Laying the Self-Sacrifice to Rest

In my goth-tinged teenage years, I fell in love with taking walks in cemeteries. At first for the aesthetic and then for the epitaphs. The longer inscriptions can be a fascinating window into lives I’d otherwise know nothing about. I try to visit historic cemeteries, graveyards, and mausoleums whenever I get the chance, especially when traveling to older cities.

Headstones I’ve encountered have mourned soldiers, presidents, poets, and sons. They’ve also mourned women. Those women, however, are nearly exclusively described in terms of their relationships to men.

Is that how the women defined themselves in life? Possibly. Would they still do so if they’d been born a couple of generations later? The modern person in me wants to deny it. Yet I admit that I, too, have defined myself in large part through my relationships to others and what I do for them. It’s a troublingly patriarchy-centered thing to do.

Dutiful daughter, marriageable girlfriend, understanding wife, dependable mother. Those have been my primary identities over the first forty-odd years of life. And relationships with other humans are necessary—in my opinion—for emotional and mental health. But how you frame your identity within those relationships matters, too.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be appealing. To potential friends, sure, but also to potential boyfriends—unfortunately, to men in general. It feels shameful to admit this, like I can’t be a feminist and also have caved to the incessant pressure to be desirable. It sounds like the worst kind of Victorian-era bullshit to determine my self-worth based on how many men wanted me. Approved of me. Not how many men appealed to me, please note, but how many men found me appealing.

My generation of women were explicitly told that we should aim higher than our forebears had. That we were lucky to live in an age of dawning egalitarianism. That we should focus on intellectually demanding careers and logistically equal romantic partnerships. That we were letting our side down if we didn’t escape the suffocating weight of the patriarchy.

At the same time, every implicit message we received—from television, ads, movies, books, music, our peers, our teachers, our political leaders—told us to be pretty, friendly, and unthreatening. Appealing. To men. Who continued to take up a ton of space in executive suites and top-level government jobs, and who continued to be the default protagonist of every mainstream story.

In the Victorian era, women were told, “this high and no higher” and their restraints were obvious. In the Xennial era, women were told, “you’re free from those restraints; shatter that glass ceiling and shoot into the stratosphere.” Yet many of us have been too weighed down to rise. By gender expectations and norms. By the way we’ve structured romantic love. By our own exhaustion from trying to meet irreconcilable demands.

Is it better now than it was a couple of centuries ago? A hundred years? A decade? Definitely. And still I’ve shaped my identity around what other people want. I’d like to spend the next forty years figuring out how to be a meaningful and compassionate part of my loved ones’ lives without neglecting to compassionately find out what’s meaningful to me.

In some ways, I have no choice. As I age, I’m experiencing a significant reduction in desirability. But I’m also experiencing a reduction in wanting to be desirable. And in this age, that doesn’t mean The End. In that way, we have evolved and made progress. The insidiousness of having independence preached to us while codependence was all around us may be fading at last.

More than a few women Gen Xers, brought up with the same mixed messages I was, are moving on from their marriages, aware of their own selves in a way that they couldn’t be when they were young. That liberation, as much as it can be complicated and messy, feels like it’s growing. My younger friends are already confronting and trying to accept their desires independent of romance and likability—they’re doing it much earlier and much more honestly than I did (or am doing).

Maybe we’re getting to a point where the rhetoric and the reality are finally merging.

So while it’s disheartening on one level to no longer feel that I’m valued and attractive in the specific way I’ve been indoctrinated to value…it’s also a massive relief—as a woman—to be dismissed by the patriarchal gaze. I’ve ruminated on this theme before, but it’s one that comes up over and over. Losing your “place” in our male-dominated society can mean gaining value to yourself. It can mean freedom to figure out what you want, who you are, and what you can do outside your relationships.

I still want to be an appreciated spouse, a beloved parent, a dependable friend (and a charming drinking partner, I hope). Just…I also want to figure out what I’d write for my own epitaph.

Yours in contemplation,

That Hag

Two Ways to Enjoy Yourself in the Week Ahead:

1. If you find yourself too often becoming the Angel of the House, consign her to hell and continue on without her. Virginia Woolf in the 1930s described the Angel of the House thusly: “She was utterly unselfish…. She sacrificed herself daily…. [She] preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.” Well, stop. Sympathize with yourself for a bit. Obviously perpetual selfishness isn’t a good plan for life, but prioritizing your own health is not only reasonable, it’s necessary for your relationships to thrive. Do something you enjoy that no one else around you does. Sure, there’s a time (many times!) to enjoy things mutually with other people. But there’s got to be at least one thing you like that no one else does (roller skating? watching that show everyone else trash talks? walking through local cemeteries?). Do that. Enjoy it.

2. Think of the most extravagant thing your schedule and budget allow and let yourself do it. Honestly at this point for me? That thing is leaving my spouse with our kids one evening and going out to a movie alone—complete with Milk Dud–studded popcorn and whatever off-brand Icee the local theater offers. Maybe for you it’s a last-minute trip to Greece or a trip to the bakery or a really long hike. We’re all in different places. And ideally we’re reaching the same emotional point: Release of tension and guilt-free enjoyment and the sense that we can not only please ourselves but should.