The Woman In Me
As a young adult, I considered feminism a worthy cause. I could often be found tucked away behind the covers of an Atwood novel or Ms. magazine. I learned the language of activism and spoke it fluently. My bookshelf boasted an impressive array of authoresses from Jane Austen and Virginia Woolfe to Gloria Steinam and Naomi Wolf. My friends and I, keen and passionate for justice, conversed endlessly about the evil patriarchal empire. We lamented for our fellow sisters and cursed the oppressed state of the nation.
I was unable to see the irony of my convictions at the time. I was working part-time for a prominent bookstore chain and studying part-time at a University. While women’s issues apparently burned wild fire in my heart and soul, I achieved little in the interest of feminism. In fact, I was surprisingly distant from the cause for one so well informed. I enjoyed “identifying” from a distance. I needed to feel as though I was struggling, fighting and living passionately. My feminist phase was akin to my Buddhist meditation phase and my Ayn Rand objectivism phase. All worthy pursuits in their own right, I now recognize these periods as my half-hearted effort to believe in something.
When I wasn’t occupied with my feminist readings, I was worrying about my appearance and desirability as a young woman. In my early twenties, I wasn’t much concerned with personal accomplishment. Instead of pursuing a career or aiming for the top, I spent my time whittling away my student loan, scribbling random feelings in a journal, drinking rye and ginger and calling myself a writer. I was a self-described slacker, afraid to try, passionate yet passive. Armed with useless ideology I could not produce.
Eventually I met the man of my desire, fell in love and was married (committing feminist blasphemy by changing my name and wearing white). Soon we were pregnant. During the first few months of my pregnancy, I began to re-visit, in a more earnest way, my feminist self. As I cared for the growing life inside of me, I experienced, for the first time, a true sense of personal responsibility. My life, spirit and aspirations required urgent observation, demanded care and evaluation. With some surprise, I realised the friends with whom I once shared my fervent feminism were now successful in their chosen fields. I painfully realised that while I was ranting and raving about equality and abolishing injustice, my friends were out there, in the real world, living it, becoming
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