Fembots Among Us…
There was this article about supposed fem-bots, this new breed of women twentysomethings and thirtysomethings who were detached, selfish and competitive. Sounds like neo-feminazism? Well, it just described women that didn’t feel the need to get emotional, were very self-aware of their needs coming first and not really trying to be everyone’s best friend and were focused on their careers and getting ahead in them.
So goes the American’s psyche, being further plunged into a younger generation of women’s heads. I started to feel like I could identify, over the years through work experience and relationships that have come and gone and still here, I’ve become more emotionally detached, in a great way, more thick-skinned, not taking anything personally. But then it seemed like a role-reversal of women acting like men yet again. And it described men acting like sensitive beings that women once were.
It described how Angelina Jolie once said she doesn’t feel the need to cry but the article failed tomention the other part of that quote, that when she has to cry in a scene, it’s usually uncotrollable. The article talked a little about suppressing feelings, and not needing to tell everything to another person.
I can see how this would be true, I can definitely relate to that, of course that’s all relative and situational oriented. Intimate relationship with a significant other, yes, I do and will share all my feelings. I don’t talk to people that I don’t trust or know very well and I only talk to people about my deepest concerns because I know that I’m talking to someone that can listen without judgment and chip in some dimes of perspective as well.
Here’s another medial label for women to adhere to, try to identify with and mold themselves into. A couple of years ago, I might have seen myself in that article and aspired to be more like a fem-bot. But I’m not that person anymore. I’ve really come to a point of embracing my emotions for what they are and releasing them, not holding on to them, not comdeming them or myself, but letting it go.
It’s been very liberating to do that, it’s allowed me to be more myself, feminine, in every sense of the word and beyond. I don’t feel the need to prove that I’m intelligent or have my voice heard unless I feel that it’s necessary, it’s allowed me to be more authentic with who I really am. Where as before someone may have a debate about something, and I had to chime in with my two cents and be adamant, and dominant, it was very important for me to be heard. But now, I notice that there is more subtlety, and that I don’t have a need to have my voice heard every time, I have become more discerning in how I will share myself.
It’s the competition with men that I’m not interested in doing anymore and that part of me I’ve let go a couple of years ago, of course I didn’t do this on my own, I took this great class that used body awareness, facilitated meditation and breathwork to release pain and all feelings of non-comfort in the body in an open, gentle, inviting way. A way that was very feminine, and it was in this 8 week class that I learned how to do that for myself and let go of the idea of feminism to be this entity that embodies adopting a man’s way of dealing with things that were learned and affected. That’s not natural for a man either to constantly emote and act-out different scenarios of affectation that he learned through society, peers and family. Neither is it for a woman to do the same, and it wasn’t working for me either.
So I read this article in August’s issue of Marie Claire with concern, humor and disconnectedness. I see how much I’ve grown and how I used to think and repress how I felt for fear of ‘looking’ vulnerable. I’ve learned to be in the present with everything, and learned how to deal with feelings. I don’t go into meditation right there if I’m in a conflict, but with most of us that feeling is still with us long after the conflict and we are left with these emotions. I will immediately if I can, find a place to be alone and process what I’ve felt.
I think articles like these or this one (mine) need to be taken with a grain of salt, the impact these have on us, is beyond what we give recognition and are aware of. I have found a path that felt really good to me, and let me be, just be, it took work and I still work at it, but the beauty still remains changing and growing. I, human being.
Tags: The Path of Life
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