As I thought about it I recalled several very vivid instances of my mom brushing my hair and I remember that it hurt my head a lot and she used to tell me that "that's what us girls have to go through." I remember thinking, well then I don't want to be a girl because its painful and this hurts. The interesting thing though is that she was always seemingly happy about it and not saying it in a mean way or intentionally trying to hurt me, but she would kinda laugh and say in like a melodic voice "well this is what we have to do" and like shrug her shoulders as if there was nothing we could do to change it. It was just our lot in life to have to go through this to be beautiful every day of our life.
Recently I guess the first thing that comes to mind is the timeless assumption that the women will do the cleaning and tidying up after a party or a get together. Recently I was at a gathering at a friend of a friend's and as the night wound down there were about 50/50 men to women hanging around and 2 women headed into the kitchen and started to clean up and I'm not sure if it's just my own history or if they were subtly pressuring us other women to join them in the effort but we all ended up in the kitchen washing dishes and wiping down counters. All but like 3 of the women ended up in the kitchen and none of the men did. The expectation was clearly there and the women who did not join us in the kitchen almost seemed like they were not a part of the "group" that was formed as we scrubbed and did our womanly duties. LOL.
