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My Turnby Maileen Hamto |
 |
From The Asian Reporter, V18, #37 (September 16, 2008), page 6.
Woman, meet self
A good friend and I are working on a list of things we want to do before we die.
A short count of things that made her list thus far: bungee jumping, skydiving, and spending weeks in Boracay doing absolutely nothing but enjoying the sun.
On my list: travel to Tibet, learn how to make and edit films, and finally become conversational in Spanish.
Now in our 30s, my friend and I are college buddies. Even as she and I check off items from our individual lists, somehow other things manage to make it on. The way it’s looking, it’s going to take us a lifetime to get through everything we want to experience.
This just in: an audience with Trent Reznor when Nine Inch Nails comes to Portland in December (this one actually made both our lists).
We’re not getting any younger, and creating the list has been a good exercise for keeping track of the passions, idiosyncrasies, and nuances that make us who we are. We didn’t want our identities and personalities to get lost in the fray.
Like me, many of my friends are first- or second-generation immigrants. Many are of Asian descent. We have come to realize a lot of our years as young women have been consumed and defined by meeting (more like failing) the expectations of our parents and by the relationships we’ve had with men.
It’s difficult for many women to maintain the ability to keep one’s sense of self while weathering the different seasons of life. For women who have to transcend the boundaries of more traditional cultures, it is often a struggle to build an identity that is not wrapped around the relationships we have with partners or children.
I’ve heard and read about challenges "seasoned" American-born women have about "coming to their own" as independent women. It’s not easy to build a life without the security of a relationship and all the societal approbations that come with leading a typical "coupled" life, with or without kids.
A good friend of mine, also in her 30s, said she stopped going to parties thrown by certain coupled friends. She is single and loving it, and is rightly annoyed whenever people ask her when she plans to "settle down."
Another friend, living half a world away from her family, said she stopped telling her father about her vacation plans. She is single, lives in Europe, and has travelled with girlfriends to every European country that is part of NATO. Her father worries too much about her safety as a single woman travelling without a man.
There continues to exist the expectation that women of a certain age must be coupled. Else, there has to be something terribly wrong. Many of us grew up around more traditional ways of being a woman, and independence can be a whole new territory.
Yet, more and more women of my demographic — college-educated, professional women from immigrant roots — are saying adieu to the status quo. I bought my own home two years ago, sans a co-signer or a partner. A couple of my single Asian women friends are homeowners as well.
For women rising out of societal expectations that dictate dependence on men, what could be more empowering than being fully responsible for your own finances, and in the process setting the direction for your own life?
The gist of the matter is this: whether a woman chooses singledom or couplehood shouldn’t bear down on her ability to maintain her autonomy and sense of self.
It’s a fine goal to aspire to.