Paris and feminism

Today I've been thinking a lot about the stereotype of thin French women. I once read a poem about how as the French men get older, they get bigger from all the cheese and wine, but the women in contrast shrink, drinking mostly water and smoking cigarettes. The writer put forth the idea that the women were getting smaller simply to make room for the men. They shrunk to accommodate their needs. This poem stayed with me for a long time as I at times have shrunk under the pressure of what I believed it meant to be a woman. This can be seen in the way I never order more food than a man at a restaurant, often letting them make the decisions and talk in a higher voice when I feel unsure or intimidated. "You are just doing a girl thing," someone even accused me at one point on this trip, and the thing that I was in fact doing, was simply asking a practical and logical question. How has society twisted us so much that asking a question is given a negative connotation when it comes from a woman?

I hate that when a woman has needs, she becomes needy, when she is angry she is a bitch, and when she is decisive she is demanding. I hate that we can be made to loose our power for standing up for ourselves. It makes me question, why is society so uncomfortable with women being loud, wanting things, pushing boundaries, growing, and progressing. If everyone is so uncomfortable with the noise of a woman being authentic, maybe they should consider that they are simply insecure of being drowned out? I believe that we as women are more powerful than we let on, or allow ourselves to believe. That we are capable of anything. That we can run kitchens as well as men (if not better at times), read maps, navigate a metro system, live in a country where we don't speak the language alone, get our hearts devastatingly broken by people who don't deserve us, and still dust ourselves off and continue being brave and strong and independent and loud.

This is what Paris taught me today.