In society today we see a lot of comments about what
defines a “real” woman or man. In fact just yesterday I saw a usually very
intelligent friend post something about “real men playing hockey and real women
being hockey fans”. The flippancy of this statement caught me off guard and
made me upset in a very deep way.
Why have we as a society decided to define what makes
someone real? Does the way I look, or what I like and don't like, decide whether or not I am achieving the feminine ideal? As far as I’m concerned, until we are faced with the addition of
robots into everyday society (a la Terminator) this “real” or “not real” crap
is a joke. Every day we are inundated with “Real women have curves”, “Real men
cry (or don’t cry)”, “Real professionals wear suits” and the list goes on. Why
is a woman with a voluptuous body more real than a starving mother in Africa, or an Olympic athlete? Why is an openly sensitive man more real than a man who expresses his
emotions through other mediums? Why does being gay make you less of a man or more of a woman? These
definitions are silly and quite frankly irrational. We are all real. We are all
flesh, blood, spirit and brains. I am a woman, but more importantly I am
a human. I am not a cyborg because I have an athletic build and not Marilyn
Monroe's curves or Audrey Hepburn’s delicate frame. My husband is not an extraterrestrial
being because he doesn't cry during the “Notebook”.
Realness is not something you achieve; it is something that
is true the moment you are conceived. You can never in your life be more or
less real, and society has no jurisdiction over this fact. You are real, you
are human, you are an incredible being. Whether you define yourself as feminine,
masculine, childish, adult or any other “category”, you are that thing. You are
the only one who can define yourself and no matter what that definition may be,
you are and always will be “real”.
