Women's Role In My Family

Submitted By Sonali897
Words: 2198
Pages: 9

As I grow up I am beginning to notice more and more that the women in my family do just about all household work. This really became visible to me on a trip to my aunt’s house in Virginia for the week of the 4th of July. It was so enjoyable playing games, going to the pool, and I even visited Kings Dominion, a wonderful amusement park. Then one morning my oldest cousin called my two younger cousins and I to get ready go downstairs for an “Adventure”. We’d guessed that we were going for another trip to the pool or to play some games but, once she said we didn’t even need to put on shoes our ideas on the pool and games were shattered. It turned out that we were going to wash dishes, and watch the younger kids. Not that I mind cleaning and looking over a couple of children however, when I looked around all I saw were women cooking and cleaning to get ready for the big family dinner. The men were either playing games, on the computer, or making music. Yes, I do admit that noticing this struck a nerve in me. It seemed a little unfair to me. Not to say that the men in my family are lazy and don’t do anything, they do help out at times and when they have to, they are very caring, and they are down to earth, intelligent guys. I just feel that if they were just as able as we were then they could’ve done the household work with us. Since early times women were expected to be home take care of the kids, cook, and clean all day long. The Christian bible has an extremely large influence over that. Which growing up surrounded by a mainly religious family I sort of understand but not completely. What I really don’t understand is the huge expectation on women to perform household task. I don’t complain too much about it because I know it could be worse, in many other countries it is much worse. Therefore, I do not take what I have for granted and I don’t frequently bring up my thoughts on anything about sexism only when necessary. But, why is it that women have to do so much work? I’m sure we’ve suffered enough. Half of the things women deal with men probably would have a hard time dealing with. To add extra anticipated work on us like we don’t already go through enough physically, mentally and emotionally is slightly outlandish. My confusion led me into to research on other people perspectives and reasoning’s. Searching on the internet I found multiple sources. Which I chose because of the proof and verification it gave about sexism and how it is found everywhere like in the media and our everyday lives past and present. There was an amazing article on the Disney Princess Merida of the movie Brave. It was based on the changing of her physical features to make her svelte, and to give her more sex appeal with gorgeous glowing skin. This was so contradicting to the movie and representation of Merida. There was also an article on unequal pay between women and men who do the same job and how your physical appearance controls what job you get, where men were paid more than women with the exception of the modeling world. Before this I research about sexism I had never known that women made a larger salary in modeling. There were some great pictures from a website of extremely sexist advertisement from the 1950s about the things women she be doing to keep their men satisfied. Even though I was born in 97’ I felt a tinge offended because if my grandmothers were there and faced these issues themselves. They were forced to do certain things and be a specific way. The changing of Merida has concerned many parents and people in general. There were even petitions because of this contradictory change. Merida represents a girl who is more than just pretty but, also a girl, who stands up for herself, is sensible and independent and doesn’t need to be ideal female. This makeover only goes against who she really is. Brave is not just another Cinderella with a glass slipper which magically leads her to her