School is back in session and as such I have had the opportunity to people watch a little bit and after the first two days of my second year, this is what I have determined: Mormon society is very, very strange.
For many obvious reasons; we are in fact a peculiar people, but recently (probably from the influence of my hippie sister Rachel) I have been thinking a lot about the role of women and i ave been able to see how Mormons on the whole see that role here on campus.
I feel a pressure here at BYU, not only to succeed at a competitve university, but also to stand out in other areas. I feel a pressure to be better at singing or playing the piano (though neither will likely happen any time soon. I feel like I need to be thin and very pretty, athletic and fit. I feel like I need to be a good cook and a tidy housekeeper, a good time manager and a hard worker.
Maybe everyone feels these pressure, but from my two days of observing around campus and delving into my memories of young women's, it seems that there is more pressure on the women in or Mormon society. I feel the need to be accomplished.
``Oh! certainly, no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.''
And then the inconsistency: women are expected to, after they are very "accomplished," settle down and have a family. I look forward to the day when I will have children to raise and teach, but it seems like a very anti-feminist thing that these accomplished women are expected to don the apron and welcome their husband home from work with dinner and a sparkling kitchen. Don't get me wrong, I will be happy to do just that because I expect to love my husband that much, but I just wonder about it.
I guess it's just the expectation, the assumption, that bothers me a little bit.
Can you tell that Rachel definitely lives in Provo and we visit much more than we used to?
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