all the women in my family create.
my grandmother used to knit and crochet. she meant to teach my sister and i but kept putting it off. it makes her very happy that we learned on our own.
my two aunts were writers. one took creative writing classes later in life. i go to read her poems whenever i miss her. one gave it up decades ago when her father insisted she pursue more lucrative paths.
art, decoration, and domestic labor are often cast aside as women’s work. nevermind that most art museums are filled with the work of the “masters” who all seem to look like any other man you have ever met on the street in bootcut jeans. sometimes, their work is just any other thing. sometimes their work is really, really bad.
i’ve had enough discussions about men and their art and the inevitable, sprawling conversation of what is and is not valued in the fine art world.
i don’t care to preserve the art of men.
so many of my friends build with their hands. they sew. they craft. they carve. they tattoo. they draw. they sing.
they create, create, create.
creation, crafting, and art are women’s work. therefore, it’s not serious work. the world tells us that work is worth nothing but femmes are simultaneously told to build entire communities, families, and most often, men, from the ground up.
we are asked to create out of nothing.
when we follow the call to do that creation for ourselves, each other, or even as a career, we are devalued for the very thing they expect of us. if we cannot carry the burden of destruction at our fingertips as only men should do, we will create. in that creation you will find your land razed flat by the blaze of “woman’s” work.
creation is violent. it’s the stab of the needle through cloth. the weaving of yarn in a constant jabbing motion until your wrist aches and your hand seizes. the pull of sharp tools across linoleum. it’s knives and keyboards and pen ink smudged to blood spatter on the back of receipts.
have you ever watched someone at a sewing maching? hunched over, eyes glazed, the horrible, metal sound of an industrial machine made to clothe whole families for generations stabbing close to soft fingers again and again as fast as you can imagine any one thing going. you cannot bother a girl making a dress from a thrifted bedsheet. she will turn to you, eyes overcome with the muses, and ask, “what do you want?”
you should assume your skin will be repurposed for her next garment.
sometimes i want to defend rupi kuar—not against her very real faults but for the way they speak about her like every other girl who makes something.
like her work is less than.
like she is less than.
there’s 1,000 male poets who do what she does and some who do much worse. they write in lowercase and espouse their woes. they hate their exes and write about them like passing thoughts. they are bad at it.
let us be bad at things and still get fame and money for it anyway. if we’re just throwing out adoration for mediocrity, i would rather it be her.
i only want to defend our creation.
everything else be damned.