Gender Roles

Gender roles. Yeah. This is not the lightest topic to write about, but I found myself in my office last week talking to two coworkers about gender roles. I work in the field of Student Affairs, so this stuff is bound to come up once in a while, and since my background is decidedly not in student affairs (I sold lightbulbs before I started this job) I rarely feel like I have much to contribute in these situations. 

Nonetheless, I have been finding myself thinking about the gender roles conversation this past week or so. I even consulted Wikipedia in preparation for this blog post so I wouldn't sound like a total idiot: 

A gender role is a set of social and behavioral norms that are generally considered appropriate for either a man or a woman in a social or interpersonal relationship. There are differences of opinion as to which observed differences in behavior and personality between genders are entirely due to innate personality of the person and which are due to cultural or social factors, and are therefore the product of socialization, or to what extent gender differences are due to biological and physiological differences.

Thanks, Wikipedia! I would cite my source, but the last time I did that on a paper was when I was in high school, and it was called a bibliography back then. Bibliography. I'm pretty sure nobody uses that word anymore. I guess I could put "Bibliography" into Wikipedia, but then would I need to cite that? This is making me tired. 

So I've found myself wondering: am I living my life according to what I feel like is my role as a woman? Do I feel like I should be channeling Donna Reed every minute? Well, I'm not sure if I feel like I'm being pressured to feel that way, but I actually do really like pearls, I sort of wish my closet were full of circle skirts and crinolines, and I actually really enjoy cooking and housekeeping. 

The problem is, though, the more I analyze whether I'm being influenced by gender roles, the less I care. I know that's totally not the right answer. Don't get me wrong, it's important that people don't feel forced into traditional gender roles, but at the end of the day, I am actually okay with being the kind of wife that legitimately enjoys taking care of my husband, and cooking, and making the house pretty and comfortable. I generally like dresses better than pants, not because I am a crazy person who thinks that it's wrong for a woman to wear pants, it's just that dresses are more comfortable than pants. Seriously. It's the best kept secret of women and cross-dressing men the world around. If I lived in a world where the world was trying to convince me that women should only wear Nike shoes, and that wearing them would make me a real woman, would it be wrong for me to wear Nike shoes if I actually tried them on, walked around in them, and preferred them to other shoes?

I know there is the argument that generations of women fought for the right to vote, and the right for equal work opportunities, and the opportunity for equal rights. I applaud them for this, and I thank them. But I also like to think that those same women would have fought for the right for women to make a choice about the kind of woman they want to be. And for me, I like to be the kind of woman that comes home at the end of a long day at work, make the house nice for my husband, pour him a cold beer when he walks through the door, and serve him a delicious dinner. That's my gender role, and I love every single day of it.