Growing up with an older brother has been one of my life’s greatest blessings in many ways. He’s always been there for me, remembered absurd things that guys said about me in middle school, then refused to let me have a crush on them once I was in high school, given me some of the most loving but valid reality checks I’ve ever gotten, and always been a role model for me (after he mellowed out from his wild middle school days). However, there was one way that having an older brother caused me tremendous angst throughout high school. I felt like I was always expected to live up to the legend he left there. He graduated valedictorian, so why wasn’t I aiming for the same goal? He was a star athlete, so why was it so hard for me to get into a high school sport and at least try? This experience was probably the first time in my life that I became keenly aware of something: I’m just plain old not very good at being a carbon copy of somebody else.
Armed with this realization, it’s only fitting that when I went to college, I found myself facing a new kind of expectation. I was forced to drink from the firehose of feminist ideology, and I started feeling this tremendous weight on my chest. Sure, in hindsight I see that feminism was served to me, albeit more palatably, all throughout my early education. College, however, was a different game. As an engineering major, I was the feminist’s dream. I was smart, competing with and beating out some of my male classmates. I was pursuing a degree in a field that women traditionally aren’t interested in. And, most importantly, I was a young, malleable woman.
This last point is what made it easy for the idea that I needed to be just as competitive and successful as my male counterparts to take root deep within me. I felt like everybody, and I mean everybody, just had this expectation that I was going to be a “smart young cookie who graduated and started working hard for some corporation, eventually earning her way to the top and then turning around and helping a new generation of young women onto the same path.” If I got married young and had kids and stayed at home with them, well, why on earth did I just pay tens of thousands of dollars to go get my engineering degree? Yet somehow, waiting around for Prince Charming to come along and not going to school simply was not an option either. In my high school, the kids who didn’t go to college were the kids who also dabbled in God-knows-what in some dank corner of the school when they were supposed to be in class. Nope. Not an option if you wanted to be a person with any halfway decent reputation.
It was this dichotomy between career ambition and the desire for family that I blame for creating a deep anxiety within me throughout college. The desire to be a stay-at-home mom who had a husband to adore and be adored by was something that I didn’t feel like I could share aloud with anybody at school, and I was made to feel like there was something deeply and substantially wrong with me for hating having to compete with the men around me for a degree and career that I wasn’t even sure I wanted.
So, I did what any “smart young woman” in the same shoes would do: I shut up and buried my anxiety and regrets deep inside of me. I started pretending that the desire I was supposed to have was indeed the desire I’d had all along. Don’t get me wrong, this dichotomy still presented itself in other ways: random mental breakdowns, seeking attention from men in all the wrong ways (because after all, I did still want to get married, even if it meant being a devoted career woman, wife, and mother so as not to betray anybody’s expectations), and anxiety throughout college that was always present if it wasn’t numbed by alcohol.
Things got marginally better once I left college, although I still work a 9–5 job at a corporation. It’s safe to say I really felt like my life was “starting” and being given a purpose once I met the man that I am now engaged to and planning to marry soon. Something deep within me shifted, and for the first time, my life felt like it had a trajectory that was in alignment with what my physical body was created for. Once we have kids, I fully plan to be a stay-at-home mom and devote my life to raising them and serving my husband, family, and community. Having this plan in place and a way “out” of the feminist ideal is what has finally, at long last, given me a deep and lasting peace with my life.
I also want to be clear about something: I don’t believe the answer is to swing to the opposite extreme and adopt a harsh, hyper-masculine model of life and relationships. To me, that feels like an overcorrection with its own set of issues. The answer, as I see it, is much simpler and much older. It’s a return to Biblical ideals of womanhood, lived out with sincerity and conviction. I believe that when women begin to realign in this way, men and the broader culture will follow.
I share all of this with you as a way to introduce myself and explain why I am so passionate about helping young women escape the clutches of feminism. I hope to share a story that will resonate with other young women who may feel lost in this culture. I want this blog to be a place where women can come and feel inspired and united through this battle. I believe that the way out of feminism is through quiet rebellion and a cultural shift that starts with each and every one of you. So, welcome. I am so glad you’re here. Please share anything on your heart in the comments below, from ways we can make this blog a place to support women to your own experience with feminism. I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!
‘Til next time,
Elle