We condition girls to aspire to marriage and we do not condition boys to aspire to marriage, and so there is already a terrible imbalance at the start. The girls will grow up to be women preoccupied with marriage. The boys will grow up to be men who are not preoccupied with marriage. The women marry those men. The relationship is automatically uneven because the institution matters more to one than the other. Is it any wonder that, in so many marriages, women sacrifice more, at a loss to themselves, because they have to constantly maintain an uneven exchange? One consequence of this imbalance is the very shabby and very familiar phenomenon of two women publicly fighting over a man, while the man remains silent.
When Hillary Clinton was running for president of the United States, the first descriptor on her Twitter account was “Wife.” The first descriptor on the Twitter account of Bill Clinton, her husband, is “Founder,” not “Husband.” (Because of this, I have an unreasonable affection for the very few men who use “husband” as their first descriptor.) In a strange way, it doesn’t feel unusual that she would define herself as a wife like this, while he doesn’t define himself as a husband. It feels normal, because it is so common; our world still largely values a woman’s marital and maternal roles more than anything else.
After she married Bill Clinton in 1975, Hillary Clinton kept her name, Hillary Rodham. Eventually she began to add his name, Clinton, to hers, and then after a while sh
e dropped “Rodham” because of political pressure—because her husband would lose voters who were offended that his wife had kept her name.
Reading of this made me think not only of how American voters apparently place retrograde marital expectations on women, but also of my own experience with my name.
You remember how a journalist unilaterally decided to give me a new name—Mrs. Husband’s Surname—on learning that I was married, and how I asked him to stop because that was not my name. I will never forget the smoldering hostility from some Nigerian women in response to this. It is interesting that there was more hostility, in general, from women than from men, many of whom insisted on calling me what was not my name, as though to silence my voice.
I wondered about that, and thought that perhaps for many of them, my choice represented a challenge to their idea of what is the norm.
Even some friends made statements like “You are successful and so it is okay to keep your name.” Which made me wonder: Why does a woman have to be successful at work in order to justify keeping her name?
The truth is that I have not kept my name because I am successful. Had I not had the good fortune to be published and widely read, I would still have kept my name. I have kept my name because it is my name. I have kept my name because I like my name.
There are people who say “Well, your name is also about patriarchy because it is your father’s name.” Indeed. But the point is simply this: Whether it came from my father or from the moon, it is the name that I have had since I was born, the name with which I traveled my life’s milestones, the name I have answered to since that first day I went to kindergarten on a hazy morning and my teacher said, “Answer ‘present’ if you hear your name. Number one: Adichie!”
More important, every woman should have the choice of keeping her name—but the reality is that there is an overwhelming societal pressure to conform. There are obviously women who want to take their husband’s names, but there are women who do not want to conform but for whom the required energy—mental, emotional, even physical—is just too much. How many men do you think would be willing to change their names on getting married?
“Mrs.” is a title I dislike because Nigerian society gives it too much value. I have observed too many cases of men and women who proudly speak of the title of Mrs. as though those who are not Mrs. have somehow failed at something. Mrs. can be a choice, but to infuse it with as much value as our culture does is disturbing. The value we give to Mrs. means that marriage changes the social status of a woman but not that of a man. (Is that perhaps why many women complain of married men still “acting” as though they were single? Perhaps if our society asked married men to change their names and take on a new title, different from Mr., their behavior might change as well? Ha!) But more seriously, if you, a twenty-eight-year-old master’s degree holder, go overnight from Ijeawele Eze to Mrs. Ijeawele Udegbunam, surely it requires not just the mental energy of changing passports and licenses but also a psychic change, a new “becoming”? This new “becoming” would not matter so much if men, too, had to undergo it.
I prefer Ms. because it is similar to Mr. A man is Mr. whether married or not, a woman is Ms. whether married or not. So please teach Chizalum that in a truly just society, women should not be expected to make marriage-based changes that men are not expected to make. Here’s a nifty solution: Each couple that marries should take on an entirely new surname, chosen however they want as long as both agree to it, so that a day after the wedding, both husband and wife can hold hands and joyfully journey off to the municipal offices to change their passports, driver’s licenses, signatures, initials, bank accounts, etc.
EIGHTH SUGGESTION
Teach her to reject likeability. Her job is not to make herself likeable, her job is to be her full self, a self that is honest and aware of the equal humanity of other people. Remember I told you how upsetting it was to me that our friend Chioma would often tell me that “people” would not “like” something I wanted to say or do? I always felt, from her, the unspoken pressure to change myself to fit some mold that would please an amorphous entity called “people.” It was upsetting because we want those close to us to encourage us to be our most authentic selves.
Please do not ever put this pressure on your daughter. We teach girls to be likeable, to be nice, to be false. And we do not teach boys the same. This is dangerous. Many sexual predators have capitalized on this. Many girls remain silent when abused because they want to be nice. Many girls spend too much time trying to be “nice” to people who do them harm. Many girls think of the “feelings” of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability. We have a world full of women who are unable to exhale fully because they have for so long been conditioned to fold themselves into shapes to make themselves likeable.
So instead of teaching Chizalum to be likeable, teach her to be honest. And kind.
And brave. Encourage her to speak her mind, to say what she really thinks, to speak truthfully. And then praise her when she does. Praise her especially when she takes a stand that is difficult or unpopular because it happens to be her honest position. Tell her that kindness matters. Praise her when she is kind to other people. But teach her that her kindness must never be taken for granted. Tell her that she, too, deserves the kindness of others. Teach her to stand up for what is hers. If another child takes her toy without her permission, ask her to take it back, because her consent is important. Tell her that if anything ever makes her uncomfortable, to speak up, to say it, to shout.
Show her that she does not need to be liked by everyone. Tell her that if someone does not like her, there will be someone else who will. Teach her that she is not merely an object to be liked or disliked, she is also a subject who can like or dislike. In her teenage years, if she comes home crying about some boys who don’t like her, let her know she can choose not to like those boys—yes, it’s hard, I know, just remembering my crush on Nnamdi in secondary school.
But still I wish somebody had told me this.
NINTH SUGGESTION
Give Chizalum a sense of identity. It matters. Be deliberate about it. Let her grow up to think of herself as, among other things, a proud Igbo woman. And you must be selective—teach her to embrace the parts of Igbo culture that are beautiful and teach her to reject the parts that are not. You can say to her, in different contexts and different ways, “Igbo culture is lovely because it values community and consensus and hard work, and the language and proverbs are beautiful and full of great wisdom. But Igbo culture also teaches that a woman cannot do certain things just because she’s a woman, and that is wrong. Igbo culture also focuses a little too much on materialism, and while money is important—because money means self-reliance—you must not value people based on who has money and who does not.”
Be deliberate also about showing her the enduring beauty and resilience of Africans and of black people. Why? Because of the power dynamics in the world, she will grow up seeing images of white beauty, white ability, and white achievement, no matter where she is in the world. It will be in the TV shows she watches, in the popular culture she consumes, in the books she reads. She will also probably grow up seeing many negative images of blackness and of Africans.
Teach her to take pride in the history of Africans, and in the black diaspora. Find black heroes, men and women, in history. They exist. You might have to counter some of the things she will learn in school—the Nigerian curriculum isn’t quite infused with the idea of teaching children to have a sense of pride in their history. So her teachers will be fantastic at teaching her mathematics and science and art and music, but you will have to do the pride-teaching yourself.
Teach her about privilege and inequality and the importance of giving dignity to everyone who does not mean her harm—teach her that the household help is human just like her, teach her always to greet the driver. Link these expectations to her identity—for example, say to her “In our family, when you are a child, you g
reet those older than you no matter what job they do.”
Give her an Igbo nickname. When I was growing up, my Aunty Gladys called me Ada Obodo Dike. I always loved that. Apparently my village, Ezi-Abba, is known as the Land of Warriors, and to be called Daughter of the Land of Warriors was deliciously heady.
TENTH SUGGESTION
Be deliberate about how you engage with her and her appearance.
Encourage her participation in sports. Teach her to be physically active. Take walks with her. Swim. Run. Play tennis. Football. Table tennis. All kinds of sports. Any kind of sports. I think this is important not only because of the obvious health benefits but because it can help with all the body-image insecurities that the world thrusts on girls. Let Chizalum know that there is great value in being active. Studies show that girls generally stop playing sports as puberty arrives. Not surprising. Breasts and self-consciousness can get in the way of sports—I stopped playing football when my breasts first appeared because all I wanted to do was hide the existence of my breasts, and running and tackling didn’t help. Please try not to let that get in her way.