March is National Women's History Month. Started in 1981, it was meant to honor and showcase the remarkable lives of those women who paved the way for greater possibilities for women who would come after them. Since its inception, it has come to celebrate the breaking down of certain gender stereotypes. While most people think of larger gender issues, like gaining suffrage in 1920 and the continuing battle for equal pay, there are also minor changes that have occurred in the past decades. As a result, many women, including myself, now face a sense of confusion when it comes to defining our femininity.
In the 1920s, tens of thousands of women used the cigarette as evidence that they were gaining social and civic equality. Because people were not used to seeing women smoke, women were still conspicuous as smokers. For them, cigarettes meant they were being naughty, and perhaps even more sexually open. Women could use smoking to set themselves apart from women in the past. In a sense, they radically challenged the establishment just by smoking cigarettes.
Later, in the 1950s, a very simple yet very important battle was being fought for the right to wear pants. Girls at that time were required to wear skirts to school every day. Even Mary Tyler Moore had to duke it out with her bosses just to wear pants on \The Dick Van Dyke Show."" While this is probably a foreign concept for women today, something as simple as what you were allowed to wear was still dictated by someone else.
I am constantly contradicting lingering stereotypes. Although I'm a woman, I don't own a purse, I hate shoe shopping and I don't even like to talk about weddings. Between the ages of eight and 14, I remember wearing a dress approximately two times, both times for a relative's wedding. Last Christmas, my sister received a cordless drill. I've never been so jealous of anyone in my life.
I've spent hours trying to explain to my female friends why my favorite TV show is ""NFL Films."" For some reason, they just don't understand my obsession with the 1986 AFC Championship game, or the beauty in John Elway's 98-yard drive with 1:47 left on the clock. I say it's a work of art; they call it boring. Could it be that I'm a product of my generation, or am I just weird?
Most likely it's a combination of both, but although I do have many seemingly male tendencies, I am still a girl at heart. I giggle incessantly and sometimes cry for no reason. I have been known to wear make up from time to time, I have a subscription to Cosmo and I've even started to wear dresses, just for fun. However, I think it's pretty safe to assume that most girls can't identify a 1967 Corvette just by the wheels.
So where does that leave us? What we have here is an apparent paradox. That is, while the progress women have made is definitely wonderful by any standards, we still have to figure out how to be strong while maintaining the femininity that defines our gender.
We're now allowed to wear pants whenever we want to, and we don't need to smoke cigarettes to show our independence, but there are still ways for us to raise a few eyebrows. Every day, women are proving that you can like sports and cars and still be a woman. So even though I may enjoy ""SportsCenter"" and other ESPN productions more than most guys, put me in a pink dress and heels and I'm just as feminine as the next girl. Again, a paradox. But then again, maybe that's what we've been fighting for all along.
