PunkAssBlog.com

I am sorry I have been bereft of my blogging duties as of late. Last week, I spent the Independence Day weekend at the lake with Hubby, Hubby’s family, and PE, and this week my grandmother was in the hospital, so I had to entertain family who came out.

For those of you interested, my grandmother is doing very well. She had some internal bleeding problems, but they were caught soon enough.

It is my grandmother, however that has caused me to think in two different streams about today’s post. The first one has to do with the hospital, the second one has to do with me.

My grandmother is a smart woman. It disturbs me that I’ve seen her play the “oh I’m just a helpless old lady” act and then turn around and do the thing that she was supposedly incapable of doing (like reprogram the phone, or wisely invest in her finances), but that doesn’t stop the fact that she is very intelligent, and in control of her mental facilities. I say this, because apparently the hospital staff feels otherwise. She has been complaining for awhile about pains that the staff has ignored as all in her head. She wanted tests done that they claimed as “unnecessary” that would have caught her problem before she collapsed. Even while she was IN the hospital, they ignored her. One of the nurses asked “Do you feel any pain?” and my grandmother responded that she “felt a little queasy”. The nurse responded “Good, no pain”. I asked if the queasiness was normal, and was duly ignored. It wasn’t until my (older, male) cousin asked about what they were doing for her stomach that they addressed it at all.

I’m not sure what this is. I’m going to say an intersection between age- and- gender. Yet, on the other hand, when they were describing what they were going to do to my grandmother, as far as surgeries and medicines went, they addressed the lecture to me. It may be because I have a passing familiarity with medical terms (my mom’s a nurse, and three of my friends are in medicine, so one is bound to pick it up) whereas my cousins eyes glazed over, but if was strictly a gendered thing, then they wouldn’t have addressed me out of the group. Perhaps the idea of “intelligence as a female quality” is making inroads as a stereotype*, whereas “women overreact to pain/ lie about pain to get attention” is still running strong.

The second part of this post is about my grandmother, a woman who I find very difficult to parse how I feel about. I knew my grandmother was feeling fine when, in addition to not looking as white as a sheet, she started criticizing me. My grandmother, much like most members of my family, like to ignore, patronize, and/or disparage any and all of my life choices, but for my grandmother, the one she likes to focus on the most is my weight. Both sides of my family have the genes for being heavy, but it’s my dad’s side (this grandmother’s side) that has the history of anorexia and bulimia, largely to keep up with my grandmother’s incredibly high standards. Grandmother thinks that “fat” not only means “unhealthy” but “unsightly” “lazy” and “sloppy”. She likes to tell me that I shouldn’t eat so much “junk food” (but mind, she gets insulted if when I eat there I don’t eat all of her good, healthy, fried chicken-and-baked potato Midwest meals). She likes to tell me how I need to exercise more, so that I can be “healthy”. I told her that I average 40 miles a week bicycling, and she asked if I was “sure I was really biking that much” because “I still looked chubby”. Before I married Hubby, she routinely implied or insinuated that no man was going to love me because I was unattractive.

What kills me about all of these things is that they are so factually wrong. I am healthy: I have perfect cholesterol, perfect blood pressure; and while I’m out of shape, I am not in any great risk of getting hypertension, diabetes, or heart disease. I never had any trouble finding anyone to date, and heck, I’m married now to a guy that happens to think I’m the sexiest thing on the planet. Beyond that, her standards are incredibly, impossibly high: I saw her critique my one aunt for eating French fries when she was in full swing anorexia nervosa**. Of course, she critiques, insults, and belittles everyone: I am not particularly special in that regard, except that I do not ever look ashamed when she does this*** and she saves the fat-shaming for the women.

I guess the thrust of this post is that my grandmother is a good example of a victim/ enforcer of the patriarchy. She is ignored because of her gender, but then she reinforces through her children and grandchildren what “appropriate” social roles are.

*This is still a bad thing, if for no other reason than it discourages males to learn things. Honestly, can’t qualities just be “good” and not “male” or “female”?

**This isn’t armchair-analysis: she did eventually get help for anorexia.

***She also wonders why people are disinclined to spend a lot of time with her.