Everything I know, I was taught. My young self, as I eyed my mother blot her lips a tame magenta and tousle her long wavy hair, came to form a desire to emulate her. She was my first mentor. I knew that I was to adopt her mannerisms rather than my father’s, simply because that is what they taught me to do. This was the start of my ongoing inheritance from my mother, an inheritance that extends well beyond genetic code and toward the way I physically and mentally move through the world. Well into adulthood, the devoted student I am has never dared cut my hair as short as a boy’s.
I had no reason to be suspicious of my mother’s teachings. They were all I knew, so they were all I could trust.
But you can’t know what you don’t know. Where the world didn’t treat her well, my mother could not protect me. Perhaps it should be obvious why embedded in her language are criticisms, both self-destructive and unsubstantiated, of her body, when I have witnessed the men in her life criticize the girth of her legs and the fullness of her face. I look at myself in the mirror, and feel a deep dissatisfaction and hatred of self. Like her—whom I have seen accused of being irrational, stupid and sensitive—I keep quiet. We fear being a disturbance to others: she, a disturbance to her bosses and coworkers, and myself, to my professors and peers.
I ask where it all starts, why my mother and I are pushed into corners. Why did the two men I sat between in my recitation go out of their ways to discuss the material with either one on my opposite sides, rather than just speak to me? Why exactly is it that, though fraternities are typically the groups responsible for hosting parties in college, women are trained to look out for one another—why are women prepared to expect violence? Perhaps this is an extension of the trope for parents to overprotect their daughters rather than their sons—what are they protecting their daughters from?
I think of the men in my own life, and wonder. I think of my brother. Why is it that as children, when I cried, my parents would pet me and speak to me softly, but when my brother cried—a rare event in of itself—our parents would leave him isolated?
Two decades later, and I am still my mother’s daughter. As many times as I tell myself that I shouldn’t allow myself to feel belittled, I might still keep my mouth shut when a man explains to me, in unbelievable depth, the most inane things, plainly and clearly so I don’t miss a single word he says (such as why it is more economical to purchase a larger-size pizza). When I hear a crude comment about another woman’s body, or even my own, I might stay silent. And why should I be expected to do otherwise, when the bodies that patronize and cheat us are not just personal but institutional; when local and national governments are willing to go tremendous lengths to deny women the right to their own bodies.
There are mentors aside from my mother who—perhaps unknowingly—help fill the gaps in my understanding, to offer up explanations for my automatic behaviors and suggest alternatives to my canon of responses that I draw from whenever I am in an uncomfortable situation with a man. It was my dance professor from the fall of my first year here at Duke who told me, in a brief aside, to “take up space.” It was my best friend, who I could confide in when it had become too hard to get out of bed. It was when I didn’t just have someone there to say, “Go for it, you can do it!” but I had someone to empower me with comfort. “Don’t worry, you are fine, you are doing okay.”
We are collectors of personal experiences: we adapt to changes in the surrounding environment and learn from the mentors who cross our paths. Among these experiences, there is friction. For me, this was the time I was told that there is nothing wrong with the way my body looks, even though that directly contradicted what I learned from my mother. I am constantly pulled in different directions, but growth isn’t reaffirming what one already believes; it is comes out from spaces of tension, spaces which provide room for learning as well.
It is brave to seek out alternative spaces that challenge one’s understanding of themselves and their experiences, to contradict the dominant narrative one is taught from a young age. There is power in the mere act of questioning the assumptions your surroundings have imposed on us, to embrace the uncertainty and discomfort of friction.
It is brave to seek help and to confide in friends, family and counselors. It is brave to accept and embrace deviations from enforced gender roles and predetermined sexualities. It is brave as well to “confront toxic masculinity” and the spaces that breed tension within the experiences shared by men. In the vast depth of human experience, there are indeed ways to reconcile difference.
I admire those who work to forge relationships of mutual mentorship, relationships that are vulnerable, novel and courageous. I can only hope that I too can be a mentor to others. I hope that when a friend asks for advice, a piece of what I say might infuse in them a tiny spark of strength that I pass on from my predecessors. I want my writing to count for something. I hope to attend Duke Men’s Project events and both absorb and contribute to the conversation. I want to return the gift of mentorship that so many others have given me. That to me seems like a worthy legacy to leave behind in these four years.
Jennifer Zhou is a Trinity junior. Her column, "just like a woman," runs on alternate Thursdays.
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