once, i laid down the bill for some customers, discretely as any dutiful waitress, and by some chance glanced down at my fingers, still gripping the corner of the bill holder. one of the men already had a hovering hand awaiting my self-removal from the tableside, and i recall thinking about the image in my mind of a thick hand on a bill vs. a smaller, softer one with chipped polish on the fingers instead of hairy knuckles. the juxtaposition seemed strange to me, like my hand shouldn't have been on it. it took me a while to realize why, but in all my time as a waitress, i have only rarely seen a woman pay for the food when her company also included at least one grown man.
my own father fits the same profile, so i suppose my socialization is to blame for why the reversal of roles would stand out to me. i don't assume something so daft as that a female breadwinner (or bread-payer-for, at any rate) would destabilize society, but it would certainly break a mold i still have yet to see reshaped.
****
as a child, rarely ever did i dream of marriage.
actually, that's not true. i never imagined my wedding, which is what one hears about little girls, isn't it? a mother walking in on her daughter, all overdolled in makeup until she resembles more a clown than a lady, stumbling around in too-big heels and a trailing dress, and she doesn't frown at the hurricane that's blown through the room, but coos because her little girl has been properly socialized, and in the end that's the only job of a parent.
but such a comment is for another post.
i wonder how many girls thought about marriage, as opposed to the ornate quality of their wedding decorations. how many pondered who would raise the children; whose job would be the force behind any migration of familial location; who would do the driving and the paying and the speaking to members of society outside the family unit. because that's as much a matrix of choices in marriage as is picking apart one another's guest list when planning a wedding.
all this post-postmodern world has bequeathed to its generations is the cliquifying of individuality, the recognition of even the most obviously androgynous traits (and those who insist on viewing them as such) to the LGBT community's claims department, and the polarization of all behavior any woman exhibits (or inhibits) in light of the 'type' of woman it makes her. to someone with only two decades marked on the bingo scoresheet of life experiences, even the willingness to wear an engagement ring, as opposed to the demand that her fiance wear one as well, is some Epic Revelation Regarding Her Opinions Of Her Ancestors' Fight For Her Right To Be Masculine.
not-so-secretly, all i want to be is me, and to hell with gender roles and societal expectations, but even i can squint through my cloud of idealism well enough to recognize reality right before it boxes my ears. history is a tale spun by the victors, and if we aren't always fighting then the story isn't deemed interesting enough to tell, so sometimes we just make it up.
it's because we cannot let anything exist without letting everyone dig a fingernail into it that my marriage - assuming i ever actually meet someone i could imagining myself willing to spend a lifetime With Me as opposed to just around me, like my dearest and most prized friends - would be niggled at and prodded with and stipulated upon before i even agreed to undertaking it.
which, ok: writing the fine print before signing to the contract is always a wise idea, but i wonder just how many more conditions are set nowadays than in ye oldedayes, because so many women are under the assumption that if they list a quota on how many hours a week their husbands must allow them outside working and shopping, that they will be doing the foremothers of feminism proud. in the end, though, they're still defining themselves by their relation to men; drinking vodka martinis instead of beers on a raucous night out because they hold themselves at a higher class than men; wearing high heels and a slinky dress to work because they happen to have bodies that are less aesthetically awkward than men; hiring someone else to raise/watch/interact with the children because they refuse to be held down by domestic responsibilities any more than their masculine counterparts.
perhaps i am putting more thought into this than required (wouldn't be the first time i stuck philosophy in where it wasn't recommended), but i imagine the utmost a woman can do for marriage, or feminism, or for anti-discrimination movements anywhere, is to refine her self-concept (and her intentions, and certainly her values) internally.
****
if i marry, it won't be because that's 'what you do' or because i intend to listen to any biological clock, or because i am secretly waiting for the one person in all of creation who, by his battered lonesome, can finish my puzzle better than the jagged pieces i collect from everyone else who has ever influenced me.
if i marry, i won't change my name, and i won't ask my fiance to change his - not as some vehement feminist message about how i am tied but not bound, but simply because i've actively struggled against letting other people drape names on me like mantling.
unless it was a clearly superior last name, that is. then i would change it just to introduce myself and hear the syllables roll around in my mouth.
if i marry, i won't quit my job to raise children, and i won't pawn them off on a daycare center. mostly because i don't really want children (i rather expect to be an atrociously-tempered, inconsistent, impertinent mother, and why, if i could avoid it, would i burden anyone with whatever psychological scarring that would cause, thereby creating a vicious serial killer?).
if i do end up reproducing, my husband can take off time or work from home and rear them, because he would be the one who'd begged for them in the first place.
if i marry, i won't keep an immaculate house. i wouldn't even have a house, since i much prefer more cramped dwellings like inner-city apartments (i can sacrifice living in a tenement, though). i would wash dishes if what i needed at the moment was unclean. i would sweep/vaccuum if i couldn't walk barefoot across a floor without wincing at the sensation of dirt squishing itself between my toes. i usually don't ever really clean until i get disgusted or i find myself in an obsessive-compulsive fit of tidiness. instead of worrying about what a 'bad' wife that might make me, i just chalk it up to artistic nature and move on.
if i marry, i won't have dinner waiting on the table precisely at mealtimes. mostly because i don't have a set meal time, i just eat when i am hungry, but also because if anyone's going to be enforcing a family dinner, it's whomever happens to be the better cook.
if i marry, i will continue to have friends my husband doesn't share, and probably a few he hates. as i imagine he will. i never understood couples whose lives suddenly revolve around one another, who think love is spending nearly every waking second together. nor can i understand why they are so shocked that the spark dies after being throttled for twenty years.
...and so many other stipulations, but after a while that just becomes another random list, and not something that matters to this post.
