Recently I have been visiting a lot of family members as I am home from university and they all like to see me and make me eat loads etc. Today I saw my grandmother, a kind old country lady with good morals and an even better cake tin.
However, today's visit left a somewhat sour taste in my mouth due to the fact that we have very different views on what is expected of women. Call it a generational thing, it probably is due to that, but basically she believes women belong in the home with the children. I on the other hand believe women belong wherever the fuck they want to be. This creates tension most of the time and I'm like whatever usually but today was different.
One of my cousins is expecting a child, he is like 23 or something and his girlfriend is roughly the same age. My grandmother adores it because it means she will become a great grandmother who can fuss and dote all over the little baby n'aww (the baby is also a boy so all the clothes she has made for it are blue but that was too sensitive a subject for me to criticise honestly). I don't really care because babies and children in general irritate me. They don't have respect for those around them, they don't know anything and all in all they are just annoying and loud and they are gross. Fine if you want to have a child, but don't expect me to like them just because they are little and 'cute'.
This came across to my grandmother and my mother when I said all of this to them. Instead of a normal response (Oh OK that's a little harsh but I get your point) the response I got was 'Oh well you're a woman you will have to grow to love them'.
Here is a list of things wrong with that statement:
1. I am capable of having children. I have a uterus. That does not mean I have to love anything that may come out of it.
2. Just because I have a uterus does not mean I have to fill it with baby.
3. I usually get bored before I learn to love things; I love things or I don't it is not a process whereby I force myself into it.
Yes maybe when I am older I will want children, but if I still do not does that make me less of a woman? Will I be cast out onto the streets for being childless and alone? Will my uterus rot away and my boobs fall off because I'm not enough of a woman? WHY CAN'T I JUST DO WHAT I WANT GODDAMMIT
I just found one of my oldest friends new artsy blogs. She is an art student at Glasgow School of Art and her latest project involved hugging clay into funny shapes and then putting it on white blocks and ta daa it's art.
She writes on this blog about all the profound artsy proverbs and bullshit that inspires her in life, the pseudo-intellectual tittle tattle that thrives in art schools and universities in general nation wide. And it made me think; why am I not clever. Then I went through an entire angry process before I realised that in fact I am clever, I am just clever in a less bullshit way. It is easy to scoff at art students, like way too easy, and as a sociology student I will take any chance I can to look down on someone else (most people hate us).
She thrives in talking about how bits of ice melting on the ground in her last show represent how nature changes and alters the environment around it (no joke). But that is not being clever; that is learning how to spin bullshit in a way which will make middle class mothers coo and say how clever you are. I am not saying my friend is not clever, she is extremely clever, what I am saying is that this spinning of bullshit can not be a substitute for actual life changing, ground breaking knowledge. This ice melting cannot change the world, or remotely explain our position within it. The things she learns from art school will never influence world politics, or challenge social unjust. Yes, art CAN do these things, but ultimately it boils down to actual understanding of the world, not understanding of how clay alters when clasped to a body.
I have always been cynical of art. I hate art galleries, I hate when people talk about art and the vast majority of the time I cannot stand artistic types. I hate how my friends mothers pay more attention to those who study art, asking in depth questions at every opportunity. Most of all I can't stand the fact that art takes presidency over actual intellect. This may stem from jealousy that my degree subject is not taken seriously by ANYONE and the most bullshit degree in the whole entire world is taken as the holy fucking grail and anyone that studies it is the dalai fucking lama. But now the jealousy has turned to rage; rage at those who appreciate art more than sociology, rage at art snobbery, and, most of all, rage at myself for letting it get to me so much.
