Don't date men who want racial stereotypes:
I have dark skin but I'm Saudi Arabian, just because I'm Saudi and from the same country as Bin Laden doesn't mean that I'm a terrorist or that I have to act like one. I'm a lady but I'm a human being first and I expect to be treated as such.
If you're black, you can be feminine and lovely. Don't date some lame white dude who wants you to act like a thug and play up the racial stereotypes to be with him. Don't try to force yourself into a box to try to make other people happy with the way you present yourself.
If you're Latina, you don't need to be a chola. You don't need to play up your accent or speak Spanish, you don't need to take his shitty jokes about your family being mechanics or migrant workers, you don't need to be ashamed for being from wherever you're from.
And, if you're Asian, you don't need to pretend that you speak bad English or play up your accent and pretend to be this submissive again stereotype. You don't need to pretend to be anything you aren't to make yourself seem more appealing to a man, if you do, he's not worth spending your time with.
For the love of God, don't let men treat you badly because of your ethnicity or your religion. Don't let him fetishise your existence to get himself going, you're a human being, don't let him treat you like you're not even worthy of basic compassion or even respect.
Don't let men take away the things you enjoy:
I'm a fiend for renaissance festivals and I love books with illustrations in them. When I dated my ex-boyfriend, he thought that those were two of the most childish things in the world and he used to make fun of me for enjoying them until I stopped and let that light leave my life.
I didn't start up again until I met Frederick and he loved that about me. He loved taking me to my renaissance fairs, he loved helping me design my costumes, and he loved to read books with me. If I was enjoying a book that didn't have pictures, he'd doodle in the pages for me so I could find his little surprises.
You can't live your life or truly love someone who doesn't appreciate you for who you are. I used to hate so many things about myself and I was taught to despise those things by men who ridiculed me. Only when I met my husband who was fine and admired those things about me did I truly begin to enjoy myself again and enjoy the things that I'd loved in a past life of mine.
Don't let men speak over you when you know that you're correct about something:
Grandma was albino, like legitimately. She wore SPF 100 and powder on top of that for her first layer of makeup. Foundation didn't come in her precise colour and so she didn't wear it unless she was mixing her own. She knew that it would match her skin and so she never bothered unless Nana was buying or mixing her makeup straight from Japan.
Whenever I'd go to Sephora, Ulta, or any sort of store that sold high end makeup, I'd look for a colour that I thought would match her and bring back samples. They never did. My ex boyfriend would argue with me and one day he dragged me around to try and find a match. It was never going to happen and I told him so and he screamed at me and called me crazy. If she had skin, why wouldn't a shade of foundation match her?
I was right, no shade matched her unless we were in Asia and I told him this. We argued and he screamed at me, he picked the palest shade, pulled me out of the store, and brought it to Grandma with me. It didn't match and made her look like some sort of pumpkin.
After he left, she looked at me and said "Don't ever let a man treat you like you're wrong or stupid when you're right, say what you have to say and then leave it at that. If you're right, you're right. Don't ever let a man treat you like you're the one who's wrong when you know you're not. If he insists that he's right and you know he's not, sit back and you watch him fail."
Don't do any sort of uncompensated work for men:
I work as a secretary for Frederick, I go into the office and I'm paid a salary by his firm and I'm also an authorised user on his AmEx Black, his silk card, and his JP Morgan reserve card. If I do any sort of work for him, I'm compensated and I spend whatever I want on the cards that he's added me to. He also puts special surprise money in my special piggy bank.
Don't bust your ass working for a man who doesn't compensate you, he doesn't have to pay you but he does need to be grateful for you and show that gratitude because you're not free labour. Even if he brings you a cup of coffee and a pastry when you're working at his computer, that's something. You're working off the clock for him and you deserve thanks.
If you can clean, do his laundry, cook, and support him, he can thank you and give you gifts once in a blue moon. He's earning the money and you're keeping his home and keeping yourself beautiful, you're both working full time jobs except for the fact that you're never really off the clock, are you?
There's a difference between being a maid (maids get paid) and being some sort of unpaid sort of sex slave who also cooks and cleans. Don't do anything without gratitude or compensation, if a man can't thank you, don't do extra things for him. Only do the bare minimum to keep yourself happy and leave it at that. He'll learn to be gracious soon enough.
Don't do his work work either, if he's being paid to work from home and you're crunching the numbers for him or doing any sort of actual work without being compensated, don't do it. Stop allowing him to walk all over you and then just watch him fail. If he's been irresponsible, let it become his problem again and go ahead and stop babying him.
When Grandma would work for Grandpa in his office, she was making $100,000 yearly of her own money. She'd go in 5 days weekly, work for 5 hours, and then say "Mi hija, I'm not interested in spending my day working for free even for the man that I love and who I married, if he wants good work done, he can either pay someone who he doesn't know or he can pay me the rate I want because he knows I do good work, I won't be letting him cheap on me."
You don't need to be a strong independent woman if you don't want to be:
There's so much emphasis on women being strong, independent, and not needing a man. That doesn't have to be you if you don't want it to be. You don't need to be that empowered feminist who's all into doing her own thing if that's not you, you can be who you want to be.
I'm not an independent woman in any way at all, I know that I need a man and so I found the right man and I got married. I don't pay for a single thing and I don't feel the need to. I don't want to leave my home and go back into the actual workforce, I want to have his child, and I'm in a traditional relationship. I'm very much the woman and he's all man. I would hate for that to ever change and I truly love my life.
Some women are meant to go out there, be trailblazers, show the world what they're worth, and hit the work force with all the weight of an atomic bomb. I'll always support them from afar but that's not me and I never truly saw myself walking down that path. Some women are meant to shine in the workforce and in their respective fields and some women are meant to shine on their husband's arm. Either way, we're all women.
There are women who wear scrubs and work their bums off to make other women healthy and there are women who feel like they exist to please themselves and who do just that. I don't see anything to be ashamed about with either road travelled. You can marry a wealthy man and live the life you want without having to be that wealthy man for yourself. Either way, you deserve only the best life for yourself and you shouldn't feel like you have to be one woman when you're meant to be another woman.
