“So I'm not a real woman”
Maybe you missed it, I certainly did, so you must have been cozy with me under a rock, but let me catch you up. Serena Williams, you know, the grunting tennis player, said in an interview with the Herald Sun the following: “I have so much respect for so many women. I am about to be a real woman now, you know?” Look, you would shed a tear over that, it's sweet of her, only then I found out that I don't belong to the women she means. Aiaiai. The statement was about being pregnant, becoming a mother, and all the other women who have ever brought a child into the world. She is expecting her first. Okay, okay Serena, I was a bit taken aback by that.
I am on an editorial team with quite a few women per square meter. If one isn't on her period, the other one is. The colleague on the left is on the line (and otherwise the one on the right), the next one has breathtaking expensive boots bought and there is grumbling about men. Women things, yes. If you ask me, all very real specimens. Even though we may not be proud mothers of two (or three, or four) and giving birth to a little one is still uncharted territory. And a few actually are; in my eyes, they are just as much women as the childless (or child-free, you can call it that too) rest. By the way, they are also masters in the planning aspect of life, good grief, because the hockey practice is ticked off in one breath with the laundry and a business lunch. Now, Serena probably doesn't say this to turn women who don't see motherhood that way (or can't have children, let's not forget that) around, but I don't find it very handy or three-musketeer-like collegial of her. If I decide not to have children, and as you know they are not in my five-year plan, I don't feel any less feminine about it. If a woman cannot have children, she is not any less real because of it. And honestly, since when is having children the highest achievable goal in life? I certainly believe that giving birth brings out the primal instinct of being a woman. I am also convinced that you will forever be in a loving state towards your child. But that doesn't mean that the childless woman doesn't know what love is or isn't a real woman.
“Since when is having children the highest achievable goal in a woman's life?”
Anyway, quite dubious, because what actually is a real woman? According to Wiki, I'm completely safe, because you are a woman if you are an adult human of the female sex. Relief all around. I was starting to doubt my womanhood a bit after Serena's statement (not really, don't worry). But the last time I checked in the smallest room, I was still in the reassuring Wiki category. Although you might start to doubt if you see me darting around in Allstars without makeup on the weekend, but we won't talk about that. One in five women in the Netherlands chooses not to bring children into the world, says the CBS, even though they can.
I think it's beautiful when a woman chooses to have a child. But not being a real woman if I don't experience this? Hmmm, I don't think so. It could just be that your life path happens to take a different turn. So Serena, I especially hope that you feel just as much a woman after your childbirth and as a mother of your child as you do now. Because actually, it's just a shame that you have to have a child for that.
Source: Lifestyle.one
