Mother in Law: Leaders and healers, feared by weak men

Recently, Deceptively Angelic Looking Child 2 was chosen to represent her school at a public speaking competition. Despite the fact that, as far as I can tell, they have done absolutely nothing at school since their SATs, she was required to write her speech at home. 

‘What can I speak about?’ she asked me.

‘Bullying? Polar ice caps melting? The rise of populism?’ I replied.

‘Nah, it’s got to be something I care about.’ 

I very, very nearly called it quits on parenting at that moment. But then I had a thought. 

‘What about ongoing gender inequality?’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘If you start paying the average man and the average woman the same amount in January, the woman’s salary would run out in September. She works the rest of the year for free.’

‘Wait, what?!’ 

Turns out she does care about something. Unfortunately, that ‘something’ is her future earnings, but it was something to work with. 

‘You can’t win, though, even if you do make more money than men. Taylor Swift got called a bad role model during her Eras Tour because she is childless,’ I continued. 

I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head. Squeaky clean, creative phenomenon and billionaire singer-songwriter Tay Tay NOT a good role model?

‘Yeah,’ I continued, ‘and we only have tiny pockets in our clothes.’ 

‘I guess that’s because we’ve got less money to put in them,’ she replied in a huff. 

What a turnaround. In the space of 10 minutes, I’d gone from wondering how much I could sell an elfin 11-year-old for to realising she was fully ready to smash the patriarchy with her big blue eyes and sharp wit. I could not have been prouder. 

I’m not saying I wrote the speech for her, but I was certainly able to show her some photos I had taken of boys’ and girls’ T-shirt slogans with their very differing messages. I was able to talk about the way this messaging translates to the workplace, with ambitious men being seen as ‘natural leaders’ and ambitious women as hard or bossy. On the subject of beauty expectations, she probably wouldn’t have found her way to photos of Leonardo DiCaprio in St Tropez without my guidance. 

The speech was awesome. She included the pockets joke, and delivered it well. 

I could not be prouder to announce that she won the competition. 

After the results, she had a photo with some local dignitaries. One pointed at her and said, ‘I’m scared of that one’. Aside from the fact that we have been scared of her most of her life (she’s always had an element of the unpredictable about her, particularly when holding a penknife or matches), when she told me this, I felt utter despair. What was he scared of, precisely? Her ambition? Her dissatisfaction with the gender pay gap? That if she marries his grandson, his grandson might have to do 50% of the housework? 

Of course, it is none of these individual things. It is exactly what she said in her speech – that the conviction, ambition and confidence she showed do not marry up in people’s minds with a dainty, feminine female. She can’t possibly be gentle and kind too, right? She must be scary. 

As luck would have it, when I was about to write this article, a short BBC Sport video came up on my newsfeed. It was the poem If I Ever Have Girls by Daragh Fleming. I highly recommend you look up the video, but I will leave you with these words:

‘If I ever have girls, they’ll be feared by weak men. 

But to everyone else, they’ll be a consistent friend…

…They’ll know their value is inherent, 

And has nothing to do with their looks.

They’ll be leaders 

They’ll be healers, 

Right wrongs, write books.’

Sounds good to me.

Some facts and identities have been altered in the above article