No trophy for ‘good’ women

Growing old is not all bad. During a date with him, he suddenly needs to read something but he does not have his reading glasses. So you loan him your reading glasses. How cute is that? Plus in a few years you can get appointed to big government jobs. I mean, if these are not incentives to grow old, I do not know what is!

As young girls, we were always told to be good. Do the right thing (I know right is relative) and hang around the right girls. If a certain girl had a bad reputation, proven or otherwise, you were never to be seen with her or else. So we grew up, trying to be or pretending to be good.

Then there were the girls who did not try to be good. They did what they wanted. We all grew up and went our separate paths. Then Facebook happened and we started looking for each other. And there was the shocker! The bad girls (most I swear!) who we had been warned against; the ones our mothers said would not amount to much, well here they were, married with reasonable looking children.

These bad girls now good women had married and settled well. Then I looked at the rest of us good girls, many, please do not make me swear twice. We, who had done the right things, were struggling a bit, some more than others with relationships.

I have really tried to understand this phenomenon. Being a ‘good’ woman does not equate to a good life. Maybe because what society calls a good woman is almost always a doormat of a woman. I read somewhere, “A good woman will always win in the end!” I am still wondering in the end of what? Life?

Listen, I have no issue with being good. The good of not breaking laws, being kind to people in general, looking after your children and the poor. I have an issue when women are expected to grin and bear bad treatment, when women are not allowed to speak up because good women are not confrontational. I have an issue with the way society thinks a good woman cannot and should not express her desires and needs. I really have an issue with this good being a box for suffering women.

My grandma was a good woman. She got married and never left, even when his left hook was constantly in her face. She gave birth to a number of children and raised them almost alone; including the ones that were ‘gifted’ to her from my grandfather’s exploits.

When the missionaries came, she accepted their ‘good’ news, cut her hair and wore a long dress and headscarf, you know, like a good woman. She read her Bible daily, prayed and brought up her children. She had shops, she would sew and learnt how to bake. In the end, she died of a broken heart. What did she win? Please do not tell me about heaven, unless you have gone to those proverbial streets of gold and come back.

Married to the love of her life when she was a young good girl, a certain lady endured years of domestic abuse and neglect. Twenty-eight to be exact. After twenty-eight years of praying for her husband to change, twenty-eight years of suffering with five children, of going without and then getting high blood pressure, God answered her prayers. Her husband came back with diabetes and gout. She is now his home nurse who works in a high-pressure environment. What did she win, please?

The examples of good women are many. I think we are better off with happy women. Women who achieve their dreams and speak their minds (in context though). Women who do not care to be good for society, but are good and happy with themselves. Women who do what is right for them and do not fear to be labelled bad. Because there is no trophy for suffering.

A happy woman, who does what she wants, is a good woman who not only wins in the end, but throughout her life.

[email protected]