There were four of them. Young guys in their early twenties, tall and
lean and loud, more interested in being heard than working out. Otherwise, the
gym was relatively quiet, about fifteen others spread throughout the weight
room.
Bethany set her water down by the lat pulldown machine and leaned over to adjust the weight. One of the young guys approached, indignant, and said, "Hey, I'm using that!"
“Ok, can I work in with you?”
He sniffed. “No.”
He turned back to his friends and started joking with them as if she was
no longer standing there. As he was talking, he picked up a pair of dumbbells and started doing shrugs. Bethany shook her head
and dropped her stuff beside the lat machine. When she sat down, he looked over
at her.
“Hey, I told you that I was using it.” His voice dripped with
entitlement.
“No, you're not. You're doing shrugs.”
“But my stuff is there,” he said, pointing to his towel, clearly shocked
that someone would challenge him, especially a woman. A woman!
Bethany pointed to her water bottle on the other side. “My stuff is there,
too.”
It wasn’t until she finally started doing her set before he backed down,
though not before looking over at his friends. “What a bitch.”
When she’d finished her set, an older man approached her. “I’m glad
you told them off. They’re a bunch of jackasses.”
Bethany nodded, though she hadn’t really told them off, she’d merely
stood her ground. She finished her workout by spending a hard twenty minutes working
the heavy bag, angry that the place she went for peace, her place, had become a
place of confrontation.
When she came home, her face was red. I kissed her at the door.
“How was your workout, Love?” I asked.
“I may have gone a bit too hard.”
She told me what had happened, and I grimaced as I listened. My wife is
about 5’4”, strong but small, and this seemed like just another story – one of
many – that she’d told me regarding her brushes with men. From the parking lot
to the grocery store to the gym, her experience in society was completely different
than mine. I wasn’t completely surprised by this, I’d been lucky enough to have
a number of strong female friends over the years, and they’d echoed similar
situations that happened to them on a regular basis.
According to them, when you’re a girl, you grow up with it, and so
dealing with incidents like that are just part of life. Yeesh. I shook my head
and continued to listen to Bethany tell her story. For as much as I still found
it difficult to believe, there was a time I thought I had it rough because I
was a man.
Young Men are Daft (For a Reason)
When I was in my early twenties, I had these ideas about women, strange
creatures that they were. Fortunately, they were easy to categorize.
a) loud and crass
b) sexy and dumb
c) smart and ugly
d) bossy and mean
And all of those could be lumped into one of these two categories
e) frigid or slutty (Madonna or Whore)
That was about it. Some combinations were possible. Occasionally a woman
could be smart and plain, or they could bossy and pretty, but for the most
part, there weren’t that many different types of women. Men could be a million
things, have all kinds of contradictions, but that made sense. Why? Because
they were men, that’s why.
Early romantic counselling for me included any number of older men
telling me that women would be whatever you made them. They were mirrors.
Whatever reflection you saw was a result of your own doing. Women were strange,
yes, but very simple. If you were good to them, they’d look after you. If you
weren’t, all kinds of bad behaviours would result. Like pets, I remember
thinking. Crazy as it sounds, I did not intend that as an insult. It just
seemed self-explanatory. Most of the movies I watched clearly showed what
happened when women were put in tough situations. How many times did the woman
bungle things up only for the man to save things? Or when was the last time you
heard a woman speak intelligently about guy things. Sure, there were a few
exceptions, but that’s all they were: exceptions. It wasn’t that women were
doing it on purpose, it was just their nature. I understood that, of course.
But damn, it was just so frustrating.
And then there was the special attention they received. That used to
frustrate me, too. A woman could walk into a room, and a proper man was
supposed to hold the door open for her, make sure she was okay, settle her down
if things got anxious, and THEN pay the bill. And I didn’t even mention all
those ridiculous fruitcakes running around screaming about feminism and equal
rights. Equal rights? Women didn’t have to do ANYTHING? Men had to shoulder the
load. You didn’t see us running around whining about “special rights.”
When I asked other men about this, older men, they’d smile and shrug.
That was how women were. There was no explaining it, so best get used to it.
Writers: Women are NOT Hollywood
Some time in my late twenties, a good five years after I started writing
full time, I noticed that my attitude regarding women began to change. My first
(horrible) novel featured two men as the main characters. Writing from a woman’s
perspective was as unthinkable as understanding women in the first place. My
own marriage had been a colossal failure, and here I was, not yet thirty and
already divorced. What did I know about women? Certainly not enough to write
from their perspective.
As a writer, I’d always wanted to challenge myself, so I determined that
I was going to feature two women in my next novel as my main characters. Two estranged
sisters, wildly different from one another. (That novel, Ravin, led to me to my
brief relationship with a literary agent.) I’d somehow developed close friendships
with two women who started to show me that everything I’d perceived about women
and most things I’d learned about them, from either books or movies or the “wise”
advice from other men, were completely wrong. Both of them were pretty and
smart and complex, filled with nuances and contradictions, just like a man. They
did not fit into my categories. (Yes, a man can have a platonic friendship with
a woman. Both of them stood for me in my wedding party, and they remain two of
my best friends to this day.)
At the same time, I began to realize that my perception of women had been
shaped as much by the narrative I’d absorbed (movies, books, music) as by my
own experiences with actual women. Around this time, I’d started watching Hercules:
The Legendary Journey, and when they spun Xena off of it, I watched that, too.
As funny as it sounds, Xena was the first show I’d ever seen to take women
seriously. Sure, Lucy Lawless was sexy and tough, but even within the campy set
of the show, there were more than glimpses to some of the difficulties women
faced. That, along with her relationship with Gabrielle, her quick witted
younger travelling companion, was quite revealing to me. I’d never watched a
show – certainly not a ‘superhero’ type show – that centered on the
relationship between two women. Both of them were strong in their own way, and
both of them were admirable.
What DOES a Strong Woman Look Like?
The crazy thing is that she doesn’t “look” like anything. One of the
reasons I perceived women to be weak and shallow when I was young was that the
definitions and answers I received regarding them weren’t answers at all, they
were types. Look again at my categories. Those aren’t real humans, they’re
stereotypes. And they’re still perpetuated in everything from relational best-sellers
(Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars) to blockbuster movies (anything from
Michael Bay) to best-selling novels written by men AND women. (Fifty Shades of
Grey, anyone? Twilight?)
Over the last decade, my view of women has changed so dramatically, I
can hardly recognize the boy that used to believe those stereotypes were the
totality of another human being. And as a writer, I find it much easier now to
write strong female characters than I do strong males. My only explanation for
this is that when you work from a blank slate, as I’ve had to do, and you’re
writing from an experience completely unlike your own, it’s much easier to find
objectivity when you discover your characters. (Sorry, that sounds artsy, but
there it is)
In
Second Blood, my forthcoming fantasy novel, my female lead (De Nyara)
is by far the strongest and most complex character in the book. She was also
the easiest to write. And in my new novel, The Last Angel, my female lead is a
strong character that again, one I find easy to “hear.”
In both fiction and life, it’s important to consider the complexity of
all people, regardless of gender. By addressing this complexity you neither
write shallow characters nor perceive others the same way. (With brazenly
ignorant comments like, “Ugh. Typical woman!”)
A strong woman does not have to be an Amazonian princess in the same way
a strong man does not have to be a warrior. A strong woman can be a
stay-at-home mom or a lawyer or a politician or a nutritionist. Strength is not
defined by the loudness (or quietness) of an individual or success in a certain
field or recognition by others within society.
Strength, in both men and women, is found in those who act against their
own self-interests to better those around them. Their family. Their friends.
Their community. Strength is found in those who battle the pre-conceptions and
prejudices of society and decide for themselves what they will believe. And strength
is found in those unwilling to sacrifice kindness and compassion for the sake
of moving up society’s hierarchical ladder, be it for money or fame or anything
else. Ultimately, it is defined by our attention to self-awareness, our
willingness to look into the mirror and see who we are, to see our humanity,
and face whatever that reflection reveals.
I’ve been lucky in my life. I’ve been able to meet strong people, kind
people, people who were selfless and gracious and compassionate. But if you
were to really press me, ask me what a strong woman looked like, I’d tell you that
she looked something like the one who stood up those guys at the gym, the one
who refuses to kill a moth in the house and will spend time trapping it in a
box to release it outside, the one who spends countless hours developing meal
plans for her friends and family, most of which go unpaid. Yeah, if you were to
press me hard enough, I’d tell you that she looked like my wife.
-Steve
NOTE: Why not tell me about a strong woman in your life in the comments
below?
