Women & Labels: The Real Problematic Ways Society Puts Women Under So Much Pressure

Chelsea Blackwell wasn’t the only contestant on the latest season of ‘Love Is Blind’ to make headlines. Jessica Vestal did too. Coincidentally, she was involved in a love trial with Chelsea and Jimmy. Ultimately, Jimmy chose Chelsea to be his bride in the long run. We mainly saw Jessica during the pods segment of the show’s season. Though her time on the show was fairly short, she certainly made an long-lasting impression for viewers to remember her and make her famous. She’s become so famous that she’ll be appearing on the second season of Netflix’s ‘Perfect Match’.

Jessica didn’t just make headlines for her relationship with Jimmy. She also made headlines for being a mom. She never hid the fact that she had a child from anyone. In fact, she’d been called out by viewers of the show, mainly by women who are also mothers, for it being the first thing she said about herself. For the most part, she was judged for labelling herself as a mother first, and anything else second. These comments got me thinking of labels and assumptions. Was Jessica labelling herself as a mother or was she letting everything out in the open?

She’s a single mom. And not only is she a single mom, but she’s also a young mom. She had a child before she was 20 years old. There are men out there in the dating world who have zero interest to be with a woman who already has children of her own, so letting it out in the open right from the beginning is actually important. If I were in Jessica’s shoes, I’d do the same exact thing. My previous post emphasized the importance of disclosing my disability right away to anyone I date. Back when my husband and I met, he noticed that I was limping. I brushed it off at the time, as the timing and energy didn’t feel right. It was a cottage party with pizza and booze, and, of course, a lot of people in sight. It didn’t feel right to share my ‘sob story’ at that time. I didn’t even know if I’d ever see him in the first place. But I did disclose my disability on our first date. I thoroughly explained to him what cerebral palsy is and how it had affected my life. I owed him that.

To me, dating as a single mother can be compared to dating as a disabled woman. When I told my husband about my disability, I gave him a choice – he could stay or he could go, and if he did choose to leave, I wouldn’t get hurt. I was very honest with him. I even had him Google cerebral palsy on his phone. Though, nothing could ever beat that infamous book he was given by his father about cerebral palsy written by a doctor who probably retired in 1975. And even so, he stayed it. It never crossed his mind not to continue to court me because I was disabled. In fact, he once told me that he wouldn’t have courted me if I wasn’t disabled, because that was what made me so intriguing in the first place. But no one I ever dated cared for my disability. No one ran for the hills when I told them I had a disability, nor when they realized themselves. I guess it had a lot to do with how I presented myself. I didn’t present myself as a cripple. Instead, I presented myself as a confident, strong, and enriched woman.

As I was in the process of writing this blog post, I was immediately reminded of Michelle Buteau’s Netflix show, ‘Survival Of The Thickest.’ Buteau plays Mavis, a woman in her late 30’s who’s starting her entire life over she catches her boyfriend of 5 years cheating on her. She does so with the help of her best friends, Khalil and Marley. Khalil is a womanizer, and doesn’t ever show a need or want for commitment. He preferred that lifestyle until he met India. He was taken aback with her, and utterly surprised when he realized she wasn’t just waiting for him after they slept together. She didn’t chase him or beg him to be with her like the other women he’d been with did. That was what drew Khalil to India, and after many attempts, he finally got her to accept his quest for India to officially be his girlfriend. It was at that moment that it was revealed that India had a son. She didn’t even tell him. Her son was looking for and found her right at the moment when Khalil asked her to be his girlfriend.

As a viewer, I expected Khalil to run for the hills at the mere sight of India’s son, and I based this assumption on what I got to know about him. Men like him don’t stick around for women, let alone women with kids. But he surprised me. Dating a woman with a child didn’t scare him. He stuck around, and the two became an official couple. All seemed well between the two. They were cute together. He supported her in her personal life and connected with her son. She supported him in his career. We even saw India defend Khalil against racism when he was doing a job he was hired to do. Things got serious between them, which meant it was time for India’s baby daddy to become involved. That became the beginning of the end for the two.

We, the viewers, saw Khalil and India, along with her son, meet with the baby daddy for the first time for lunch. India’s ex-husband was aiming to throw punches at Khalil, as to embarrass him and mock him in front of his son. India, on her part, went along with her ex-husband and took it as a joke. It just so happened that their meet-and-greet happened close to India’s son’s birthday. Meeting India’s son’s father didn’t seem to intimidate Khalil, and he went on with his life and with his relationship with India as normal. Things changed for the worst, however, at Mavis’s work event. It was there that India told Khalil that her ex-husband didn’t want Khalil to attend their son’s birthday party. Khalil is visibly disappointed, and tells India that he’s been nothing bu patient, and nothing but supportive, but that it hurt that he’s not even considered to be at her son’s party even though he’s been making attempts and trying really hard to be a part of his life.

India wanted to leave the event to talk about the matter further, but Kahlil declined her quest. He said that he was there to support his best friend, and it was more important for him to stay than to come with her. India nods and leaves the event thereafter without saying another words. It’s implied that Khalil has nothing left to say or hear of the matter, and the two break things off. But we’ll have to wait for season 2 to find out for sure. As my husband and I watched their story unfold, my husband said to me, ‘That’s what happens when you date a woman who already has a child.’ I had to disagree with his sentiment. It wasn’t that India had a child that Khalil brought into such a chaotic, awkward situation. It was rather that India didn’t put boundaries in place with her ex-husband when it comes to her personal life, and, therefore, her ex-husband felt that he could intervene in their relationship and her happiness. India could’ve stopped her ex-husband from trying to intimidate Kahlil at the meet-and-greet lunch, but she didn’t when she really should’ve. Instead, she went along with it and laughed along with her ex-husband. And it escalated from there. As a single mother, she also shouldn’t have had Khalil bond the way that he did with her son so soon when there is a father who’s in the picture involved. That was why the duo broke up; not because India had a child.

Dating is hard, even when you’re not a single mother; even when you’re not disabled. Some of my single friends who aren’t mothers, nor are they disabled, have told me some horror stories that made me so grateful I’m not in the dating scene. I can compare it to job seeking, where going on a first, second, a third date with someone is like going through job interviews and seemingly never getting the job. Dating as a single mother and/or as a disabled woman is much more complicated than that. I keep saying that dating wasn’t an issue for me, ever; that each person I dated saw me for me rather than for my disability. But it doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared of it.

In my everyday life, I’d been put in a box. I was always treated as a ‘regular, normal person’ at home, and I felt normal. As soon as I stepped out of my house, the world turned against me. Suddenly, no matter where I went, I was labelled, and I was known as ‘the disabled one.’ It seemed natural, and I even wrote more than one blog post about the matter. I’d been labelled through all walks of my life – my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. I STILL get labelled to this very day in my every day life. I’d been labelled by doctors, teachers, counsellors, classmates, friends, recruiters, clients, and now, even the condo management company where I live (more on THAT later). There’s absolutely no winning and there’s no way to avoid it.

When it came time for me to start dating, I became scared that I’d be labelled in that part of my life. There were times where I kept thinking to myself, ‘Who would ever love a disabled girl like me?’ But I was so, so wrong about it. When I told my now-husband about my disability, I gave him a through explanation of what cerebral palsy is and what it can look like; exactly like the book that my father-in-law, another person who’s put a label on me, gave him following the ‘job interview’ – what I call our first initial meeting to be – that he conducted with me. When I told my now-husband of my disability, he listened carefully, and then said, ‘Okay.’ I even managed to fall down at the end of the date when he walked me home. I didn’t think anything of him, nor the date. I just figured he’d forget about me and move on to another girl. He didn’t seem like the type who’d stay. But I was wrong, and 13 years later, we’re still together. We’ve unexpectedly built a whole life together. And the reason why I used the word, ‘unexpectedly’, is because he’s the last person I thought I’d end up with, but here we are. He understood that he couldn’t put me under this little box just because I had cerebral palsy. He knew that not all of the same disabilities looked the same. Just because one person who has cerebral palsy, is in a wheelchair and is mentally challenged, doesn’t mean that I am or will be in the future.

I think the main reason why our relationship works so well is because my husband is never one to put a label on me. He’s never one to treat me as disabled. He doesn’t see me as disabled. He sees me as an equal in our relationship. He believes that I can do anything, and if, let’s say, I have difficulty getting a task done because of my physical disability, he finds a way for me to do it with one hand. There’s constant communication between us. We work well together as a team. And I’ve already started explaining this mantra to my son. He’s starting to get curious about everything he sees, which includes my hands. So I started explaining to him, ‘You see , mommy’s hands look different. But that’s okay. Mommy can do anything you can. She’ll just need a little help sometimes. But everyone needs help from time to time. You’ll need help from time to time too.’ My goal is that my son doesn’t see me as anything different; that he sees me as an equal; that instead of seeing me as his disabled mom, he sees me as just his mom. But it’s more than just about me. I’m teaching him not to label women just based on what he knows about them. I want him to see women for WHO they are; not for WHAT they are.

The outside world sees my husband as brave for being in a long-term relationship with me, a disabled woman. He even had several of his friends tell him that he was brave for being in a relationship with me, as they wouldn’t be able to. What they didn’t realize was that they’d unintentionally already labelled me as ‘the disabled girl’ by saying that my husband was brave for being with someone like me. My husband isn’t brave for being with someone like me, though. Everyone deserves to have love in their lives, even disabled people. However, I wish more people in my outside world – a world that’s outside my home- would see me for WHO I am; not for WHAT I am. I want to teach my son to be that person; to see as for WHO they are, and not for WHAT they are. I want to see women as people; as equals; just like my husband does. I want to see in him what I didn’t see in society my entire life.

If we go back to my point on ‘Survival Of The Thickest’, we get to realize that India didn’t say anything to Khalil about her being a mother because all she wanted out of Khalil was a one-night stand, no strings attached type of situation. She’s a single mother and doesn’t have time, nor the energy to be looking for a serious relationship, and she’s afraid to open up and let herself go to someone because she’s a single mother. When their circumstances didn’t allow her to hide that she was a mother from Khalil, it didn’t stop Khalil from wanting to be with her, and stepped out of his comfort zone to be with her. He wasn’t ever in a serious, committed, long-term relationship with a woman. He went from not even remembering the names of the women he slept with to being so committed that he wasn’t just getting to know the woman he was dating, but her child as well. Some would say it’s brave of him to have done that, but I’d call it growth; the same as what I’d say of my husband choosing to be with me knowing that I have cerebral palsy.

India’s relationship with Khalil didn’t work out not because she’s a mother, but because she didn’t see enough worth in herself. She saw herself as a mother first, and her own person second. She forgot that she deserved her own happiness because she was thinking more about the happiness of her child and her ex-husband. And that’s the real issue women face in the real world. We see ourselves for WHAT we are more than for WHO we are. I know I’m talking about India as if she she’s a real person and not a TV character, but I wish she’d see that her child and being a mother is a PART OF her life rather than her entire life, and her happiness shouldn’t be defined solely by being a mother. This pressure was mostly caused by her ex-husband and the father of her child. If he was more supportive and more understanding of her, maybe things would’ve turned out different for her.

Now if we go back to Jessica from ‘Love Is Blind’, we know that Jessica was judged for telling Jimmy right off the bat she had a daughter. People, mothers in particular, were saying that she was labelling herself as a mother before anything else. But when she announced that she’d participate in ‘Love Is Blind’ spin-off series, ‘Perfect Match’, she was called out, probably by the same people, and was asked, ‘What about your daughter?’ This just shows that no matter what we do, as women, nothing will ever be good enough; nothing will ever please anyone. We, as women, will always be villains in others’ stories strictly based on the labels they put us on. I recently saw a TikTok video of a woman who said she was rejected by a hiring manager due to her not wearing makeup when they met for a job interview. But would a man ever be judged for it and be rejected because he wasn’t wearing makeup during a job interview? Would a man ever be judged and labelled as a father? Would a man ever be judged and looked down upon for his disability, and be told things like he could never have kids, raise kids, take care of a household, etc.?

Women are put under a lot of pressure by society. It’s a sexist world out there. Men don’t face that pressure. As women, we strive to be the best versions of ourselves; whether it be in the workforce, or at home, or anywhere in between. No matter what path we choose for ourselves, someone will always have an opinion, and someone will always doubt us because we’ve been put in a box based on the labels that we’ve been put under. If we really think about it, most of this pressure comes from men themselves. As a woman who’s been labelled as disabled her entire life, I’ve simply learned to ignore the comments and continue doing what I feel is best for me. People will have opinions even if I do nothing with my life. They’ll say I had it coming because I’m disabled. Therefore, I might as well do something. I wanted to live freely, so I have. I wanted to work and start my own business, so I have. I wanted to live independently, so I have. I wanted to fall in love, so I have. I wanted to become a mother, so I did. I want to be able to take care of my son on my own with little help, so I have.

The most important lesson I’ve learned from pushing boundaries and doing everything that society said I couldn’t was that by doing so, you’ll surprise yourself in the process, and that’s the greatest achievement.