Borders and Boundaries
By: E.B. Page
What are borders and boundaries to me? They’re the realities of being a woman. Each stage of life has brought me closer to the truth of what this really means. The rules you learn over the years that contradict each other, the situations in which you must adjust your own personality and the way women treat other women. I have outlined my journey below, but it’s not unique. This contradictory conditioning begins in infancy. Childhood to adolescence, teens to twenties and beyond. Our interactions teach us who and what we should be. They rarely teach us to decide for ourselves what that looks like.
“Be quiet,” was the most common phrase uttered to me as a child. “Settle down,” was the second. The irony in this is that I was painfully shy and barely spoke in public until I was an adult. I would save up all the words I was too scared to speak throughout the day. Walking home from school quietly with my head down, thoughts and ideas filling me until I was bursting at the seams. I would start talking when I got home and the whole family was my audience. Usually, they ignored me as I followed them through the house, but at the dinner table, no one could walk away. My hidden, boisterous spirit was under attack even as a young child by my own parents.
This was unintentional of course. My family found themselves to be quite progressive. My father did a lot of the cooking, my mother worked outside the home and I was free to do whatever activities I liked. Things weren’t segregated into the categories of male or female like some of my peers. We were just people who need to get things done.
Be quiet. Settle down.
When I was fourteen I applied for my first job at a local fast food joint. I was still painfully shy, but I really wanted the job. I used every bit of courage I had to be outgoing, friendly and desirable. When they asked what my weakness was I was ready. “I’m really shy, and have a hard time talking to people I don’t know. I’d like a job in the back cooking.” The managers looked at each other incredulously. “We don’t find you shy at all,” the man said, “If you want the job, you’ll work the front counter.”
Approximately ten minutes into my first shift I realized that attractive young women were placed at the front of the store, while the boys and those who weren’t traditionally attractive were placed out of sight. In the two years I worked there I was so shy and uncomfortable that after a while I was given most of the cleaning shifts. My performance reviews were all the same. “Speak up,” they said.
Be quiet. Settle Down. Speak Up.
It should have been confusing, but I adapted rather well. Adjusting our personalities to please those around us is second nature to every woman I know. It wasn’t my bosses’ fault. If I was good looking enough to stand at the front counter then that’s where I should be. If that’s where I am, I should behave the way they want. Change, they demanded. So I tried. They were the adults, after all.
Be quiet. Settle Down. Speak Up. Change.
In high school my words still failed me. I was quiet, and a little sad too. I wanted to share my thoughts and feelings like I saw so many people doing. I wanted to explore my identity. I didn’t know whether to be quiet or speak up. I just knew I had to change. I also learned a very important lesson. If you’re looking for acceptance you can easily find it in a teenage boy for awhile. There’s always a boy who will listen, but it comes at a price. Instead of creating my own identity I adapted, as I was apt to do. I called it “trying new things,” when, in reality, it was doing things I knew I didn’t like so other people would like me too.
I seemed to have lost myself before I had a chance to find me. The rules were compounding and the lines started to blur.
Be quiet. Settle Down. Speak Up. Change. Adapt.
Motherhood became a reality for me while I was still lost in transition. I decided to fill the space that was mine to occupy with my son. He took priority, and he still does, as children do. I’ve witnessed countless women disagree about the right and wrong way to raise a child. Social media perpetuates these disagreements to the extreme. Which values need to be taught, what’s best in terms of school, discipline, health and safety. I fell into yet another trap for women, an online world that pits us against one another. This pool of negativity increases our self-doubt and prevents us from having a community on which to fall back. It stops us in our journey to stand on our own without compromising parts of ourselves. We fall into this because we want to do what’s best for the children.
Today the consumption of the female identity is receiving more attention than ever before. Women all over the world are stepping forward. We are occupying the same space as men, the space we deserve, without apologies. Brave women put targets on their own backs by refusing to be less than. As a wife and mother, I struggle every day with my choices and the guilt I’m conditioned to feel.
Be quiet. Settle Down. Speak Up. Change. Adapt. Do what’s best for the children.
Borders and boundaries cloud these interactions, but as I learn and grow I’ve finally realized that some of these borders and boundaries do not actually exist outside my mind. Stepping outside of these preconditioned lines fades them into obscurity with every action and reaction I choose.
