If you know me, you know
that I am repulsed by the idea of a conventional life – the husband, two kids,
a dog and a white picket fence life that so many young women in the church hope
to achieve so that they can bake cookies and casseroles for someone and be a
submissive wife and mother who goes to all the right church socials and attends
all the right intellectually insulting women’s Bible studies (appropriate for the
smaller female brain) and receives a directly proportional amount of stars in
her heavenly crown for hours spent in the kitchen on this earth.
Gag me and kill me.
You don’t have to point
out that I’m carrying some sort of offense or insecurity in my heart there.
It’s evident enough. It’s been evident enough for years, the many years of my impromptu
rants and quick verbal draw, my years lived on the defense.
And I think I’m ready to hang up my hat.
I’m tired of hating women so much, and
I’m tired of hating men even more.
I’m tired of standing on this soapbox.
I’m actually exhausted.
Is it okay if I climb down now?
Because I grew up
surrounded by boys, I became very confused at a young age about my place in
life, who I was supposed to be. I have two older brothers who I’ve looked up to
my whole life and seven male cousins that I’ve played outside with during every
holiday and birthday since I was little. My two best friends were boys. They
have surrounded me since I began breathing.
When I started to get a
little older, I didn’t understand why people started giving me dolls, why my
mom was putting bows in my hair even though I ripped them out every time, why
people laughed when I wore my cowboy boots with the dresses they forced onto my
body, why playing Cops and Robbers or showing people the worm I found in the
yard was met with rolling eyes and grimaces.
It wasn’t so much that I
didn’t like the girly things; it was that I had never seen anyone around me
wearing those types of clothes or playing with Barbies or going to dance class and,
in a way, all of those things made me feel alienated from all of my male
friends and playmates.
I didn’t want to be
different; I just wanted to continue to fit in, yet it was consistently
communicated that I wasn’t made to do the things that those around me were
doing. I didn’t understand.
However, when I got old
enough for school and started interacting with girls, I wanted to fit in with
them, too. I wanted to look like them and act like them and be prissy like them
(something I think I still managed to master in my own way), but my lifelong
community of boy-influence said that was impossible, too. I was met with
questioning eyes and snickers when I would decide to be girly around my boy
friends, obviously confusing their idea of the person I was since I had always
been “just another one of the guys.”
It’s like I was caught
in between genders – deep inside I really wanted to be the girl that I am but
was raised by boys and, ipso facto, tended to enjoy and do culturally male
things. I never found any way to manage the two conflicting identities.
As a result, I have lived 23 years in an identity
crisis that has left me embittered, angry and miserable.
I began to resent males
for the lives they got to live, perhaps beginning when I was told I could not
try out for the football team like my brothers. I remember feeling such a
profound sense of injustice in that moment, such an unfairness that rocked me
to my core. I had been doing the same things they had my whole life and usually
better than them – why was everything all of the sudden changing?
Why were people expecting the
Barbies to be anything other than the G.I. Joe’s’ hostages?
[apparently early childhood meredith knew how to manage cheerleading and her love of Auburn football]
I subconsciously decided
to hang on to that resentment, feeling betrayed by all of my male playmates and
lifelong buddies who were able to continue doing the things I had grown up
doing but suddenly had to leave behind because I was a different gender. It’s a
bitterness I have carried my whole life and projected onto any successful guy
that could’ve been a great friend or boyfriend, even, and I have shut out every
man I’ve ever met that could have the power to leave me feeling betrayed and
weak like the boys from my childhood (granted, it wasn’t their fault).
On the other hand, I
have resented women my entire life just as much as the men. Why weren’t they
fighting for equal rights? Didn’t anyone see how mentally dense it was to
accept such a weak life for ourselves, letting the men have anything they
wanted while we prepared their sandwiches in the kitchen so they’d have the
energy to do the things we pitiful women could never do?
At the first sign of femininity, I have fled.
Nothing seems weaker,
nothing seems more senseless, nothing seems more utterly feeble, brainless or
cowardly.
I have hated women who
were women and loved women who were as bitter as me, seeking to be stronger and
better than every man we encountered and to crush masculinity beneath the
weight of our superior, redefined femininity. My eyes and lips have dripped
with disdain for years about the women who furthered the stereotype I worked so
hard to prove wrong but was secretly driving my existence. If I really thought
women weren’t the weaker sex, why didn’t I own my womanhood?
Truly, “I am woman, hear
me roar” has been my life’s mantra and driving force.
Well, like, I said, I think I’m ready to hang up
my hat, to turn in my badge and quit policing this identity I’ve created, and
I’m going to say it.
I’m going to say the thing I’ve avoided saying
for 23 years, the one thing I could never admit to myself, the one thing that
has been most unacceptable and that I’ve been resisting and trying to redefine
my whole life. The thing that has seemed most unfair all my days on this earth.
I, Meredith Kimbrough
Hastings, am a girl.
I like getting dressed up and
looking pretty.
I like cooking and serving others
by making them food.
I actually love being coquettish
and doing horrifically Southern things like putting my arm through a guy’s arm
and letting them open doors for me (when it’s convenient) and being treated
like a lady.
I love being the apple of my
daddy’s eye and my mom’s baking buddy, and I love that my daddy has always
called me “his sweet little girl.”
I find it amusing and somewhat endearing
that I am hyperemotional and cry at the drop of a hat.
I even love to dance. I LOVE
DANCING. I dance all the time when no one is watching.
Can that be okay? Are people laughing at me?
Just kidding. Even if you are laughing, I don’t
care. I have found so much freedom in finally letting this be okay. I am a girl. I can say it without throwing
up or apologizing, and as it turns out, I love
that I am a woman.
I love that I’m a woman and yet…
I probably know more about football
than 90% of American women.
I love going outside, hiking,
exploring the woods and baiting my own fishing hook.
I love playing guitar.
Shooting a basketball is one of my
favorite ways to relieve stress and clear my head.
I could beat most guys up if I had
to thanks to years of brotherly training.
I thoroughly enjoy wearing flannel and gym shorts and headbands. At the same time. That don’t match. Below is one such example.
I can love these things
and still be a girl.
Finally, that is okay. It’s finally okay to
admit my more girlish tendencies while retaining my love for things that boys
also like. In the words of my friend Sassy Cassy Horton, I’m the “ultimate
girl,” the kind who can play football and drink a beer with the guys then throw
on a dress and go dancing.
I love that.
I’m tired of trying to
maintain this identity that pushes everyone away because I’m afraid of being
rejected by both genders. Maybe I’ve felt rejected because I never gave myself
permission to accept myself as the girl I’ve always been.
I will not live enslaved
to creating this persona for myself any longer, enslaved by acting like I hate
things that I would secretly love to love, by making faces when girls talk
about getting married to a great man one day, enslaved to pretending that I
don’t have the same desires every one of them do just to convince people I’m
somehow superior to them because I don’t need a man, feverishly trying to
convince them I’m someone I actually despise being.
By never being courageous enough to
admit my true heart’s desires, I’ve lived my life working tirelessly trying to
secure a future that I didn’t really want according to a fabricated list of my likes
and dislikes while refusing to receive the future God wanted to give me that I
was too scared to admit I actually wanted.
By finally admitting
what I have resisted for so long, I feel more free now than ever to be the
woman I was created to be, to operate from the girlish mentality I’ve yearned
to be released to have for so long while still being free to enjoy whatever I
enjoy, regardless of who culture says should like it or not.
It is finally okay to bake the
cookies I love eating in the kitchen I actually enjoy being in wearing the
apron I like while still wearing football cleats with dirt on my knees from an
afternoon of playing in the yard with my brothers.
Honestly, I’m just tired of being bitter and on
the defense, because on the inside, I’m actually a really sweet person.
A really kind young woman who lives and loves to
love people.
And I’d like for everyone else to get to know
her, because I really like her. A lot.
I really, really like her.
m
