Damsels and Dames and Everything In Between

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a woman.  I mean, I've been fed all of this nonsense ever since I was a child by everyone.

"Sit up straight, Anna."

Anna, a lady doesn't talk with her mouth full.

A woman belongs in the kitchen, does the laundry, has her husband's slippers for him when he gets home.

O_O

Whoa. None of it ever sat right with me.  I mean, when I burped, I enjoyed the meal! Was that a sin?  And why shouldn't I enjoy playing with GI Joes and blowing things up?  I liked back yard baseball just as much as I enjoyed baking a good batch of cookies.  I loved watching my brothers play video games growing up and learning all about X-Men and Pokemon and freaking Dragon Ball Z.

But girls.... I mean... I was an outcast essentially.  None of it was proper. None of it was acceptable.  I still have this daily battle of what it means to be feminine and be "appealing" to men as a woman.  What if I do, indeed, need to reject this more aggressive side of me in lieu of a far more gentile, pleasing, submissive, dainty form?  I mean, those were the girls that got the guy, right? The ones in need of saving. And I have never been that way.  I'm not going to wait for some prince on a "noble steed" to swoop in and steal MY KILL on that dragon! I want that thing's head mounted over my fire place, not our fireplace.

Don't misunderstand me. I like men. Very much. I just don't know that as a society, we have this femininity business figured out.  The image that is conjured when I thought of a good wife and a "proper" woman when I was younger was this:

Yea. Okay June Cleaver with your pans and house hold appliances and dapper looking husband swooning at the sight of your apron. 

I can do that, right?

Sure, I can clean and I can cook and I can bake. I haven't rejected all of these so-called-feminine things.  But I mean if we go back...

Okay. Even further...

DAMNIT!  Okay. I'm talking like pioneers here.

Yes! See now these were women.  This was before modern day society put us in pearls with a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a book in the other with hubby's slippers in our teeth.  Before beauty was in make up instead of when a good woman worked a good hard day with her husband to really put food on the table.  There is something incredibly stoic and respectable about working a long day in the sun, farming the land, taking care of a farm.  This was when women's hands got rough and their backs ached not from extracurricular activities (an extremely unlady-like remark for me to make).

CLARIFICATION:
I am okay with being a woman! I love being a woman! There is so much true beauty in what God gave us as women when He created us and I truly love it.  But I think this dainty form of femininity that we have painted, this incapability of doing robust and invigorating things like hunting and working on cars and all of those MANLY things... I mean, what's stopping me from still being feminine and doing those things? Does it make me any less of a woman to want to go to a rifle range or gut a deer or take apart an engine and try and put it back together?

I say no.  I say this whole stigma of this is feminine and this is masculine is utter and complete bull excrement.  I'm not a feminist. I'm not arguing that a woman can do anything a man can do. 'Cause that's bull, too.  I cannot pee standing up (accurately).  No girl can.  There is NOTHING to aim with!  [And don't shake your head at me.  I know you've tried it, too. Those times when you walk into a girls' bathroom and you're like, "How the hell do you miss when you're sitting on the toilet?" And the answer is, she didn't miss.  She was trying to pee like a dude and failed.  Accept it, squat over that toilet seat and go pee like you walked into that gas station bathroom to do.]  There are definitely things men can do better than women and vice versa.  It's a wonderful thing.

I guess I've just decided I don't want to be a lady.

la·dy  [ley-dee]

noun

1. a woman who is refined, polite, and well-spoken: She may be poor and have little education, but she's a real lady.

2. a woman of high social position or economic class: She was born a lady and found it hard to adjust to her reduced circumstances.

Look at those sentences for those definitions! No! I won't do it and you can't make me! I'm going to be a woman, end of story.  I'm always going to get flack for it, but I don't even care anymore.  I'm not going to be rude for the sake of being obscene. I just want to be able to be myself without worrying about who I'm offending because I wasn't appropriate or lady-like or soft spoken. I am almost none of those things EVER. So why try and bend to this ideal that is really only something that's been force fed to me and girls for ages and ages?  I want to be like these women:

I want to be a picture of strength and fortitude because when stuff hits the fan, I don't want to be the chick grabbed by King Kong and his meaty fists.  I want to be the chick that was carrying the tommy gun and that lights his ass up. While smoking a cigar. And grilling a steak...  Okay. Okay. I got carried away...

I like being chased. I like being called "my princess" and being told I'm lovely and all of those things.  I just don't think that's all there is to it.  And no one will ever tell me otherwise again.