Too many vs. too few choices

On a recent episode of the sitcom, “Girls,” a main character, Marney, brings up a dilemma common to the modern western woman. During an emotional breakdown, she says, ““Sometimes I just wish that someone would tell me, this is how you should spend your days, and this is how the rest of your life should look.”

Watching this episode from Sangli, surrounded by women who often have so few choices, I was intrigued by this idea of a young woman complaining for having too many choices and wanting someone to tell her what to do. After centuries of struggle for women’s rights, for the choice to do things like marry whom we want, cast our vote, and work wherever we’d like, why are women like Marney expressing such sentiments? The truth is, even though we sometimes feel silly for it, today, many of us Western women struggle with having too many choices.

Living as a woman in Sangli, I often compare my life with that of other women here. The fact that I live on my own as a 22-year old woman (unmarried), go to the market and buy everything on my own, and go to work during the day is relatively rare in this town. It was only recently that another neighbor, who is 25, went for the first time with her husband out to the market. Most of the women in my neighborhood have received some education, but their parents chose their husbands, and they are expected to treat their husbands and children in a certain way. Even the women in my office note that before they come to the office, they have to spend hours in the morning cooking a hot breakfast and a full tiffin lunch for their husband and kids.

So, when I watch Marny on Girls complain about having too many choices as a young professional in New York City, it doesn’t immediately make me sympathize for her.

           

Yet, to be honest, as much of a feminist and women’s rights advocate as I am, I too sometimes think about how it would be easier to have someone tell me what to do, and whom to be with. I would save the time and energy spent figuring out “what I want to do with my life” for sure, and the emotional trauma and confusion of relationships. Sometimes, in my most hopeless moments, I think it would be nice if I could predict the future, if I knew where I would be in 5 or 10 years, who I’d be with, and not have to have my grandmother’s voice in the back of my head as I’m working in the developing world, saying, “you’re not going to meet any future husbands there.”

But then, I think about the moments of realization in a job after months of struggle; about falling in love, and the moments where you feel you’re on top of the world after years of heartbreaks or failed relationships; about the times where you sort of figure of what you want and like and support, and feel good about your choice. I realize that we need to have these dilemmas as young women, the abundant options to chose from, because even though it may be overwhelming and scary, too many choices is always better than the opposite.

Realizing this does not make me pity the woman in my neighborhood whose marriages are arranged, or who are not able to work because their husbands don’t want them to, or who have no say in financial matters of their own household. But it does make me want to continue working toward gender equality worldwide, and to fight to at least make these choices available to all women.