. In the next posts, I will write about expectations regarding household and childcare duties.

At home, when I was a little child of elementary school age, I witnessed how after our walks on Sunday mornings, my mother would hurry to cook lunch for the family, while my father was somehow entitled to relax in a chair in the living room and read the newspaper.

Why didn’t he help with the cooking? Didn’t he see how stressed out mom was? Why did we kids have to help, but our dad was allowed to just relax?

Later I realized that this was just their way of sharing their duties. And my mom’s duty was to cook. My dad did other stuff that my mom didn’t do (like all the administration stuff of tax paperwork, for example). But this was not as visible to me as the cooking.

When I was older (in my teenage years), my mom wanted to play tennis. However, playing tennis right after her day at school would mean that she could not cook lunch on that day. She told me about her inner conflict.

I said, “It’s okay. Play tennis. If it makes you happy then you should do it. Why are you concerned about Dad? He can take care of himself and microwave some canned food or so if he is hungry. Or did he ever forbid you to go to tennis and tell you to stay home and cook?”

“No, he didn’t say it directly,” she sighed. “But it is the way he looks at me, you know, with this reproachful look . . ..”

That was telling. There were no written gender-specific rules about who had to do what at home. There were just deeply ingrained role models, which were not explicitly stated. And there was an anticipatory obedience towards these roles from my mom’s side.

I managed to persuade my mom to go for her joy and independence and play tennis.

To this day, I still get triggered when I feel that I am doing too much to prepare lunch while my husband lies on the sofa. It always reminds me of the situation at home, which I perceived as unfair when I was a child. I don’t want that in my relationship. And so, I’m trying to make sure that we distribute our duties more fairly. This isn’t always easy. But it is a work in progress.

***

This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

I am aware that there are more aspects regarding a woman’s body image than hair length and color, body hair, fingernails, and breast size, which I have covered in the previous blog posts. The aspect of body weight, for example, and how girls try to stay slim in times of social media and how that leads to lots of cases of anorexia. I haven’t covered the topic of weight here because I have no gender-specific stories to share about that.

I did have fluctuations of weight because of overeating due to stress starting around age twenty and later weight loss around age fifty with a variety of measures like eating no carbs in the evening and later skipping dinner entirely—not primarily to lose weight, but to sleep better at night. Even though my weight-loss journey might be an interesting topic for another post, it was not gender specific. So, I won’t go into that here.

Another aspect regarding the topic of body image would be the pressure for women to look youthful and wrinkle-free and to wear makeup.

Then, there is gender-specific body language. Women are expected to smile. They are expected to not take up much space with their bodies, keep their arms close to their body, keep their legs closed when sitting, tilt their heads in a conversation, and walk in a certain way.

I was admonished by my mom for not smiling enough, not wearing makeup for special occasions, not walking gracefully enough, and not closing my legs when sitting down.

I do not intend to shock anyone with my outer appearance. I am not inclined to dress my hair in punk style or have piercings all over my face. I also do not intend to be dressed up like a Barbie doll and get looks of admiration or whatever. I sort of want to stay below the radar and am happy when people don’t notice me too much.

I want to walk around as being me. Just being comfortable in my own skin. And not having to spend too much money or time on my appearance. Anything that takes too much time (like ironing clothes, shaving my legs, or dying my hair–forget it. I won’t do it).

But as these stories have shown, occasionally, I bumped into other people’s comments.

***

This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.

As a teenager, I had very flat breasts. When I was fifteen years old, my mom took me to a lingerie shop to buy a bra to wear with the ball gown for the course prom of the dance class. However, the saleswoman in the shop looked at me with compassion and said, “No, sorry, but for that small size we don’t have any bras.”

Never mind. But what was I going to wear under the ballgown now so that my nipples didn’t shine through? I don’t remember how we handled it, but that was the first time that I was told that my breasts somehow didn’t fit the norm.

Later, in my mid-twenties, my boyfriend remarked that I had small breasts and that my self-confidence must have suffered from that and I must feel sad about it.

I said, “No. Why? I am okay with my small breasts.” I found that they had some advantages. I could sleep on my stomach. I could go running without wearing a bra. It was comfortable.

But he didn’t believe me and kept insisting. He said, no, he had talked to his buddy about it, and they both agreed that big breasts were something so beautiful that women with flat breasts must be very sad about their body.

Sure. Two guys having a meeting and deciding that they know best how a woman feels about her own body. . . LOL. It was fruitless to argue with his overconfidence coupled with his stubborn ignorance. In retrospect, this was one of the many moments that should have shown me that it would be best to leave this relationship.

After having two kids and breastfeeding for several years, my breasts became larger. Again, to me, it just was what it was. Neither good nor bad. I was grateful that I was still able to sleep on my stomach.

During the years of breastfeeding, I had to wear a bra for the first time in my life—not because the breasts were larger, but because I needed to keep the nursing pads in place so that the milk wouldn’t leak out. However, after several years of breastfeeding, I gladly threw the bras away. I never got used to wearing them.

However, later when I was in my fifties, one day, my mom said, “May I ask you a personal question? You don’t wear a bra, do you?”

“No, I don’t wear one. Why are you asking?”

“Well, it really doesn’t look that good,” Mom replied with a slightly disgusted look in her face.

Sigh! Flat breasts evoked unsolicited comments. Larger breasts without a bra got me critical comments, too. I wanted to scream, “Everyone, please, just shut the f*ck up!” But I didn’t. I suppressed my angry outburst, smiled politely, and walked away.

Can I please just exist and be myself without getting unsolicited comments on my body?

Probably not. Being a woman, I am supposed to adjust my body to adhere to a myriad of unwritten rules. And if I don’t, I get something like notification pop-ups on a computer all over the place:

“Attention!

You do not look pretty enough. Do you really want to continue?

Kind regards,

Your well-meaning social enforcement team”

***

This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.