Get Out Of The Cage

Before I write this article, I was trying to figure out what kind of content that I would put down in this article. As I was longing to write how women should behave like the way they are and live the life like the way the want and put their own destiny in their own hands, I thought I should write about getting out of the cage which was made of the norms by the society.  It might be easy to say “You can do everything you want in your life” to a man but it is not easy to say the same things to the girls and women.

As growing up in developing country where women are being still locked in the norms and customs which were made before we were born, it is needless to say that women don’t have the freedom to do the things that they think right.  We don’t have to look outside of our circle, we could see how the people in our circle judge women’s behavior in inappropriate way. The society will judge us if we are single-minded persons, they will judge us if we are too emotional and sensitive, they will judge us if we are flying solo, they will judge us if we are too stubborn and tough and they will judge us if we are living the way that we want.  But above of all, we have to believe in ourselves and put aside those things.

A few years ago, when the country was still closed and people were still narrow minded, we had to wear the clothes that we didn’t like and we were prohibited to go outside alone. My mom didn’t like when I wore short pants and jeans. She didn’t like the way to see I put my butt in the shape of jeans. I saw most of my friends and including me wore the clothes that were one side bigger than the actual size because we didn’t want anyone to imagine what inside of our clothes.

One of my friends told me that she was worried if a guy imagined something inappropriate when he saw her in fit clothes. I was kind of surprised when she brought that up. She didn’t even sit right behind the taxi driver because she didn’t want the taxi driver to see her face from the rear view mirror. That was too rigid I thought. It was not right to live without sexual appeal. We don’t have to worry what if somebody imagine inappropriate thing when they saw us in fit jeans. Everybody has their own right to do anything they want. It is none of our business to concern what if other people think of us until it harmed us. 

Let’s look back how women were treated unfairly by both gender in Myanmar. If a girl was raped, first the society judged the way the girl behaved, our parents, our older siblings, our grandparents, our relatives warned us not to wear short and reveal a lot of our skin. So, we used to think it was a crime to wear short and reveal our skin. As I grew up in very traditional family, my mom prohibited me to wear bra until I was at my early 20s. She wanted to ban me to wear bra until I was married. So maybe she thought wearing bra is only for a man that she is married to.  She just wanted me to wear the traditional bra that cover my waist. But I bought the bra by myself when I got my first job. The moment I wore bra, I felt it was kind of freedom around my waist and I could breathe very well. Since I bought those bras by the money that I made, my mom didn’t say anything wrong. So that was the first time I realized that I could do anything I wanted if I could make money on my own.

When I was around thirteen years old, my mom taught me how to cook, how to make the bed, how to clean the house, how to make dishes and how to do the chores. I tried to learn but I found that I was too lazy to do such kind of things and I didn’t have talent in those things. I also found that my mom didn’t ask my younger brother to do such kind of things, I asked her why I would be the only one who needed to learn to do the things that I didn’t want to. Her answer was simple, “well, your brother is a boy”. That was the first time I hated myself for not being a boy in my family. But I was rebel. So I tried to find the way not to do those things. I found the way out eventually. That was reading books and writing. No matter what kind of books that I read and what kind of things that I wrote, my parents thought I was studying. Well, actually I was not studying very well. Most of the time, the books that I read were not related to my school and the things that I wrote were far from my homework. But still, that was the only way out and I should say it worked. 

The society will judge no matter what we do. When I was working in agency side, my boss advised me I shouldn’t have laughed and talked loudly and fast because that made me look ugly even I had pretty face. The moment he said that, I realized that I didn’t fit in that organization and I quit after three months of working there.

We also don’t have to forget that we have the right to wear what we want, to do the things that we want, do chase the dreams that we want, to travel to the place where we want to go and live the life that we always imagine. We have absolute right to do the things that make us happy. We don’t have to depend on someone else to decide our future. The future is in our hands. The country gained the independence in 1948 but most of the girl sill don’t get their independence till 2018. They still want to live in the world where the society decide their future.  We don’t have to lock ourselves in the norms and customs which were made before we were born. We have the right to create the path where we can live freely and independently. The most important thing is believing our future is in our hands. So, it’s time to get out of the cage. 

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