Among the first movies I watched after immigrating to the U.S. was The Secret Garden, bedecked with beautiful garden footage in springtime. It’s the story of an unruly orphaned girl, Mary, who moved back to England from India when her parents died. Since no one taught her how to be a proper English girl in India, the head housekeeper, Mrs. Medlock, would assume the role. She reminded me of my grandma, who taught me how to shake hands with boys, or to never wear pink outside because it was the color for the bedroom.
As Emerson had said that women be the civilizers of mankind, there is no grace that is taught by the dancing-master, no style adopted into the etiquette of courts, but was first the whim and mere action of some brilliant woman. It is thus women who pass down and enforce social traditions, ensuring that maidens are properly assimilated into society.
In the past, it was mostly concerned with morality and social etiquette. Published in 1860 by Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness had 26 chapters of guidance for how to be a lady – from what to wear morning, afternoon, and evening, how to behave at the dining table, to a young lady’s conduct when contemplating marriage. In 1938, Helen Valentine and Alice Thompson declared that Better than Beauty was not your IQ, but consideration, loyalty, sweetness, and sympathy. Young Betty B. by the intelligence test standards was the dullest of book learners. She couldn’t retain a date more than a day, yet she was captain of one team, manager of another, and one of the few winners of an award for “the best all-around girl.”
In the 21st century, the modern day ideal woman is expected to be professionally ambitious, climbing to the top of the food chain to become leader of the free world, and pulling other women along while she’s at it. It was Madeleine Albright, the 64th United States secretary of state, who said, “there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Yet it turns out that women do not always help other women at work. Now that many women have entered the workforce, there are reports of bitter competitions, backstabbing, and queen bee syndrome where high-ranking female employees bully their subordinates. During the 2016 presidential election, there were reports that disappointingly and surprisingly to some, many white women did not vote for our first female presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. It was disappointing because it was implicitly assumed that the white woman would prioritize women’s issues. Here, I find it unfair to hold white women to the idealistic version of feminism and progress. The white woman, like every other woman, is a human before she is female. The human being cares first and foremost for their family, their tribe, and their community.
When she’s not out there crushing the patriarchy ladder, she is expected to be the can-do-it-all girl. In her pop hit, Girls Run the World, Beyoncé, nicknamed by fans as Queen Bey with a capital B, proclaimed, “I work my nine to five, better cut my check…smart enough to make these millions, strong enough to bear the children, then get back to business.” But even if she can do it all, she better be treated like a queen, as Any Man of Shania Twain “better walk the line, better show me a teasing squeezing pleasing kinda time,…be a heart beating, fine treating, breathtaking, earthquaking kind.” Never mind that she has to do it to actually know how to do it.
Perhaps just as important as what men can do to help move women’s progress forward is for women to loosen their grip on each other – between mothers and daughters and daughters-in-law, aunties, sisters, friends, co-workers. As Lily Allen lamented in her Silver Spoon, “this life, that life – life isn’t fair but we all can try,” no matter what lot we find ourselves in life, we all have our own challenges to overcome. It’s only when we are allowed to be ourselves that our talents may have the opportunity to flourish.
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