What Do You Want From Me?

In 1978, Jamaica Kincaid published Girl, which is a story written in the voice of a mother

speaking to her young daughter. The mother, without pause, is rattling off a laundry list of gender specific unwritten rules and expectations that a girl becoming a woman must abide by. Kincaid grew up on the island of Antigua and some of the expectations she writes about are culturally relevant to that location, but largely, the expectations are translatable to any culture. Among instructions on how and when to wash, cook and clean, Kincaid’s narrator includes instructions on how to behave and even how to smile properly:

“This is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely.”

“[T]his is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming.”

Kincaid wrote Girl within the age of Postmodernism which kicked off in the ‘60s and ‘70s and brought about a focus on change in Women’s rights, also known as Second Wave Feminism. Gender issues, the sexual liberation of women, reproductive rights and job opportunities for

women to name a few, became the focus for change and advancement. In 1968, a book called The Second Sex, written by Simone de Beauvoir and published the same year as the birth of Jamaica Kincaid, began to recirculate and discussed the idea of women’s domestic responsibilities, inequality in the job market and specifically noted ideas of women’s success being a hindrance in potentially finding and keeping a husband. That was forty-five years ago so surely the idea of a woman has changed and the expectations are different. What women are expected to be and what women expect of themselves cannot possibly be the same, can it?

Here we are in 2023 and a movie comes out that renews the idea that the expectations and idea of woman has changed but not by much and interestingly, the growth that we have experienced within the female gender has not canceled out the previously held ideas, they have just become the undercurrent of what we are supposed to retain while also being the powerhouses that we are in all arenas of life. The movie, you may have guessed, is Barbie. In Barbie Land, the Barbie hold positions of power such as president, doctor, lawyer and journalist among others. The Barbies believe that their advancement in Barbie Land has crossed over into the real world and women must be so grateful for the Barbies’ contribution, only to find later that the idea of the

Barbie had set unrealistic expectations of beauty and physicality on the gender.

A monologue performed by America Ferrera stands shoulder to shoulder with the words of Kincaid’s Girl in showing that while things have changed, the undercurrent of the expectation of being female, has not changed much at all. The monologue, in part, reads:

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong."

“You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.”

“You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.”

"I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

So, have a high powered career but also have children, take care of the children, the house and the husband. Be strong but not in an intimidating way. Don’t be too pretty but prepare to be judged if you choose not to wear makeup. And what a feat for celebrity women who, gasp, post photos on social media without a drop of makeup on, how brave! Because it is terrifying to be in the public eye as less than perfect, so yes, it is brave for those who make their living on being the image of perfection on the movie screen.

The message here is that our work is not yet done. The balance of power is not yet balanced and we as women have not yet achieved a place in the mind where the expectation does not still dwell

in the domestic arena.