When I first started attending my high school in New Zealand, I was asked to get involved in the activities of the school. Taking a look at the various clubs and organizations available to me, I thought I would like to join the track and field team. The pictures they had of the previous season made it look like an enjoyable activity that took place in an open field in the sun. I wasn’t really sure how I felt about the activities involved, but I knew I liked to run and this was an activity I didn’t have much opportunity to indulge in at home.
The problem was that my parents didn’t want me to join the team. This wasn’t because they thought I would necessarily be bad at it, but I am a girl and I was expected to fulfill other obligations. My parents come from a traditional Taiwanese background and had definite ideas regarding the proper role of female offspring. We didn’t wear shorts or pants but skirts, which was always an argument between my mother and me.
We didn’t play sports, we learned new recipes that would please the men. Within this tradition, I was raised to believe that everything my parents told me was right. They were to be honored and respected regardless of my own opinions. As I had been taught, my parents were older and wiser and knew more about life than I could imagine. Their knowledge, being so far superior to my own, must therefore be deferred to on every matter. When they told me I couldn’t join the team because my duties were to the house and to uphold my feminine morality, I didn’t question it for a moment but simply withdrew my team application.
All year long, I watched the team working out and feeling strangely resentful of my parents’ restrictions. Other girls ran on the team and participated fully in the various events. It was true that they shamelessly showed off their legs, frequently wearing runner’s shorts that were far shorter than even the walking shorts my parents objected to and certainly not anything close to the long skirts I had now become used to wearing.
Some of those girls practiced in nothing but those short shorts and the popular so-called ‘sports bras’ that are really little more than a bikini top. As I watched these girls, I couldn’t help thinking my parents must have known what they were talking about when they told me I wasn’t allowed to join the team.
But one day, at a track meet toward the end of the season, I saw a girl on a rival team who was obviously a Muslim. I knew this was true because she wore the full headgear and veil that only the Muslim girls wore. At first, I thought she was just there to support her team in the same way that I was, but then I noticed that she was wearing the same kind of warm-up clothes as the rest of the team.
Surely, she couldn’t be running with the team in those disgracefully revealing clothes and still remain dedicated to the ideals of femininity and tradition. But the more I doubted the possibility, the more convinced I became that she really was a member of the team. As the meet continued, I watched her perform on the relay race and in the long distance race, fully dressed in her warm-up outfit but also fully a member of the team and completely immersing herself in the activity she wanted to experience.
As I watched her run, I grew angry with my parents, with myself and with the rest of the world. How could I have doubted my own instincts and given up something I cared for so much on a simple objection of my parents. I never even tried to find a way of making things work. Remembering the conversation I had with them, it was relatively cut and dried, going something like this:
“Mom, Dad, may I join the track and field team at school?” I asked.
“Isn’t that a sport? Wouldn’t they require you to attend practices in the early morning? Wouldn’t they ask you to wear a uniform that would bare your body shamefully to the world? How can you consider abandoning your family and your reputation in such a way?” Mom replied.
Dad looked at me and said, “Girls do not belong in sports. They should pursue activities that will help their families now and in the future. You will help your mother and you will not join this sports team.”
“OK,” I replied.
What was I thinking? I never once thought to challenge any of their ideas. I watched that Muslim girl all day long as she went through the various events. She even managed to win a few medals that day. I felt obsessed about her because I had a feeling our traditions were similar.
When I went home that night, I looked up what I could find about the traditions Muslim girls were expected to uphold so that I could compare. What I discovered about her traditions indicated that there are a lot of shared ideas between her cultural traditions and mine. She was expected to wear modest dress at all times, which usually involved a dress and a headscarf because only the face and the hands were permitted to be seen.
This was the most obvious thing about her because even when she was competing, she always wore the full sweat suit of the team – long sleeves and long pants. She must have worn high socks, too, because even when she fell, not a flash of skin was ever seen at her ankles. What amazed me, though, was the way that she had specially designed athletic wear that properly covered her head, even when she was running long distance.
If she followed these strict traditions, she most assuredly also shared some other common characteristics between our cultures. In her culture, as in mine, a girl is expected to remain completely obedient to her family, bending all of her efforts to helping the family achieve its goals. This usually and traditionally is in the form of keeping the house looking nice and clean, feeding the children and keeping the clothing clean and mended.
One thing that seemed different was the way that Muslim women seemed more closed off from the outside than women in my culture. Where they are closed in and held indoors, the women in my tradition could often be found outside. When necessary, which was often, women were also the workhorses of the house, doing whatever was necessary to help the family earn a living even when it meant working all day out in the fields or in the factories. This didn’t mean they weren’t expected to do the other chores of the house, too, but if they had daughters, they had help. This, I think, was an important distinction I made at this point that became much more important later.
In the short term, though, this meant that her family, like mine, depended on her as the oldest female to help get younger children ready for school in the morning. Because all the schools in the district were on the same schedule, her school also started an hour earlier than the little kids and was therefore dismissed an hour earlier. As I learned more about her specifically, I discovered that she had made special arrangements with her coach that enabled her to work out after school instead of before school with the rest of the team.
Just like the way in which she had custom designed her outfit, she had also found a way of working around her family’s schedule, using what little time she had for herself to participate in a sport she loved. When I finally had a chance to talk with her, I found out that her biggest problem related back to the most striking difference I had noticed between our traditions. Her family expected her to bring honor to the home from within and did not want her drawing attention to herself participating in the manly occupations of open competition.
It occurred to me at this point that this wouldn’t have been such a struggle within my own household. It was acceptable for women to gain a name for themselves outside of the home as long as it was honorable for both the family and the female. I knew I could bring honor to the family name with my own medals, too, if I could just get the chance. The only real stumbling block left was the skirt, that stupid skirt, but the Muslim girl was also expected to wear modest clothing at all times. When she was running, she remained in modest clothes, only slightly modified to make sure they would remain in place with safety during the activity.
When she wasn’t actually participating in her sport, she was always in the dress I’m sure her parents expected of her. When I made this connection, I was so jealous of her for her opportunity and angry that I was so restricted in what I might be able to do. By this point, I had worked myself up to a point of rage at my parents and their backwards way of looking at the world. They almost had me agreeing with their third world approach to life even though we were now living in a much more powerful and advanced nation! I was in such a place that I even forgot myself and confronted my mother on the issue.
“Why did you stop me from joining the track and field team?” I demanded as soon as I walked in the door. “I could have run without bringing disgrace on the family with inappropriate clothes. I could have made arrangements with the coach. You wouldn’t let me. You said it was shameful.”
From here, I launched into a full scale recital of the various arrangements I had found out about how that Muslim girl managed to remain true to her traditions and family and still do something she loved. I was like the raging character in cartoons, pacing back and forth, waving my arms in the air, utilizing my voice in dramatic runs up and down my vocal scales. I gave a virtuoso performance for about a half and hour, during which my mother had calmly taken a seat at the dining room table and listened.
When I finally turned to her with an expectant glare that demanded nothing short of apology, my mother just looked at me in mild surprise and disappointed puzzlement. “You did not tell us of these types of arrangements. You did not indicate your desire was so strong. Why did you not trust us with your feelings?”
This response felt like a bucket of cold water had just dumped over my head. I couldn’t seem to say another word. She was right. I hadn’t argued, I hadn’t brought forward the possibilities, I hadn’t even told them how much it meant to me to be able to be involved with the school. How could I expect her to advise me and help me through the difficult road ahead, as parents are supposed to do and as they are so capable of doing, if I was not honest with her regarding my inner thoughts and feelings? My anger disappeared entirely as I realized the wisdom of my elders and the way in which I myself prevented them from entering my life.
I’ve never forgotten that lesson from that day to this. While I still hold my parents esteem in high regard and greatly value their input in the major decisions of my life, I no longer accept these ideas at face value as I did on this occasion. I am more inclined to look into the details and try to find a means of accommodating my own wishes and progressive ideas while still honoring the traditions and beliefs of my ancestors and my parents. It is true I continue to dedicate my efforts to the betterment of my family, but it is also true that I am not uncomfortably locked away indoors within an ill-fitting shell.
Through my experience regarding the track and field team, I have learned that there are often ways of honoring my family obligations, such as working out in the fields when necessary for the family income, by following my own heart, such as pursuing an education that will enable me to command a good salary in the modern world and provide my family with better support. I may still conform to the traditional family beliefs in my daily wardrobe choice – the dreaded skirt dominates – but I am now capable of looking for ways to honor my family beliefs while still finding time to honor my more modern ideas of progress.