A Waking Nightmare

I wake up sweating. My restless sleep eventually gives way to consciousness. I’m annoyed before my feet can even touch the ground. My forehead is sweaty, but I’m clutching on to the covers curled into a ball. I let out a sigh so exasperated that my boyfriend stirs next to me. He pats my arm and groggily asks, “what’s wrong?” My frustrated and not yet fully formed thoughts mumbled about being attacked by a man. I leap into the confused details, but it is his turn to sigh. He has heard several different variations of this dream. I’m being chased, being attacked, being violated in some way. He sleepily rolls towards me with his eyes still shut as mine, alert with adrenaline burn into his eyelids. He innocently inquires, “Why do you have so many of these dreams?”

Belvedere Advert, 2012. 

My boyfriend is sweet, caring, and sensitive. He is an ally. He listens as I articulate the ways in which a woman has to walk in this world. He hears me. He believes me. He sympathizes with me. Yet, he has no idea what I am talking about.

He is lacking the context of the world in which I exist. Mine is a world that operates in the underbelly of his. He strokes my back when I tell him about being thrown and locked into a toilet stall by a man who liked the way I dance and wanted to lay claim on me, while an ex-boyfriend unknowingly stood outside the door…

Or about when my colleague grabbed my arm and pushed me onto a chair so that I was suggestively eye-level with his erect penis…

Or when an old high school flame pinned me up against a wall forcing his tongue into my mouth. The room, full of former classmates and friends, silently ignored my pleas.

I was 11 years old when a boy first grabbed my ass. He couldn’t have been older than eight, and I’m sure it was on a dare.  He smacked my butt and ran. Neither of us knew how to deal with the situation, yet we played our societal parts perfectly. I said nothing and he did it again.

Bloomingdale's Advertisement 2015.

Working my way back to my pre-pubescent childhood, he has heard some of the dramatic stories that pepper my life.  He sees them as a collection of unfortunate isolated incidents. He doesn’t see the daily violations that link them into an unending reality. My reality is full of colorful incidents that are too exhausting to tell. The wandering hands and lurking eyes that make my skin crawl as I hug myself a little bit tighter.

Even our allies can’t understand that those incessant small violations build off of each other to create intangible and somewhat unidentifiable fear that lingers in every woman.  The subtle backhanded compliments that are meant to keep me quiet, while men flex their entitlement. The power that they’ve carried for centuries and rooted so deeply in their identity, they can’t see it. The comments that I actively try to immediately repress from my memory, because I have better things to concern myself. Yet, it is always there. It may be dormant for a while; it is always lurking beneath the surface. We can’t escape it.

I have to continuously, and carefully, negotiate my place in this world. I am constantly assessing my situation -- eyeing up the people around me, or calculating how much time I have before the sets, wondering if they will protect me if something happens. The sad truth is that there is not much that I can do if I happen to be on a quiet street and a man comes walking toward me. It might be nothing. It might be an ally. But, it might not. I’ve run into both. This is why I have trouble sleeping. This is my constant reality. There is a pervasiveness of sexual oppression and dominance over women, which bleeds my waking into sleeping consciousness. It is something that I can’t evade. It is my waking nightmare.

1945 Fleet Week.  
Sailor George Mendonsa: "When I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, and I kissed her."Nurse Greta Friedman: "I did not see him approaching, and before I know it, I was in this vice grip!"

In my feminist’s imagination, I sometimes fantasize approaching an unsuspecting man while I am walking with my female crew catcalling him, ‘hey handsome, can I talk to you for a minute?’ ‘Damn boy, lookin’ good!’ His face shocked, while the compliment washes over him before it leaves its mildew of violation all across his body. I wonder how many interactions it would take before he no longer wants the unsolicited attention - before he wants to hide from the world. Feeling vulnerable and on display like an animal at the zoo; their existence is solely for the pleasure of others.

I would like to think we women are better than that. But if history can tell us anything, it is that humans want to dominate others. We try to rise to the top by holding others down. I look at this election season and it more of the same. Somehow, people are shocked by predatory ‘locker room talk’. But if I’m really honest with myself, I don’t think women are shocked at all.  I think they live in the same world that I do. We live that reality every day. We feel those words assaulting our bodies, every day. It’s our dirty little secret that we carry heavy in our hearts. It is our waking nightmare that we can’t escape in the light of day.

Work It Out

Sweat drips down my face as I determinedly race on the elliptical. As means of distraction from my discomfort and fatigue, I flip through the channels on the television that is propped in front of me for that specific purpose. I cursorily look around the gym and notice the women on other cardio machines looking as tired as I feel.

We all look the same: restlessly trekking on these machines while secretly people watching and counting down the minutes. My pace decreases, so I refocus my attention on the screen ahead and search for the inspiration to continue. Commercials are on every channel. Brawny Paper towels: a calm youthful mother easily cleans up countless spills created by her well-intentioned but oblivious family. Smiling faces of her husband, children, and dog all gravitate towards her while leaving a trail of chaotic mess.

Next commercial. Ziplock bags: a suburban family barbeques in the backyard, with dad dutifully stationed at the grill. His complete attention is on the grill, unknowingly throwing meat into the trashcan until his wife swoops in and catches a steak on a plate.

The not-so-subtle gender norm reinforcing commercials are just as endless as they are exhausting to watch. Media bombards us with images and messages of unrealistic expectations. Women are expected to always be one step ahead and gracefully handle any catastrophe at a moments notice, in heels, with polished nails, and perfect makeup. How did our expectations of women become so out of control?

Women have been forced to carry an increasingly heavy burden on their shoulders. We are silently being crushed under the weight of these demands. Increasing demands confuse our priorities and motivations. The technological era has tricked us into believing we can be productive beyond our actual capabilities.  By trying to have everything, we are not fully engaged in anything. The quality of what we are able to commit ourselves to is limited. Our attention span is compromised and our decision-making capabilities severed.

Overwhelmed by choices, we are terrified to make decisions for fear of shutting the door to other opportunities. We have been brainwashed to believe that our wealth of options enable us to have more freedom.

When we can have anything, what do we really want? If all things are held equal and without judgment, can we really sort through the plethora of options before us? I think most of us go through our lives without actually asking ourselves, what do we value?

There is an assumed life path: go to school, get a job, get married, have children, and preferably in that order. Despite the options available, when it comes to the important decisions, we follow this prescription. We would never expect to follow a one size-fits-all plan for our clothing, yet we do it for the fabric of our lives. Amidst all of those options, we need to become more intentional on how we spend our time. As technology was meant to ease our lives, options are meant to enable us the freedom of choice. Unfortunately, we have encountered that the existence of these additional resources have the potential to be counterproductive.

Even being an independent intentional woman, I still feel myself slip in the trap of society’s gender restrictions. The inspiration didn’t come to me that day at the gym from the propped up television, but it did make me dig deeper. My workout made me refocus my efforts, not just in terms of physical fitness, but my motivations and goals. I cannot and do not want to be that fictional woman that our media portrays as “successful”. Like the television propped up in front of me, those commercials illustrate how we are distracted from allowing us to really delve deeper into what we really want. The pressures are self-perpetuating, and the more we placate those expectations, the more we will be sucked into this mirage of womanhood.

We need to recalibrate our thinking to acknowledge the unrealistic pressures on women; equally, women need to manage their unrealistic expectations to have it all. Rosie the Riveter is an iconic image that invokes femininity with strength. We are powerfully fierce creatures, but we are still human.