At the age of fourteen, my grandmother told me about her own adolescence. She said, “I’m going to tell you what my mother did not tell me, if you want to stay home and read, it’s okay.”
While at first puzzled, I listened intently. My grandmother, born in 1929, began to tell me about her teenage years. Growing up in the Great Depression, she threw herself into books, the one way she could escape her dire and tumultuous surroundings. She earned the top grades in her class, year after year until she became her school’s salutatorian when she graduated in 1947. But that still wasn’t enough. “How are you supposed to meet a man when you’re always home reading all the time?” Her mother asked. My grandmother had not thought about it since learning was her passion. Nothing in that time period was worse than being single. Even if you were a woman who succeeded in every academic aspect. “In my time,” my grandmother said, “I knew college was not an option. I had to get married.”
Now it’s 2017. So many of us female students are now in college. We have the chance to pursue what we want to, and to live with exponentially more freedom than women did in years past. But especially in times like these frigid, often desolate and bleak winter months, we still feel expectations from society and older generations to be cuffed.
Rather than encourage young women to find confidence within themselves, it seems like society makes them feel as if they’re incomplete on their own, and with Love Actually playing on every channel accompanied by a Jared or Kay Jewelers advertisement every ten minutes it is constantly reinforced.
Society tells us that we are inadequate or incompetent without someone else. If all women felt self-sufficient think of how many industries would fail. This is the time where the beauty industries make their profit; so many women feel expected to make up their faces in the hopes of finding someone to get through the seemingly endless winter months. Movies make the holiday season look romantic and magical. The snow falls, the fire roars, and the idea of love seems to be everywhere. And so being alone is seen as a bad thing.
The reality is, while so many of us are worrying about what is expected of us or who we should be looking for, girls in Pakistan, Cambodia, and Nepal can’t even go to school. Girls in Guinea, Djibouti, Somalia, and many other African and Asian countries are being genitally mutilated. Girls in our own country are facing discrimination in so many aspects of life.
While we live in a different America than my grandmother did, these same expectations are reinforced especially in this misogynistic and hateful presidency. It then fuels a divided nation, generation, and media. The more women let society influence the way they look at themselves, the more power it has. The more power we let it have.
As college females, we can make a difference by looking outside of ourselves and insecurities. Rather than trying to find someone else to realize our worth, we can find our passions and let them propel us forward. This is not a time in which we have to be coupled up. This is not a time in which we need to find dates. With so much injustice and inequality other members of our own gender face daily, this is the time we need to act. We cannot let the words instilled in women of past generations continue to make us insecure when on our own.
Even the actions that seem small can make the biggest difference. Getting involved with what inspires you this season can inspire other women to do the same. Becoming active in organizations offered at your school can change not only the way you look at life but the way you truly live it.
So, if you want to go out, do so. If you want to stay in and read, it can have the same effect. Just make sure that the only voice you listen to this season is your own.
“Uncuffed” during “cuffing season”? More like free to make your own choices. Able to do what makes you happy without reporting back to anyone or feeling the need to embellish yourself for their approval. Empower yourself by embracing what makes you the most passionate.
Focus on you, the rest always falls into place.