Tag Archives: Women

On the Fluxuating Identities of New Wives

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Do men have this issue too, or is it just a girl thing? We spend the first 20-something years of our lives beautifully crafting our identities and deciding what kind of people we want to be. Then, along comes this ring-wielding man, trying to mess with our equilibrium. How rude! No, it’s not their fault, really. They don’t mean any harm, bless their little hearts. But something definitely changes once we get married.

I guess it has something to do with all the hidden text and implication behind the word “wife.” The mere thought of it conjures up vivid images of untouchable superwomen we never seem to be able to measure up to. Whether it’s the neatly-aproned June Cleaver or the oh-so-witty-and-intelligent Claire Huxtable, these classic mother icons, sweet as they are, have given the idea that wives are supposed to be perfect, forever happy. Husbands, it seems, are expected to get it wrong at times. As long as they get up and go to work in the morning, everything else is OK. You let the kids eat chocolate cake for breakfast? It’s OK, you’re a husband. You sent the kids to school without their backpacks (which contain their permission slips for their field trip this afternoon)? It’s OK, you’re a husband. And your wife will most likely make time in her schedule to go drop it off anyway. No worries. Husbands are afforded the type of breathing room many wives are deficient in.

Not to oversimplify the lives of married men, because they have their own struggles we woman can’t relate to, but there is definitely a distinct difference in expectation. For example, when it comes to taking care of his family, men have options. They can decide to be active members in the family (and get wild applause for doing so) or they can run off and leave their wives and children to fend for themselves (in which case many of us just shrug our shoulders and write him off as being a “typical man”). Women don’t have this option. We are expected to accept the pressures and responsibilities of family life with a big smile–forced or genuine. When a woman does buckle under the pressure and desert her family, it’s front-page news and she’s vilified as the evilest, craziest thing around.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not suggesting it should be more acceptable for women to leave their families (I don’t think that should be acceptable for anyone), but I am suggesting that married women and mothers should be allowed to experience the full spectrum of human emotion without judgement. This includes anger, sadness, frustration and even rage. When we’re expected to be continuously happy, calm and easy going, it puts us in an unnatural and unhealthy position that forces us to deny the ailing parts of ourselves that need expression and recognition, too.

Perhaps this explains why women in general, married or not, are nearly twice as likely to experience depression. Of the 19 million Americans that experience depressive symptoms yearly, 12 million of them are women. Statistically, between 10 and 25 percent of American women will experience clinical depression at some point in their lives. And while marriage is a protective factor against depression, numbers are highest in those between the ages of 25 and 44, the age range during which many women are starting and establishing their family lives (National Institute of Mental Health).

Along with marriage, another protective factor is intact support systems. This doesn’t just mean having someone to hang out with on Saturday nights. It means having someone (or a group of someones) with whom you can truly emote, someone that won’t expect you to just grin and bare it , someone that won’t look at you strangely because you’ve discovered that having your own family is tough work. This is the type of support many women ache for. We want to talk to our family and friends about our hardships, but don’t for fear of judgement and disregard. So, instead, we keep it in, paint over it with a thin veneer or feigned happiness. On the outside, everything appears to be fine, but inside we’re suffocating, unable to be that which we truly are. It’s hard enough taking care of yourself. Adding in another adult and a few kids doesn’t make it any easier. This life is amazing and mundane and beautiful and ugly all at the same time. We need to be able to acknowledge that, and we need others not to look down on us for doing so.

~Nadirah Angail

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On Getting the Respect you Deserve

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sb10068005e-003At the risk of sounding like a man hater (which I am not) I’ll make this statement: Many men will use you if you let them. They’re not all amoral womanizers, but when women don’t set the standard for how we should be treated, it’s a lot easier for them to become that way. I do think it’s true that men should treat women better, but I don’t believe it will happen until women begin to behave in such a way that men have no choice but to do so. People get away with as much as you allow, and as long we allow them to use our bodies and degrade our names, the weak ones will continue to do so.

Here comes the feminist voice of dissent. “Why is men’s behavior our fault? We shouldn’t have to change anything. They should.” Be assured that men’s behavior is not the fault of women. Everyone is held accountable for their own actions. But, woman have a very important role in the process of change. While women have more of an emotional nature, men have more of a visual, carnal nature. What this means is that even though men have an advantage over us in brute strength, their disadvantage is that they are often weak willed when it comes to the visual stimulation provided by us women. So it is relatively easy for us to influence them.  (Think of how much easier it is for a woman to sexually seduce a man that it is for a man to seduce a woman.) This influence is our advantage and must be used carefully and wisely. Men are the protectors and maintainers, but the best of them are those that know how to treat women, and who better to teach them that us? Ok, so let’s be clear. What am I saying, that all men are weak? Yep. That’s exactly what I’m saying. All men and women are weak, because perfection is reserved only for the Creator. We will succumb to our weaknesses, unless we know how to protect ourselves against them. Women, don’t let your attitude and overall demeanor be your weakness. Treat yourself with respect and watch everyone else follow suit.

Nadirah Angail

On Diaper Bags, Care Bears and Justmoms

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carebearsAs an almost-mom, I’d have to say that the hardest decision I’ve had to make so far has been choosing a diaper bag. It seemed like it’d be an easy and effortless task, as I love purses and diaper bags are nothing more than big purses, but my diaper bag search has proved to be much harder than I expected.

I don’t consider myself a diva, a fashionista, or any of those other trendy terms people like to throw around, but I do like to look nice and care about the way I present myself. So when I found myself standing in the diaper bag aisle, surrounded by Elmo, Care Bears and that hunny-addicted Pooh, I knew I had a problem. Does becoming a mother mean I all of a sudden have to revert to my childhood preferences? Because if I was still five or six, I would have been all over that pink and purple Care Bears bag with the matching changing pad; but now, twenty years later, I’m not as interested. My likes and interests have matured and evolved to now include looks that don’t scream “I’ve been watching PBS and Noggin all day.”

My issue with the character bags is more than just aesthetic. It also has to do with the fact that I do not want to become a Justmom. A Justmom is a wonderful, multidimensional woman who, after becoming a mother, puts her entire life on the back burner to focus exclusively on being a parent. These are good-intentioned women who end up deserting their friends, families, husbands, interests, hobbies and, themselves for motherhood. They spend all day cutting carrots, cleaning rooms, checking homework, washing clothes, joining mothers’ groups online, buying children’s clothes and items, taking trips to parks and zoos, and many other child-centered activities. There is nothing wrong with doing any of these things. In fact, they’re all signs of good parenting, but what pushes these moms into the ranks of Justmoms is that they do these types of things only, at the exclusion of the many other parts of themselves that also need to be engaged.

stressed momI don’t want to pathologize Justmoms. They’re very caring, nurturing, forgiving, and all around sweet women. My concern is that they don’t put nearly as much energy into their own maintenance as they do into their children’s. They become shells of their former selves as their marriages, social lives, self images, and mental states suffer. Consider the research. According to Ariel Gores’s The Mother Trip, mothers are more likely to be affected by depression that any other demographic group nationwide. I doubt that all of these depressed moms are Justmoms, but I’m sure being a Justmom increases the chances of being included in that group.

Mothers seem to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and not having healthy outlets to help shoulder that load is nothing more than a recipe for disaster. We all want to be good moms. We want to give our children the best, protect them from harm, prepare them for the future and reassure them of their value. That’s great and admirable. (No wonder Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) said “paradise lies at the foot of the mother.”) But, in our haste to feed and protect our children, we often forget that one of the best gifts we can give a child is an honest image of a healthy, balanced mother, one that is so much more than a bodyguard/servant. Healthy and whole moms teach their children the benefits of helping self along with those of helping others. They laugh more, handle frustration better, become angered less easily and are pleasant to be around.

For me, the idea of being a Justmom is scary, but I understand that, for some women, the idea of not being one is even scarier. Many of us have a romanticized image of the perfect mom in our heads. We grow up either wanting to be just like our own mothers, who some of us feel were perfect, or the exact opposite of our mothers, who some of us feel were neglectful. The truth is that most moms fall somewhere between perfect and neglectful. Either way, the image of the Justmom becomes glorified and normalized. So once the children start to arrive, your date nights with the husband disappear, your biweekly girls’ nights vanish, the salsa lessons you loved are discontinued, your paint dries up and your brushes harden, the instrument you used to play begins to collect dust, your sense of style somehow gets lost, and your overall personality dulls. Basically, you lose your zest and unique qualities. These are some of the affects of becoming a Justmom.

There was a time in my life when I thought being a Justmom was inevitable. I thought being a good mother meant sacrificing all else. Lucky for me my understanding has changed. I now know that it’s not a bad thing to continue to have a life outside of my child. I know that my husband can continue to be my husband instead of just being my co parent. And if nothing else, I know that it’s ok to hate the Care Bears diaper bag.

Nadirah Angail

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On Why Being a Muslim Woman Should be a Paid Job

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moneyAs I prepare to deliver this baby girl, and officially join the ranks of those who call themselves “mothers,” I take stock of all the additional responsibility I’ll have to take on. Changing diapers, bathing, grooming, feeding, and protecting: these are the absolute bare bones of parenting, a simple enough list that I think I can handle. But, on top of that, there’s also teaching (worldly and Islamic knowledge) providing an example of a good Muslim woman, exuding self love and confidence so she’ll have a solid base from which to launch her own self esteem, maintaining a healthy relationship with her father so she’ll know what a good marriage looks like, creating a welcoming and nurturing home environment so she’ll always feel comfortable and secure, staying abreast of her interests and concerns so she’ll always have someone to talk to, guiding her through puberty and all the other complicated transformations females go through, showing her how to be fashionable and Islamic, training her on the do’s and don’ts of cross-gender relations, educating her on what friendship is and isn’t… This list could go on forever.

And as if that weren’t enough to occupy my every waking moment, I’ll still have to find time to preserve my personal interests and maintain my marriage. Phew, I’m getting tired just typing this. Someone needs to come out with an energy bar formulated specially for  women. We could pull it out and take a bite whenever we’re feeling drained and overwhelmed by being scrutinized by the entire world.

A popular quote says that “if you want to know the condition of a society, look at its women.” I guess everyone is interested in societies’ conditions, because we are constantly being inspected. Like cells in a Petri dish, we are continuously examined, dissected and analyzed. In fact, it seems there are few world problems that haven’t at least at some point been blamed on women:

  • Are you a man cheating on your wife? It’s not your fault. It was the combined efforts of your inattentive wife and that home-wrecking hussy.
  • Did Adam get kicked out of the Garden? You bet he did, all because of that impulsive Eve who just had to have something from that tree!
  • Are you having trouble finding a job? Those darn independent women out there are taking all the jobs.
  • Do you have schizophrenia? Your no-good mother screwed you up in childhood. (This one was actually considered fact at one point in the psychology field.)
  • Why are contractions so painful when a woman has a baby? Because they’re being punished by God, those harlots! (This too was once considered fact in the early American medical model.)
  • Is the world going to Hell in a hand basket? Of course it is, all these devilish women out here.

devilIt’s almost as if women are the only ones capable of having a negative impact on the world. This seems to be the case in general society, but also within the Muslim communities. Though the religion of Islam brought liberation and improved conditions for pre-Islamic women, actual Muslims (some of them) have taken it upon themselves to be the harsh judges and dictators of women. This is not to say that women are perfect while men are really the devilish ones. It is to say that women get most, if not all, of the criticism and angry tirades while men seem to remain relatively unobserved.

For example, Muslims will and do engage in heated discussions about the covering of a woman’s hair, the showing of her feet, or the color of her clothing. There seems to be far less heat and debate, however, around men-centered topics that, to me, are much more worthy of serious discussion, like leadership, business endeavors, and proper and gentle treatment of wives and children. From America to the Muslim World, overall Muslim leadership seems to be declining. Discuss that. Some business owners take the ideal of Islamic ethics and conduct as a mere suggestion rather than an obligation. Discuss that. Some husbands are extremely callous and disrespectful toward their wives and children. Discuss that. These are serious problems in our communities that should take precedence over the “all-black abaya vs. colored” debate.

flowersIn Islam, men have certain responsibilities and women have certain responsibilities. They are all important and should be taken seriously, but would it not make sense to begin to put more emphasis on our men, our providers, our leaders, our protectors, our imams, our fighters? I understand how tempting it must be to focus all attention on women–we’re beautiful, alluring, and a constant reminder of Islam. Our prescribed style of dress marks us as beacons for the entire world to see. Like a single red rose amongst a sea of yellow daisies, we stand out in a most beautiful way. Don’t punish us for this. Correct us when we sin and give us reminders so that we may stay aware, but don’t forget to do the same for yourselves. Your improper actions are just as wrong and punishable as ours. Remember this just as often as you remember us.

Nadirah Anjail