The Beauty Of Being A Woman Poem by Khethiwe Ramathuthu

I have found the beauty of being a woman amongst other woman.
When I give myself permission to engage with different types of woman, from different walks of life, of different ages I find the beauty of women.

When I let go of the prejudice taught to us by different cultural divides, religions and look at the women from the place of love and understanding I see and feel the beauty of being a woman.

For many of my youthful days I was of a female gender because it was by design, I did not choose it neither did I have a problem with it, because being a woman, is like being black it has challenges of its own but these challenges builds your character and makes life so interesting that when you sit down and think about it you would not have it any other way, because life is interesting that way.

When I was a girl I felt I had the biggest chip on my shoulders and competed with the boys the best way I knew how, intellectually, I challenged them in their way of thinking, I debated issues with them that adolescent boys did not want to think about yet they spoke to me about them in order to save face when all the while they just wanted to get under my skirt.

It is this arrogance and pride that caused me to rebel and not allow myself to love and enjoy the pink colour, baking, cooking, cleaning and order.
To me doing those things meant that I was submitting to rules and regulations that were designed by men under a tree,
as I used to put it in order for them to be more superior to women.

And do not get me wrong, I did not hate being a woman but I thought my main purpose in life was to prove to men that I was not the weaker sex.

I was an equal in all my relationships and sometimes even superior, and this is a women who never dated anyone of the same age as she was, because again women biologically mature quicker than men.

When I became a women is when I fell in love with my husband,
when all the walls of Jericho fell and all of a sudden what I thought was men’s agenda on earth was turned upside down and giving myself to him and not just my body, my vulnerabilities and fears was an inevitable.
It’s like God suddenly said to me I have found your match somebody who will teach you,
even if it brought you pain like none you have ever felt, what it is to be a women.
Whilst my husband is teaching me what it is to be a woman,
and to submit either by choice or by love, engaging with other women who have gone through similar things that I have had to learn, some face the same fears but disguised in different forms I have found the beauty of being a women.

I have learned you do not have to let yourself go and not look after yourself because beauty is for shallow people.
You do not have to neglect empowering yourself with knowledge and skill in the hope that some men will marry you and save you from your human responsibility of using your talents to contribute to life with your works.
I have found the beauty of being a woman amongst the old women, who have seen it all, have done it all and are not fazed by much anymore.

I have seen beauty in women walking down the road in the morning in groups laughing loud with their long skirts and doekies, to get to Mrs’s house so they can clean their houses get paid and go back to take of their families.
I have seen beauty in the woman on Destiney’s covers who are full of ambition and drive.
I have seen so much beauty in being a woman that I finally feel that God has won His case and the verdict was that there is no weakness in being a woman only beauty.