UBA PRECIOUS

THE OTHER WOMAN 

It pains me when I see that a woman can conquer a lot of things, but if she perhaps forgets to learn to cook, or isn't domesticated enough, she's nothing. As though the metric for measuring how successful a woman is starts, and ends in the home.
So you see a high flying career woman, who is excelling on all grounds in her career, being ridiculed by her neighbor, a fellow woman, because her husband has to cater to her kids sometimes, or she simply couldn't get around to doing her daughters hair right for school. 
The neighbor raises her shoulder, and smirks with pride, because her husband comes home to a fresh meal every night, and her girls have new hairstyles every weekend. She stands with smugness because in her eyes she's the perfect wife, the perfect mother. Not a today's kind of woman. A true wife material. 
She looks with disgust at her neighbor, who is always at home with her kids, with a new set of nails, and hair, Beautiful clothes but no achievements to her name. No prefix before the mrs, just the mrs nonetheless. "No substance" she says to herself, as she drives off in her self bought benz, to start her busy day. 
You see even before we are married, this subtle competitions still exist. So there you have a girl who somehow didn't get around to learning the intricacies of beauty and it's techniques, compensate herself with sayings like "boys don't like girls with so much makeup and empty heads.". When in truth you actually want to look as glamorous as that. The beautiful girl, who couldn't get around to excelling adequately in her academics, shames the other silently for doing just that, and not taking care of herself in the process. She compensates herself with "boys don't like ugly unkempt girls and girls that are too smart for them". 
Instead of asking how it's done, you result to the oldest trick in the book, condescending and shaming the other woman.
I figured that it is easier to pick out the mistakes in what others are doing wrong. We forget that just maybe, the other woman is living the life she dreamt of. She may not have it all together but the truth is, nobody does, no woman actually has it all together.
Being a stay at home wife, traditional woman, or a career woman, is a choice. It's nobody's decision to pick, but yours personally. What's wrong, is making the other woman feel like she is less than, because she isn't conforming to what you think a woman should be.

I have a theory, and I dare say, that sometimes our willingness to find something wrong in the way someone else is living their life, is due to our deficiencies. If we are honest with ourselves, we realize that we hate the other woman for having that thing we wish we had, but couldn't get around to acquiring. So we pride ourselves in how good we are at what we do, and tell the world how much better than the other woman we are. I reckon we don't realize that we are just trying to convince ourselves, and make ourselves feel better for our inadequacy. Like how the poor man says money Is not everything, to compensate for his lack of money. 

Instead of looking down on and trying to pinpoint what she's doing right or wrong, how about we help out. Lend a helping hand, cover each other's excesses. Adjust each others crown. A little "hey I'm taking the girls to make their hair, do you want Tonye to come along." "I'm going to the market, I can help you get this up". "I can swing by and help you pick that up". No biggie. "My company runs in that line, I could help you look it up so you're really sure about this business". "We have a test tomorrow, do you want me to help you with your revision". "Your hair could be so much better, here let me help you with that”.

We also shouldn't entertain condescending talks about our sisters, from other people. We ought to have them know they can't go around mocking our sisters for their incapabilities. Especially not around us. Not on our watch.. because you see it's easy to laugh with them about someone else, except what happens when you're not there, and you're the topic of the joke. 

You see when I stand on a podium and tell young girls, you can be "anything you want to be in future" I want to mean it. I don't want for young girls to have to choose between, the life they want, and the life they must have. I want them to know that if they will it, they can have it all. They don't have to be a super woman, because no woman is super, but they can do it all, with the help of their sisters and respective spouses.

I look forward to seeing partnerships like this. Women partnering with themselves and not tearing themselves down, over frivolous things. If we want to have a female president one day, and we want women to begin to occupy "male dominated fields". We need women to get to the top first so they could stand as a reckoning for younger ones, a pillar for other dreamers to look up too. We want women on the front line, lifting each other up, for the good of all of us, and the women who come behind us. She can put in the extra work, when she doesn't have to worry about everything. 

Truth is we are all women, fat, short, slim, lazy, hardworking, domesticated, career, preety, smart, the list is endless. And we shouldn't see each other as less than because of whatever reason we might have. There's beauty in our diversity, and so much we can conquer when we stop competing for frivolous things like the attention of men, and a pat on the back from society, and start using our diversity as a strength, to dismantle the patriarchy, because indeed the fight is not against ourselves, but against the patriarchy.

Us girls we've got to stick together.