This society has turned the strong woman tag into a glorification of suffering. In Nigeria, most people’s definition of a strong woman deeply connotes a woman who is suffering and smiling especially in an abusive marriage.
Whenever I see a woman who has been battered and reduced to nothing by her partner being referred to as a strong woman, I feel bad. I want to shake that woman and tell her that suffering so much and being a doormat doesn’t make her strong, it makes her a beast of burden.
This post sums it up for me:
“The previous generation made it seem like if you don’t endure excessive pain, it means you are not a strong woman.
High pain threshold has been the story of women for so long. People expect you to take it and swallow it all, just because you are a woman.
Most people’s definition of a strong woman deeply connotes SUFFERING and SMILING. You will see someone that’s dying slowly inside and yet think it’s strength.
The society has so turned the “strong woman” label into a glorification of suffering.
Our societies definition of a strong woman is strictly someone who can bear pains (not child labor pains oh!), I mean the pain of maltreatment, abuse, infidelity, family financial burden, breaking her back to make everyone except herself happy without complaining.
Sometimes “she’s a strong woman” is not a compliment, it simply signifies that a woman has mastered unnecessary suffering. Strong woman! Strong woman! Before you know it, you don die especially for the mentally and emotionally weak women though.
I try not to laugh when I hear someone being called a “strong woman” because of all the mess she’s been through raging from abuse, injustice, maltreatment and all other forms of abuse.
A woman that has endured all this mess is strong no doubt, but that’s certainly not the way to live and certainly not a yardstick for measuring strength.
It is saddening that most women already have it at the back of their minds to suffer in order to be identified as strong women.
I keep telling myself that I will enjoy my life to the fullest. I don’t like pains, pains don’t like me. I am not a super woman that’s equivalent to suffer head. I am simply a VIRTUOUS and a HAPPY woman. No cap. I am FRAGILE like that.
I didn’t come into this world for suffering Olympics. I am here to work hard and live a baby girl lifestyle. No human around me should intentionally cause me pain, hoping that I wear my strong woman garment and endure shit.
I am already strong enough to handle the pains that nature had and will inflict, nobody should be seen adding to that and expect me to swallow, just to pose as a strong woman.
Dear parents,
Kindly teach your daughters self love so that no human will assume her to be a strong woman and intentionally abuse and maltreat her while she keeps swallowing abuse hook line sinker because the society has condemned her to pose as a strong woman.
The world at large is a strange residence. Live consciously and judiciously. As usual, I come in peace.
©Nonye Anastesia
thank you