Being a Woman: Chapter 1

I don’t know if there will be a chapter 2, but you can’t talk about being a woman in one chapter. That’s just limiting. Heck, being a woman is taking up my whole life.
Every morning the world challenges me to question what being a woman means.
What is expected of me? How should I act, look, speak?
Being a religious woman gives me another side.
How do I combine it? What does a religious feminist look like? Sound like? How does she behave?
I’ll tell you.
I behave like me.
There is no woman profile that I have to follow.
I was born a woman. I was born religious. I was born me.
Why do those have to contradict?
Why do those have to argue with each other?
I am the kind of woman I want to be.
I’m not all that pretty. I don’t dress spectacularly. Sure, I’d like to own some more expensive clothes, but I also don’t like caring about my clothes.
Whatever my face looks like in the morning, it looks like in the afternoon. Make up is not my strong point.
I cry a lot. I eat enormous amounts of chocolate.
I wear only skirts and long sleeved dresses. The most revealed I’ve ever been was in a one piece bathing suit, and frankly, I don’t want anyone to have to see any more at the moment.
I can’t wait to be a Mom, and a wife for that matter.
I hate washing dishes, and I don’t like being bossed around.
But marriage doesn’t intimidate me.
Because I’m a woman, not a copy-and-paste.
G-d willing, my husband will be a man, not a magazine cut out, so we’ll be able to create a home full of happy humans who identify as themselves, not with the profile that the whole world wrote for them.
I am a woman who doesn’t like baking.
I am a woman who is messier than her brother.
I am a woman who gets headaches from perfume.
I am a woman who likes to shop.
I hate pink and purple.
I like food too much to ever give something up for a salad.
I don’t like pumpkin spiced lattes.
I am a woman.
I am Jewish.
I am me.