Do you ever have those moments where your mind goes on what feels like a pinball’s journey from thought to idea to image only to land somewhere totally unexpected? It happens to me often and sometimes takes me good places. Here’s my journey from earlier this evening…
I happened across a blog that I read occasionally that referenced the blogger’s book Fierce Women. (Please bear with me. This train of thought in no way relates to this rather appealing looking book.)
Just glancing at the title, a mental picture came to mind of a negatively fierce woman.
That picture attached itself to a bunch of words I’d seen on Facebook recently. I say a bunch of words because I don’t want to dignify it with the term ‘joke’, though, technically, that’s what it was. Really, to me, it was just sad; even sadder because it is often true in our society.
Here are the words that connected so easily to an image of a particular variety of fierce woman:
A child asks his father, “What is a man?” The father replied, “A person who takes responsibility for his family and his house and takes care of them.”
Then the child said, “I hope I will be a man like mum one day.”
Not surprisingly, over 23,000 people had liked this joke on Facebook. It’s not surprising because this joke is telling the truth in all too many cases.
Many, many people will overtly lay blame at the door of lazy, emasculated men of today. But I think there is a middle ground to be found and, on the fault-ometre, the needle lands much closer to the female populace than many of us might be comfortable with.
Just look at the word ’emasculate’.
emas·cu·late
transitive verb \i-ˈmas-kyə-ˌlāt\
By what means, exactly, does a man get ‘deprived of his male strength, role, etc…’? I doubt that it happens spontaneously. It takes input from some outside source.
Sure, lots of men are buying into the hype about what is acceptable. Media of all sorts has painted the Al Bundy model for men since long before I was born and many of them are living it (many are not, as well, I might add). But women are upholding and reinforcing it.
Instead of defending their men’s character, women tend to believe the hype as well. And, once you buy into the mentality that ‘those bad men aren’t doing their job’, bitterness, resentment and – dare I say it? – fierceness ensues.
I’m so blessed to be surrounded by a group of women who are bucking this trend. To be fair though, it is pervasive enough that I likely do it to some degree when my guard is down. And, sadly, many emasculate their men as a matter of course.
For example, I once had a female co-worker look at a picture of my family – Lenny and I with our three kids – and say, “What a nice picture. Are those all your kids?” To which I replied, “All but the big one.”, with a smile, thinking she hadn’t noticed, as the picture was small.
But no. Her reply was, “Oh really? Most women would say they were all her kids.”
Thank you, God, that I am not most women.
The book that started this whole train of thought seems to be talking about a different kind of fierce woman. There is a fierce woman very different than the one who blames and belittles, tearing down her own house while trying to get her man to finally get off the couch and fix the roof. And I think we can all become more like her. She is the idea of a woman that made me start writing the Monday Morning Bragging Wife series (which I would welcome contributors for, incidentally).
I want to be considered fierce in the defense and encouragement of my man’s strength of character and pursuit of duty.
And, I want to be fierce in recruiting more fierce women to support their men and men in general. If we want to be treated like a queen, don’t we have to treat him like the strong and noble king that he is meant to be?
I am woman. Hear me roar!
(Sorry… I couldn’t help myself.)
photo credit: Akiko Photography via photopin cc
photo credit: oddsock via photopin cc
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