The Girl and the Pickle Jar

I take the jar of pickles out of the fridge.

It's a brand new jar, stuffed chock-full of crinkly little cucumber product, never been opened before.

I'm about to call my dad to help me open it, thinking that's what's expected of me. But the words catch in my throat.

Since when, I wonder, did women have to be the weak ones?

Traditionally, of course, men have been stronger physically. Ever since the stone age, men were relegated to the heavier labor, and women the lighter jobs, simply because of the slight sexual dimorphism present in the species H. sapiens. The men kill, the women gather; the men reap, the women sow; the mean hunt bears, the women bear hunters... It only makes sense. To format society otherwise would be highly inefficient.

But since when does that mean women have to be such wimps?

Women are delicate flowers, says the Victorian era. Women are made for housework and for child-care and for sitting around in impossibly huge dresses looking like the beautiful, delicate creatures they are. Women are not to think, women are not to work, women are not to do anything strenuous or serious or gruesome enough to move one delicate little ringlet on their delicate little heads.

Yet it's the women who bear the children. It's the women who take care of the sick, the wounded, the hurting, the dying, the lost. Even in the most ancient of civilizations, it didn't matter how much the man did unless there was a woman behind him.

Maybe it's traditionally the man who moves the world, but it's the woman who makes it stay put.

And now that times are changing, who says we women can't change with them?

Physical labor isn't the most important aspect of a job anymore. Even the farmers and the construction workers have tools to help them; although they're still immensely strenuous jobs, it's nothing an extremely fit woman couldn't handle. Society's mechanized so much that outside of mens' athletic competitions, I dare you to name a job that no woman could perform as well as her male counterparts, if not better. People say women are appeasers, are poor decision-makers, are soft and weak in the brain. They say we try too hard to make everyone happy, to be everyone's friend rather than to make the best decisions. And maybe some women do that. Maybe some women are still convinced that everyone has to like them to be worth anything... but I can name a million examples where it's exactly the opposite. Who tries harder to be everybody's friend, me or my brother? Who's made more enemies, Hillary or Bill? And when you look at the men in the CEO jobs on Wall Street giving everybody bonuses to make them happy, don't you wish just for a second that Wall Street had a tough-as-nails woman to shape it up? An Arianna Huffington? A Condoleeza Rice? Yes, even a Hillary?

Men need to respect our ability, but that also doesn't mean they have to be a jerk about it.

Yes, boys, feel free to hold doors. Feel free to pick things up when we drop them or buy us dinner. Chivalry isn't dead just because sexism should be... it just means that after you hold the door for me on the way in, I'll turn around and hold it for you when we leave. Maybe I'll pay next time. And if you drop your pencil and it rolls toward my feet, I'll pick it up and hand it to you. And then maybe I'LL ask YOU to homecoming: it's a free country, and I'm a free woman. Just because old society expects you to be chivalrous to me doesn't mean new society can't have chivalry go both ways.

--

Snapping out of my reverie, I looked at the pickle jar anew.

I set it on the table and twisted the lid. It came off without much effort.

I smiled.

Yes, I'm a woman.

I'm a woman who can give a firm handshake

I'm a woman who can carry and play an instrument bigger than you are.

I'm a woman who can write

I'm a woman who can think

I'm a woman who can decide

I'm a woman who's much more likely to change the world than to change a diaper

And I'm a woman who can open her own damn pickle jar.

--Patti