Bodyguards and Lovers

As I listened to the episode of "Repo Games" playing in the other room, I went from amused at the complete, self-inflicted stupidity of the people on the show to absolute horror and disgust. Two women were shocked to find that their cars were being repossessed because their husbands took out loans on the vehicles, without the wives' knowledge, and failed to pay them back. These men didn't merely fail to protect their wives, they threw them under the bus to save their own skins.

While I know that there is no new thing under the sun, that men and women have been taking advantage of each other forever, and there really didn't exist a "golden age" of marriage, I long for the days of common chivalry. Whether or not we like it, women long for a protector, a hero. We want to be cherished. We crave the knowledge that our men will love us for the treasures we are. Regardless of what society tells us what liberation is, we were made to desire a protector in our husbands.

This current idea of what marriage should like is confusing to the way we were made. The cries of "Women are equal!" are both right and wrong. We are equal. We have equal value, intelligence, work ethic, and bread winning capabilities. But we are not equal. We are different. We are delicate, tender nurturers.

Ms. Steinem would have us believe that in order to be equal to a man we must be the same as them. However, if we're honest, our inner beings sob silently at what we've lost. We still daydream about our knights in shining armor. We plead with ourselves to stop seeking out that fool who's "in touch with his feminine side." We over compensate by clinging to that guy who has to be the manliest man in the room.

You know, it's quite all right to let yourself be taken care of, to have the door opened and your chair pulled out for you. It is truly liberating to be able to hand off your heavy load to stronger arms and shoulders. It is more than acceptable to admit that you want to have a human shield and to be viewed as the most beautiful woman in any given room. We can find true freedom to be who we are when we can accept that what we really want are bodyguards and lovers.