On The Politics of Being A Woman
wom·an
/ˈwo͝omən/
An adult human female who can cook, clean, be smart, not be smart, be smart while not being too smart...
Definition from Ghanaian society
As satirical as I am being, the construct of being a woman growing up was a checklist of things I had to acquire — or not acquire — in a bid to prepare myself for a future family. From when I was nine, my home had changed at some point to become a grooming camp — what I was being groomed for, I had no idea at that time. I remember having liked cooking as a kid, you know, before it became part of the checklist of being a woman. Every child has that faux cooking phase in their lives — the one that involves scrunching soft mud into delicious renditions of some food for an imaginary family. Back then, I’d spend the whole day huddled over clay dough, making pots and bowls that I’d later fill with sand and pond water for my imaginary children to feast on. I’d envy my older cousins who got to go to the kitchen to make real food, and I loved watching Sunday cooking shows sponsored by Maggi. But what I also remember from my faux cooking phase was my female cousin tiredly looking at my enthusiastic younger self and saying, “Wait till you reach my age. You would not think cooking is fun then.”
I became her age soon enough. And oddly characteristic of that age was me being stuck in the kitchen while my brother got to go and play outside because “I was becoming a woman and women needed to learn how to cook. How could I call myself a woman if I didn’t know how to cook?”. Twenty-one year old Price sees as many loopholes in this reasoning as much as the Price of then did. I confusedly wondered if cooking was specific to women, and if it was, did that make my dad a woman too because he had stood for four hours one Saturday afternoon preparing the best dish of Jollof I have ever had the pleasure of tasting. You couldn’t call yourself a woman if you couldn’t cook, after all.
I am not sure if I would have had as much displeasure with cooking if I was actually a good cook. But a combination of factors — including my being blind in one eye — made the process of learning to cook a living nightmare. I was skinny, I was weak, my mother was a terrible teacher... I could go on with the excuses that made me an inexperienced cook at twenty-one. If anything, though, what pulled me back from learning was that I couldn’t just learn how to cook for myself and for my future survival skills. No...cooking always had to be attached to the worry that nobody would want to marry me because I wouldn’t be able to do anything past boiling water. Why I couldn’t just learn for myself was a mystery, and I never was a patient detective.
My mother gave up on me ever getting married before I was eleven and my period came. I sometimes wonder if she took one look at me and saw the very long checklist she could never teach me to tick and gave up. I was happy she gave up when she did. I could go out once again to play, and to study as much as I wanted. I convinced myself jokingly that if puberty hit me good and I grew breasts, nobody would doubt whether I was a woman or not, and then I’d mischievously trick someone into marrying me. Puberty heard my request and thought it was better to not give me any. I never grew breasts bigger than my palm. And I let that define me as less of a woman for the longest time. I’d look at the voluptuous and curvy looking female figures in my life and lament that I would never be able to convince anyone that I was female. I understand now that such a feeling is baseless, and at twenty-one, I am trying to uncover the facade of it all, starting with getting rid of my pushup bras that I had started wearing at 16 to compensate for my lack of mammary tissue.
Quite naively, when I realised I couldn’t ‘look like a woman’ or do things women were supposed to do, I resorted to working hard to be a better person, detached from gender constructs and checklists. I told myself I’d study to be the best I could be, and maybe that would make up for the failure of a woman everyone thought I was. I realized too late that that was a fallacious dream. I worked hard to clinch the 1st position in class — out of 63 students — and to prove it wasn’t a fluke, I continued to do so till I graduated junior high. But even with my achievement of being a better student — a better genderless being — there were always criticisms of why I had succeeded. Most notable of these criticisms was the fact that I had only gotten 1st place because I didn’t have chores to do at home, and so had more time to study. Years after, I still remember these remarks when I win an award or do something worthwhile. I question if I only got to where I was because my failure to be a ‘woman’ allowed me to do so. But it hurts even more when, at the end of the rat race of seeking validation, my bid to be a better person is still attached to my being a woman. Even having worked so hard to be where I am today, I still receive ‘harmless remarks’ from family and friends (who I am sure mean well) that “book knowledge is not as important as house knowledge”, and that my 15 years of formal education would never be as valuable in their eyes if I do not get married or know how to cook and clean.
So, I have given up on being a woman in the traditional sense and of chasing a pipeline dream of a bra I can never fit. I have become tired of placing my identity in the hands of others to define, and in turn letting that definition brand itself on me like a marker. At this point, I am female and a woman because I feel that I am. And how I define what that means is up to me. I'd probably spend my whole life chasing that concrete definition. Or not. I don’t want to be too consumed if such a reality is not possible. In the meanwhile, however, I am just Price.
