Today I am wearing new shoes (black leather lace up boots) and they REALLY hurt. Walking through London trying to smile through the pain, I was thinking about the saying “walk a mile in someone’s shoes” – that you can’t really know what someone’s life is like unless you experience it for yourself.
I got a snapshot of two very different viewpoints yesterday from women in UK with very different lives:
1. A female columnist in free weekly mag. Stylist, who was talking about her refusal to take on her husbands surname, fearing she would lose her identity along with her madian name.
2. A 18 year old girl getting married on Channel 4 documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding who was describing her soon-to-be life of staying in the home cleaning, cooking, looking after the children and checking with her husband if she wants to go out anywhere.
It got me thinking about how extreme both views are. How some women feminism doesn’t even enter their heads, and for others they worry about how being with a man might change their feminist identity.
I can’t picture either of these two women’s lives as my own. I couldn’t imagine walking in their shoes. But I can understand the Stylist’s writers’ views more because I have been brought up in a completely different culture to the young Traveller girl where I see men and women as equals.
On a positive note, I liked how both women were able to live with their views, with their own cultures. Because surely feminism is about choice? Being able to live the way you want – have a career, vote or stay at home and have a family, both options are open to us now.
Right now, I’ll stick to my own shoes (even if they hurt) but it’s interesting to see how other people walk!
Vix x
