“Oh goodness, Sanjida! Do you ever make time for anyone? Or is it all you in your world?”
“Go hang out with more people, be more social, or you won’t be considered as a good marriage material.”
“Visit the relatives more often; they usually vouch for you when it comes to weddings.”
“You are supposed to serve the guests; it’s expected from the girl.”
Honestly, people really need to come up with better excuses to have me attend their social gatherings.
Coming at this age, at my mid-twenties, I often come across statements where I am being called ‘a self-centred woman’ for not hanging out with more people and relatives. To be frank, I could not care less, and I am sure neither could a lot many other ladies, who by all means, earn their (independent) living.
It’s a struggle, to be independent, to be ambitious, and to work towards it. For both men and women, it’s a real challenge to maintain that imaginary balance while we are equally responsible to earn our independence and maintain social expectations. And coming from the region, where all these ‘people-pleasing’ formalities are mostly expected from women, it's even more difficult.
Now, this does not stop until the relatives. The very question of not showing up in social gatherings also follows a woman when it comes to her acquaintances. As much as balancing networks and ties are required, we keep forgetting the extent to which maintaining one’s personal space is important too. Again, this issue goes beyond genders.
However, I highlight it from the perspective of a woman because somewhere down the line, as a woman, I have been and am still expected to play the upper hand in keeping up with such formalities.
I don’t do it.
I am not saying I am against it, but I don’t prefer playing that role to prove that I am a responsible lady. It still bothers me to see how it is considered to be a girl’s prioritised responsibility in a family to entertain and serve the guests.
It bothers me when I hear or see my female friends pick out a joke that it is pointless working so hard as a woman because eventually, it’s a man’s responsibility to pay the bills. And trust me there are a lot many other women who would tell you the same.
We don’t seek validation from the society. We understand that keeping ties, showing up at gatherings is very much expected from everyone around. However, using that as a tool to judge a person’s contribution in the society is what we ask to stop.
Now for a girl who has her own set of tasks and checklists that she needs to tick off regularly, being dolled up as a marriage material is the least of her concerns. Again, it’s nothing negative, but some of us just don’t feel the need to do so, and we would very much be happy to be the ‘self-centered’ people we are for being focused on things that matter to us. And to some of us, making time for our own family is all that matters.
Managing time is a struggle that we are not complaining about. We are rather asking you to stop increasing the bars of expectations as we age. Just because we are in our mid-twenties, or late-twenties, or even early-thirties, really does not make us feel that we are now in desperate need to prove the society that we can have our own family. Probably, some of us don’t even want it. Probably, some of us have plans before we think to settle. And we are fine. We are fine in taking our time, we are fine that we are late, we are fine that we sometimes fail to show up in parties because we might be rather meeting a deadline.
This is my shout out to the girls, who have come past the need to prove their femininity to the society, to the girls who know what their priorities are, to the girls who walk extra miles for their dreams, to the girls who go beyond how the chick-flick movies define girls to be like, to the girls who know that they don’t need validation.
Sanjida Tanny is the founder of Contentier (more known as The Raconteuse/Storyteller) and a passionate art curator.