Random Rant: A woman's tryst with pain
I will take a couple of incidents from my life to start off this article.
I got married last year, and all of the occasions involved wearing accessories, amidst which were chunky ethnic earrings. When I tried wearing these, I discovered that the stem of almost all of these earrings were thick, and the piercings on my earlobes were tiny in comparison. As a result, it was a struggle to wear them, one I hadn't anticipated or planned for. My ears would bleed every time I wore a earring, and not figuratively. The pain was really bad, and my ears were terribly bruised by the third consecutive day of this ordeal. But that's not the point. The point was how normal this was for everyone. The makeup people who were there to help clucked sympathetically that it would hurt, and then pressed the earring into my ear anyway.The memory of this just makes me shudder!
Another one from the wedding-- the parlor. I found the waxing extremely painful, and really regretted having signed up for it. My nerves were shot to hell, and my skin was red for hours after. But the part that caught my attention was again the normalcy of it. The beautician was very matter-of-fact- this will hurt. Whenever I flinched in pain or exclaimed, she laughed slightly and said: This is your first time, that's why it's bad. You'll soon get used to it. As if this was a pagan ritual that had to be done in order to appease the God of beauty!
I wanted to scream: Are you out of your mind? Get used to it-- why would I want to do that? I am not a masochist.
But I see this as a general trend, in several things concerning women, especially those associated with beauty. Heels that make your feet hurt. Hairdos that make you want to tear your scalp out. So much more. And the pain is so normalized, so accepted. Women endure it silently, sometimes telling other women, who nod sympathetically but helplessly. Some people tell me that the pain is the price one must pay for looking beautiful--does that make sense at all?
And horrifyingly enough, it does not end at beauty. Several times, women's experiences of excruciating pain are normalized and trivialized. Oh, but that's part and parcel of being a woman! Every woman on earth goes through it.
My retort: Doesn't that make the problem more pressing then? How does it become unimportant?
Another argument: That women must be strong, and not let pain deter them.
My answer: Why must you endure pain if it is avoidable? Strength has nothing to do with it.
The serenity prayer is one of my favorites: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
When we have the ability to change so much, why must women endure pain on a regular basis? Surely there are other ways to beauty, and anything else that demands pain tolerance from women.
Dear Reader, the next time you are confronted by such a decision, take a moment to introspect before you accept something as the status quo.
I got married last year, and all of the occasions involved wearing accessories, amidst which were chunky ethnic earrings. When I tried wearing these, I discovered that the stem of almost all of these earrings were thick, and the piercings on my earlobes were tiny in comparison. As a result, it was a struggle to wear them, one I hadn't anticipated or planned for. My ears would bleed every time I wore a earring, and not figuratively. The pain was really bad, and my ears were terribly bruised by the third consecutive day of this ordeal. But that's not the point. The point was how normal this was for everyone. The makeup people who were there to help clucked sympathetically that it would hurt, and then pressed the earring into my ear anyway.The memory of this just makes me shudder!
Another one from the wedding-- the parlor. I found the waxing extremely painful, and really regretted having signed up for it. My nerves were shot to hell, and my skin was red for hours after. But the part that caught my attention was again the normalcy of it. The beautician was very matter-of-fact- this will hurt. Whenever I flinched in pain or exclaimed, she laughed slightly and said: This is your first time, that's why it's bad. You'll soon get used to it. As if this was a pagan ritual that had to be done in order to appease the God of beauty!
I wanted to scream: Are you out of your mind? Get used to it-- why would I want to do that? I am not a masochist.
But I see this as a general trend, in several things concerning women, especially those associated with beauty. Heels that make your feet hurt. Hairdos that make you want to tear your scalp out. So much more. And the pain is so normalized, so accepted. Women endure it silently, sometimes telling other women, who nod sympathetically but helplessly. Some people tell me that the pain is the price one must pay for looking beautiful--does that make sense at all?
And horrifyingly enough, it does not end at beauty. Several times, women's experiences of excruciating pain are normalized and trivialized. Oh, but that's part and parcel of being a woman! Every woman on earth goes through it.
My retort: Doesn't that make the problem more pressing then? How does it become unimportant?
Another argument: That women must be strong, and not let pain deter them.
My answer: Why must you endure pain if it is avoidable? Strength has nothing to do with it.
The serenity prayer is one of my favorites: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
When we have the ability to change so much, why must women endure pain on a regular basis? Surely there are other ways to beauty, and anything else that demands pain tolerance from women.
Dear Reader, the next time you are confronted by such a decision, take a moment to introspect before you accept something as the status quo.
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