A few weeks ago, a line jumped out at me in an article I was reading in one of the frum women’s magazines. It went something like, “It feels like yesterday that I was a teen but at 30, I’m practically a mother of teens myself.”
Say what?
I once wrote a post about throwing away the timelines, releasing ourselves from the expectation that life will play out on a certain schedule. Recently I’ve wanted to revisit this idea as I’ve noted subtle and less-subtle messages in our media about what constitutes a “normal” frum life. It’s not only about timelines, by the way, but also cultural norms and expectations. For example, the introduction to a recipe column practically apologizing for printing recipes that “we would have assumed everyone already has but apparently not” (not a direct quote, sorry; I don’t have it in front of me). Y’all are making quite a few assumptions there about culture, background, and ability, friends. The implication is that “everyone” does it the expected and therefore correct way and…well, the others don’t, for some reason.
Lest you think social work school has turned me into a hypersensitive lily, I’ve always been one to pick up on language that differentiates between “everyone” and “the others.” When I was in graduate school the first time around, a girl next to me was chatting her friend through Gmail — I should not have been reading along but I was — and helping her choose maternity clothes. She wrote, “Did you get the Dimensions wrap sweater? Everyone has it” and illogically but so logically my immediate thought was, No, I don’t.
So whose frame of reference gets to dominate? Who gets to define “everyone”?
I find it beneficial to my mental health to shine the light on these subtle assumptions as I come across them. Left unchecked, they feed right into the inferiority complex so many people struggle with when their reality doesn’t match the dominant narrative. Empowerment is being able to say, “Perhaps this makes sense to you based on your experience, but it does not make sense based on my experience, which is just as valid.”
After all, diversity of experience…is normal.
Any thoughts?
