What Happens When Women Refuse to Behave

by María del Mal 

Beautiful things happen when women refuse to behave. Women create change—and that includes all women. Women who protest, leave abusive marriage, deny weaponized incompetence, dress for themselves, and live for themselves. Their wants and needs come first, not their families, not their friends, not their husbands. Women are brave soldiers. Wars rely on them. 

Society relies on the backbone of women doing the housework, raising boys to be better men than their absent fathers ever could, and bringing in the bacon. Men get to be babies, men get to be sad, they get to choose when they want to parent, choose when to be a good person, choose when to do the bare minimum. Men get options in how to behave in society, and if it’s less than favorable maybe it’ll be blamed on mental illness. Women don’t get to have choices. We don’t get to throw a tantrum when someone puts our character into question, instead we get up and prove them wrong in our day-to-day actions. A man does his role as a father, and it’s celebrated while women are expected to be mothers and superheroes. We don’t get to be angry, not about anything, not when we’re raped, not when we’re killed. We get to do the 9-to-5 and raise the kids and keep the house clean while making it a home, while our husbands cheat on us with younger coworkers who they call their “work wife.” 

We are burned at the stake while not being allowed the right to vote. 

Women out rank men in enrolled and completed programs in higher education. Women also experience higher rates of violence, women earn less than men, and women are often given less leadership opportunities. When women misbehave, they take over parts of the world and show other women it’s possible. When women “stick to their place” they continue to bear the unfair, unwavering, and unrelenting load of house work and childcare. When women behave, men rule their lives in and outside of their home. They are expected to carry the weight of often unacknowledged work. That includes the cooking, cleaning, and emotional labor of relationships–to say the least. When women wear what they want, don’t shave (or do), say no, set boundaries, the world shifts. 

Black women can’t be angry. They can’t be loud. They can’t be ghetto or classy. They can’t talk with SAT words or use AAVE. They can’t be overweight, too curvy, or too skinny. They have to have an hourglass figure while starving themselves, and carry 4-6 kids minimum. They have to have their edges laid, hair done, but still appreciative of their natural hair. They need nails, but nothing too long or too loud or too colorful. Latine women are expected to be feisty and submissive. They can’t dance the language of their homeland, not until they slip on a bodycon dress. Indigenous women aren’t even talked about to begin with. For women of color, misbehaving is survival and rebellion. It’s a fight for the right to exist alongside the rest of the world without dying, without being perfect, without being anything but ourselves. 

We are expected to be natural women, have natural bodies, but still an hourglass figure. We can’t be flat chested or overweight, we can’t be too assertive or direct. Somehow subtle and obvious at the same time in both flirting and setting boundaries. When women misbehave they create lives for themselves. They create life and mold one of their own. 

Men are put on a pedestal for the same behavior we are shamed for. Women who mishave fight for the right to their bodies. They fight for autonomy, for choice. 

What happens when the whole world of women misbehaves? Daughters and granddaughters learn bravery, they learn to be loud and free and unapologetically themselves. To learn to say ‘no’ and how to ask for help. Misbehaving means going against the grain, and doing what needs to be done to insight change.