My Dirty Little Secrets

I like pink.

I like pink, and cooking, and (sometimes) cleaning.

I like puppies, and kids, and I love babies.

I like flowers, and doing laundry, and bright colors.

I like shopping, and sewing, and talking on the phone for hours on end.

I like teaching.

In fact, I like a lot of things that are generally associated with being a woman.  I've written before about how difficult that is for me.  I spent many years training myself to despise all female-oriented stereotypes, and almost as many years trying to convince everyone in my life that I was not a cookie cutter, cook-and-clean, domestic goddess.

Instead, I was an academic who hated handbags.  Or a truck driver who didn't need a man.  An independent woman who didn't want to get married, who sawed open rooves, and peed in the woods.  A lawyer.  A New Yorker.  An intellectual who conquered Japanese.  A strong woman in a man's world.

Except I'm not.  I'm a strong woman in a woman's world; a teacher.  A woman who can't wait to get married and have a zillion babies with Mr. Peaches, and maybe even stay at home to take care of them all.  I'm a woman whose best friend is her mama and who can't stand to live more than 90 miles away from her relatives.   

Within Feminism are a lot of opposing viewpoints.  As I developed in my own views, I began to  espouse that "Feminism" means that women [should] have the ability to do whatever they want.  CEO?  Cool.  Homemaker?  Go for it.  But I didn't believe that for myself.  I could only do things considered to be outside the norm for women.  

The fact that I like teaching is frustrating, in a way.  I never expected to like it.  After I left my last "career" I decided to become a Spanish teacher only as an avenue to become fluent in the language.  Maybe I would like teaching, maybe not, but I knew I would love Spanish and I would have something to "fall back on" if whatever I really decided to do with my life didn't work out.

Learning that I like the kids, and molding their little brains, has forced me to come to terms with the idea that I might be teaching for a long time.  And as I get older, marriage, babies, and domestic goddessness-a word I just invented- becomes more real.  

It's time I am honest with myself.  And- apparently- you, Dear Reader.