Good Girl, Bad Boy
Part 1.
That’s what we’re raised to be. We’re all decent people, aren’t we?
Girls, especially.
This is the expectation cast on women right from childhood - when playtime is slowly replaced by chores, classroom rowdy behaviour is punished harshly, higher expectations of both behaviour and performance dangled on our heads.
Girls, right from childhood are held to higher standards.
Boys play. Girls have to play nice.
Our earliest toys are not rowdy action figures, they’re tea sets, household kits and kitchen sets. Instead of play-acting hero stories, we’re taught games where we play-act a household, hold play-weddings and pretend to have kids, perform rituals and marry off said kids.
Girls are rewarded for learning chores and getting organized at an early age - it’s an expectation.
For a guy - they’re just rowdy boys - what can you expect? If they exhibit the same behaviour, it’s the sign of genius.
When it comes to schooling, the same expectations carry over, except with an undercurrent - girls are consistently held to a higher standard of behaviour, excellence, performance. It is also subtly dangled over their heads to be grateful for every ounce and opportunity of educational advancement allowed us, thanks to the schooling system, because your mothers and grandmothers surely didn’t have these, did they?
Most desi women have been given the opportunity to study because the law and the systems of our countries says they should, not because individual pairs of parents assessed their children and believed a certain type of education and opportunity means better growth for this child.
And the underlying denominator that leads them to this kind of thinking is the idea of a woman as Paraya Dhan - Literally - someone else’s wealth. The current patriarchal models followed by desi societies (most of them, pardon me, as I am not aware of how some matriarchal communities function) is that once a woman reaches a certain marriageable benchmark, she is eventually shifted to another family which becomes her sole focus.
Her new family earns the benefit of her education, her salary, her expertise or her past achievements. Her skills are put to use for the benefit of the family she marries into. This is even a prominent point of negotiation when arranged marriages are formulated - Can the daughter help her parents financially or should it all go to her husband and in-laws? Can we avoid a dowry if she promises to dedicate her salary to her in-laws?
The marriageable benchmark for desi women in modern times is being defined as =
[ age of majority + childbearing ability+ household skills + education & degrees + Money & earnings she brings into the new family ]
And meeting this benchmark means attracting in-laws who are also of a similar or higher standing which benefits the families coming together. So much so that, some girl-parents overstretch their means to make sure their daughters hit benchmarks beyond their means - expensive schooling, international education with crippling lifelong debt and similar choices, with this equation in mind. Mind you, given so many government schemes, parents begin saving for their daughters’ marriages right from when they’re toddlers, such as the famous Sukanya Samriddhi scheme. Is it a stretch to imagine that the average girl-parents have already charted her future when she begins to walk?
And to achieve these benchmarks, the average girl child is subject to stricter standards of behaviour, social compliance, educational standards by teachers and achievement benchmarks.
They’re rewarded, reinforced and supported all the way into college and university, until the shackles and expectations of love and marriage start to descend upon adulthood,
So much that even guys begin to notice at an early age - but their registering of the problem is different.
Guys at an early age realise they can get away with a lot of things because, well, boys will be boys.
Scraped knees, broken neighbour’s window? Psshhh.. No biggie
Fireworks in the classroom? Lines and running in the grounds thanks to the PE teacher.
Playing cricket in the halls? Kneel down or stand outside the class.
Bunking classes, smoking and drinking? Suspension for 3 days (aka the holiday they wanted).
Are any of these really punishments? Where is the reward for good behaviour and the genuine consequences for the bad?
From an early age, boys are exposed to the boundaries girls are, but instead of expecting compliance, they’re expected to test them. A lot of their behaviour is excused as boyish yuva ka josh.
However, there is something to be said that they notice the attention and discipline with which the average girl is groomed for long-term success from day one. And I kid you not, it is discipline and success. Girls are raised, equipped with crucial survival skills right from childhood but the same is not the case with guys.
They notice the outcomes - girls are believed over boys when something happens. The word of a girl is prioritized when something goes wrong. Acting out is not even an expectation laid on a girl. Guys notice that girls are EXPECTED to succeed, while for them, SUCCESS is a bonus or a happy accident but not a pre-requisite.
Most guys do not have the same careful behavioural grooming, exposure to tailored influences with the long term goal of seeing them win in the olympics, join the army, become a diplomat, run a business or become the CEO of a tech company. They’re allowed to grow wild until adulthood hits them hard, and then they have to scramble.
A lot of this is the result of wilful pampering at home - where traditional roles dictate that the Son of the family takes responsibility for the family. In a sense of collectively misguided thought, parents tend to pour more love (read: pampering) into the Son - by excusing his behaviour, allowing his childish explorations, giving into their rebellion or wilfulness, funding their lavish lifestyles, in the hope that their Raja Beta would turn around and do the exact same for their aged mother and father - host them and pamper them in their old age the same way they pampered their dear son.
This trend continues till adulthood - they’re still living with their mothers, their jobs, porn and dating being the only adult outlets in their lives, while they wait for said families to find eligible girls for them to marry. They haven’t done a thing to develop themselves as individuals with something to offer other than a dick and a paycheck or a personality that consists of cheering at cricket matches.
Which brings me to Adulthood.
Nearly every woman I’ve met who has some degree of self awareness has envisioned a plan for her future. She has survival skills that involve everything from chores in the house to tasks for the household. They know what age they want to or are going to marry and how much it will cost the family, they know what investment plans they want to make so they become financially free.
They know what hobbies and side gigs they want to nurture, they know what their career graph will look like, and what they want to do. They even have calculated the cost of going abroad and living in various countries to make any of these happen.
Most guys on the other hand, have no clue. They’re still living at home, obsessed over the latest gadget or new internet guru, have no implementable life skills, can’t make a cup of tea or run a load of laundry to save their lives, have no clue how to develop their personality, or have an investment plan for themselves, family, elders or even themselves. They have no idea what to do when marriage is on the horizon, or when building a life requires foresight and action.
So at the same age of 25, a woman has already planned 50-90% of her life out in various aspects and is already making arrangements to realise them while a man has discovered the joys of a disposable income and has no thoughts beyond the cricket match he can finally splurge on without his parents’ nagging.
At age 30, a woman has her retirement planned, she’s building skills both at home and professionally, accomplishing the way she’s been taught to excel since childhood, while a man has discovered that his parents are not going to live forever, responsibility is not just a word in the dictionary, it has meaning, and the opposite sex does not find his lack of a personality or inability to build a future, attractive.
Is it surprising anymore that girls, are told to lower their standards by the likes of Sima Taparia and many other meaningful aunties with miserable marriages, and just pick a guy to marry?
The keyword here is lowering standards. How can any clear thinking self-respecting woman entrust her future to someone who does not have his shit together at the BARE MINIMUM? And yet, due to the realities of desi society and the nagging biological clock, we are expected to lower the BARE MINIMUM standards.
We’ve been taught since childhood to hold high standards, while men have been taught the opposite.
They’ve been waited on, and cultivated as princelings by families, with the expectation that a suitable girl will simply fall into their laps when the time comes.
Is it really that necessary to lower your standards?
Ladies, let me ask you.
Do you deserve this clueless, aimless, personality-less skill-less complete bubble that most guys come from? When a job has stringent requirements from you for 8 hours a day, your landlord has requirements he needs you to meet even for a few months, why not for the rest of your life?
When you have been raised to meet certain standards all your life, it is not a stretch to expect your partner to have similar if not complimentary skills to yours.
Marriage is not a zero-sum game. If you bring something to the table, your partner at the very least needs to bring something similar to offer. 1+0 = 1 1+1 has to become either 2 or 11.
So HAVE ALL THE EXPECTATIONS you can. Because you will only get what you ask and settle for. And it’s only when you have the right set of expectations that you can find someone who vibes at your level, if not exceed it.
Because marriage is a traditional institution despite all attempts to modernise it, equip it with laws, ideals and so much more.
Expecting a guy who steps up IS NOT A BIG STRETCH.
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But I know most of you desi women will give in and accept whatever comes your way and term it on par with what you deserve. So let’s do a little exercise to help you figure out what you are worth.
WHAT YOU ARE WORTH
Do this on paper, or if possible, Word, or Google Docs, or Powerpoint. Open up a document. This is going to be LONG.
Step 1: Find a nice picture of yourself that YOU LOVE and think you look amazing in. Say something nice about yourself.
Step 2 : list down your qualifications and professional skillsets, and everything you are doing work-wise. Starting a side gig? It goes in. Learning pottery? Goes in. Somebody complemented your writing skills at work? Goes in. Saved group projects in college from dying a miserable death? Goes in. Played a sport, led people or won medals? Goes in. For each Skill Item you have listed - make a column and name the demonstrated skill - such as project management, pottery and ceramics, athletics/sprinting, engineering, public speaking, poetry, and so on.
Step 3: Make a list of every occasion people have thanked you for helping them in some way. Any way. Be it - overcoming bullies at school, dealing with a creep, solving problems at home, tutoring, editing a newsletter, etc etc, Whatever you have done to help someone - list the occasion. And then, name the value or the quality it represents - like - courage, or honesty, or street smart thinking, and so on. Those are values that you hold and have demonstrated as an individual. These are your DEMONSTRATED PERSONAL VALUES
Step 4: Make a long list of LIFE skills you have. Cooking? Laundry and housekeeping? Driving? Dealing with legal and government systems? Time Management? Childcare? Conflict resolution? Research? Balancing family accounts? First aid? Ayurveda? Yoga? Every single thing. And yes, planning a puja at home or that diwali party in the family does count. That's Event Management.
Step 5 : Open up job portals in your country, and for every item you have listed in your professional skillset - find job listings and salaries attached to it for 1 year. Add that number next to each item.
Step 6 : Do the same with your LIFE skills - for every skillset, there is a professional doing a job - so list their annual salaries next to it.
Step 7 : Add up the sum total of the salaries from both your professional skills and life skills - That is your QUANTITATIVE PERSONAL WORTH for 1 year. Step 8 - See all the qualities you’ve listed, like leadership, time management, accounting and so on? Make a long list of these, and do a search for these skill sets on JOB portals. Find the top-paying jobs that pay for a combination of these values and skillsets. It will be in millions or lakhs. Add that to your Quantitative Personal worth.
Step 8 : To your list of DEMONSTRATED PERSONAL VALUES, add a list of dos and don’ts. These are - Behaviours you will ACCEPT AND WELCOME (dos) and Behaviours you will absolutely deny, abhor, condemn and get angry at (Don’ts) For example - Being casual and unserious can be a DO for me, but Betrayal is a DON’T - which means, I greatly value loyalty as an individual. Make these lists and define them.
Now, your demonstrated personal values and the DOs and DON’Ts you list out signal the type of people you are okay with welcoming into your life and the type you cannot accept. THESE are your moral standard. THESE are your benchmark for friends, family, and life partner. THESE are your personal boundaries. Write them in your diary and stand by them uncompromisingly.
Step 9 - Back to your Quantitative Personal Worth. Multiply it with the average Desi woman’s life expectancy. It has been calculated to be between 67 - 70 years. That’s your worth as an individual at the BARE MINIMUM. That is your poverty line, and no person you welcome into your life can go below this line, or treat you beneath it.
Now, looking at this list, ask yourself, my dear lady.
Do you really think you ought to settle?
