It’s a casual weekend afternoon in the sun. The group we are with, who we don’t really know, has done that annoying Maltese thing and split into two, with the men in one corner and the women in the other. I don’t have much to say to the people I’ve been segregated with, but I’m happily munching on some biscuits and waiting for an eBay auction to end.
Tired of speaking about blocked drains and her baby’s toilet habits, one lazily saunters over to me and rudely peers at my phone. I’m not amused but decide to say nothing till she raises her voice several octaves to make sure that it will carry and asks me the one question that is sure to turn me nuclear every time: “Doesn’t he (my partner) mind that you buy so much stuff?” I’m not going to bore you with what came after except to say that if the ice age didn’t commence that day, I’m not sure it ever will.
I’m writing about this today because this is not the first time this question has been asked, and it probably won’t be the last. I’m writing this because, as a woman in her thirties who has been making her own money for decades, I resent the misogynistic comments coming from within the house even more than when they come from a member of the opposite sex who should know better. What happened to the girl code? Did it disappear with skinny jeans 10 years ago? I don’t need to justify my spending habits to anyone, let alone a random woman I’ve met for five minutes but who has probably been stalking me on social media for years and has come to her own conclusions about who I am and what I like.
I honestly don’t understand why so many people in this country go around speaking like they’re in some bad 1960s TV show where women still dress up solely for their husbands and rub their feet after making them a three-course meal. If I have to get up in the morning and go to work like my partner does, as equals, then I fail to say why I can’t spend my own money on plastic dinosaurs in Marie Antoinette wigs if that’s where the mood takes me. I owe no one any explanations, least of all yet another “pick-me girl” who apparently just left her father’s house to have another daddy.
I’m honestly so tired of this narrative where women are portrayed as these emotional, hysterical shopaholics who need permission to breathe and spend their own money. I not only refuse to participate in it, but I’m going to actively start going after anyone who comes at me with their unwashed opinions about how I or anyone should live.
The next time someone tries to shame you into not living your best life because they have their own issues, invoke the words of the most fabulous queen of them all, Ru Paul: “Unless they paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind.”
