Bina Shah March 22, 2005

Tags:

rel="tag" href="/tag/Kashmir">Kashmir Day, Christmas, and so on and so forth. The difference is that on this particular holiday, a woman will actually be able to enjoy the benefits of holidays, which include doing nothing that you don’t want to do. No, this is not a "personal day" or a "mental health day" as invented by people too guilty to claim free time any other day of the year. The holiday that I propose to be added, solely and wholly for women, is National Bitch Day.

Before you burst out laughing or remind me that Halloween is seven months away, let me tell you that the pressure on women to be nice is so immense that sometimes women feel they’re going to crack under the strain. Since childhood, girls are raised to be nice. "Don’t forget your manners, be nice, be polite, be a good little girls, don’t be naughty, sit and play nicely with your dolly" is the mantra that we all have grown up by. On the other hand, our brothers were told to be rough and tough, to climb trees and be as noisome and boisterous as they want to.

When a girl smacks someone, she’s looked at with a frown. When a boy does it, his puny biceps are massaged with goat’s milk so that he can grow even stronger to hit someone else even harder in the future. When a girl (in a moment of frivolity understood only by little girls) decides to pull up her dress and show everyone her pretty underwear, she’s told not to be besharam and immediately bundled into a pair of trousers. If a boy, however, decides to pull his pants down in the middle of the street, everyone laughs and observes how cute he is (though he’ll probably never live the mortifying memory down, while everyone wants to forget the girl’s moment of public stripping forever).

The pressure mounts all the way through adolescence and into early adulthood. Boys are excused from every crime in the book as "boys will be boys" whether the crime ranges from illicit smoking to girlfriends to full on torture and murder. Girls, on the other hand, are made to feel like proclaimed offenders if they sit with their legs uncrossed in the television lounge. Of course, the training to become the perfect wife adds another sadistic dimension to the "nice training" of all girls in Pakistan. It’s like training for the Sugar Olympics: learn to do all the household chores, learn cooking, learn how to never answer back, learn how to look as though you wake up with full make up and blow dry every morning, learn how to lower your voice and blink up at people from coyly lowered eyelashes, say your prayers, cover your head, be nice, nice, nice till it comes out of your ears. If you don’t be nice, you’ll never get married and you’ll go to hell, which in some circles is regarded as the same thing.

The situation goes on even after marriage and well into old age. You’ve got to be nice to your husband; you’ve got to be nice with the kids and their teachers and their friends and their friends’ parents. You’ve got to be nice to your husband’s colleagues. You’ve got to be nice to your colleagues and your boss (In this sentence I actually typed "mice" and then realized my mistake was not a typo but a Freudian slip). You’ve got to be nice to your friends and your parents’ friends. On your wedding day you’ve got to practically promise to immolate yourself on behalf of your in-laws, should they ever require it. God forbid you should say a word behind anyone’s back because that would mean you weren’t a nice person. And there is no sin for a woman greater than not being thought of as "nice". Women, it's well known, are people pleasers, have a large need for acceptance and approval, and as a result, tend to have low self esteem because they think of others (and of what others will think of them) more than they think of themselves (and what they think of how others treat them).

So "National Bitch Day" could actually be seen as something very beneficial to women's collective mental health. This would be the one day where you, as a woman, are not allowed to be "nice". In fact, you have to be nasty from the moment you wake up to the minute you fall asleep. Imagine that: roughly sixteen hours where you don't have to pretend to like the fact that your husband thinks your making his breakfast is the high point of your day. You don't have to restrain yourself with the servants; you can throw pots and pans at them if you want, and if you already do that, then you can just go out of the house all day and refuse to give them any instruction whatsoever, then come back home and scold them mercilessly for not listening to you.

Need more ideas? If you're a teacher, tell all the children that they're the worst class you've ever seen with no exceptions. If you work in an office, you can tell your boss you can't do that project today - in fact tell him you can't come into the office at all because you have an appointment with your gynecologist that will last all day, then offer to go into a blow-by-blow account of the details of your exact physical condition till the boss begs for mercy. Then blow off work and go and get a facial and blow dry and don't tip the assistant. Eat everything first at the dinner table and don't leave anything for others. Tell your mother in law that she's so intrusive and irritating, it feels like she's your husband's first wife and you're just the inferior mistress. Don't return your friends' phone calls. Don't offer to bake something for the kitty party. Be late with your committee payment even though you were the lucky one who got it last month.

You will be astonished at how liberating being a she-devil for one day actually feels. The difference is that on National Bitch Day, there are no strings attached. Nobody will hold you accountable for all the little (and big) destructive things that you do on this day. Nor will they be able to blame your hormones for it - the number one top annoying response that women usually receive when they have done something that makes them look less perfect than the Virgin Mary and Mother Theresa combined. They will know that this is simply your day to be well, if not yourself, at least a truer version of yourself than the one that you are normally pressured to present to the world.
And they might just begin to realize that you are not Miss or Mrs. Perfect, but a human being, with feelings and emotions that are positive as well as negative, with behaviors that aren't always for the good of everyone, and someone who isn't willing to be a martyr all the time. In short, they'll recognize and learn to fear your inner bitch, which is probably enough to ensure better behavior from them on the all the other days of the year that aren't National Bitch Day.

Because if they don't, you'll turn the yearly holiday into a weekly phenomenon, a monthly ritual, or, God forbid, a year-long festival of bitchery which will make Joan Collins on Dynasty look like a toddler with Hello Kitty underwear.