The Princess Syndrome and Redefining Chivalry

I posted the other day that mother and wife are different people, incomparable yet equal on all terms and somebody said, ‘first you stop wanting to be princesses, father's princess or whatever, expecting men to do everything for you.’ I agree with him.

Carrying all the luggage, opening car door, pulling chair out for you, blanketing you, fetching water for you, switching off the light – there’s a difference between being a princess and dependent. If you are ill or really isn't strong physically, then it's fine but that is gender blind. I want to stress here that being female isn’t a disability or an illness or a weakness that we always need a man to do something for us. You say it’s romantic. I say it’s not. It’s women insulting their capacity and thinking of themselves as unequal under the whitewash of popularly professed romance.

Do what you can for yourself by yourself – be it housework or opening car door. That’s what KK always says. Women should not confuse being dependent with being romantic as men shouldn’t. Love isn’t about making the one you love a handicap. Love is encouraging independence and sharing. Why should a guy run to your car door and open it for you? What next? Carrying you out of the car? You have hands, you open the car door yourself. We can’t scream for equality when you behave like a woman who can’t even open your car door yourself. That’s not romantic. That’s you bringing your own capability down. That’s you alluding that I won’t do things for myself even if i can. It’s enough that your guy doesn’t dominate you – he doesn’t have to step down and elevate you a step up. He needs to see you as his equal just like how Mahatma Jyotiba Phule saw and treated his wife, Savitribai Phule –as his equal.

You see, our society and our men either elevate femininity or trample it down. They call us goddess and then call a guy who is afraid or cries easily ‘potta’ (pussy). Expecting guys to do all that and treating us like a princess only consolidates us as unequal and incapable of doing the simplest of things hence inferior. When are they going to see us as equal human beings? When we see ourselves as equal human beings. Start with the tiniest things because change starts small.

There are thousands of ways to be romantic without being dependent. Calling with special names, shopping together, holding hands, eating together and serving each other, reading one book together, sharing earphones, doing the dishes together, doing Dutch, doing housework together, are considered romantic without being dependent. There should be self respect in romance. Being a princess doesn’t mean not doing what you can under the shroud of romance. Pampering is different, incapacitating is different. Learn the difference

Women should quit behaving like damsels in distress or rather damsels who won’t get stuff done, waiting for her knight in armour to do things for them and even think for them. Remember Reese Witherspoon’s “What do we do now?” speech? It sounds hypocritical that we sulk if our guy won’t open the car door for us and we lobby for our parents to educate us equally, send us abroad to study/work and demanding equal pay. Step up girls.

Gallantry has phased itself out. The new chivalry needs to be defined. I would open the door people, for men and women. People are protectors, not men only. Men need protection too and women can and have protected men. Even children have protected adults. People get weak and sick and anyone can take care of them, feed them, fetch water for them – there is no gender involved here. There is no binary here and that’s the new chivalry. And, that’s feminism.