on feminism and a dusty surfboard

(Written last October)


Last weekend an apostle came to town. The night he was scheduled to speak everyone arrived early. There was a special reverence in the air. A hushed silence came over the room as he and his wife walked in and took their seats up on the stand.


He delivered a wonderful message, was completely charming and witty and everything you'd hope an apostle would be. Despite all of that, my eyes kept drifting over to his wife again and again. She was nothing what I'd expected. She was small. Think Olympic gymnast sized. She had long, frizzy dark hair with bangs covering her whole forehead and resting on her eyelashes. She wore a floor-length black skirt with a black long-sleeved shirt and a lot of black eyeliner. My initial impression was Wednesday from the Adams Family. She spoke just above a whisper and kept her upper torso very still, just shifting her eyes as she spoke. She was very poised and articulate and terribly, terribly sweet from head to toe. 


As she spoke my mind revisited all of the other apostle's wives I've met or heard, and all of the women who speak from the pulpit at General Conference, and I concluded: sweet, sweet, soft-spoken, subservient, geez, sweet! And I thought, I will never be an apostle's wife. 


I am way too spicy. I have women's rights and feminism plastered all over the walls of my brain. I can be authoritative and rude and outspoken and, most annoyingly, prideful. And I wonder if any of those women started out like me? And do I even want to become that type of woman? Some part of my identity is tied up in being feisty and savvy and not so quiet about it all. And I wonder if that's something that will fade away as I grow?




(Written today)


I had an encounter last week with a teenaged girl. She had spiky red hair, a hoop through her nose, and body parts stuffed into Barbie-sized clothes. She was chewing out another woman twice her age, a respectable authority figure, in a loud obnoxious voice with her chest puffed out and finger waving. Her language was uneducated and harsh and crude.


Is this what women have become after just three generations of liberation? Are these the types of girls my daughter will have as peers and colleagues? Immodest, vulgar with hardly a trace of femininity left unscathed?


I'm beginning to understand the incalculable value of traditional women. Gentle, nurturing, quietly wise. 


Once I wanted to pursue professional surfing. I idolized spiky-haired women who could stand on a board propelled by a wave and do some pretty cool tricks. I used to roll my eyes when I watched General Conference and those soft-spoken women came on. I JUST CAN'T RELATE TO THOSE PEOPLE, I thought. THEY'RE SO CLOSED-MINDED AND BORING.


Now my surfboard is gathering dust in the garage and the words of those sweet women fill my head with beautiful truth and buoy up my sometimes-weary heart while I mop the floors and do the dishes. 


I've chosen to pursue a quiet life in the trenches of marriage and motherhood. It is far from the lime-light of popularity or prestige and certainly not very exciting, I'm sure some people think. And amazingly, I don't mind. I still surf occasionally, but my focus has shifted. I'm still feisty and outspoken, but I no longer want to be. The things I care about have changed. My heart has changed. 


I feel like I'm finally becoming someone I can be proud of.