The Soul of a Woman

by Isabel Allende

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  I asked several female friends and acquaintances if they were happy with their gender and why. It’s a tricky question because we have come to understand the concept of gender is fluid, but for simplicity’s sake I will use the terms woman and man. Though this was admittedly an unscientific and small sampling, the responses were incredibly interesting.

  The women said they liked being female because we have more empathy and solidarity than men and we are more resilient. As we give birth, we bet on life, not on extermination. We are the only possible salvation for the other half of humanity. Our mission is to nurture; destruction is masculine.

  Someone refuted this affirmation, arguing that there are women as bad as the worst men. True, but the greatest predators are men. Ninety percent of violent crimes are committed by men. In every circumstance, in war as in peace, within the family or at work, men impose themselves by force; they bear the most responsibility for this culture of greed and violence in which we live.

  One woman in her forties referenced testosterone, which generates impulses of aggression, competition, and supremacy. She told us that her gynecologist prescribed her that hormone in a cream, to be rubbed on the belly to increase her libido. She had to stop because she grew a beard and drove her car with an intention of running over the first pedestrian who crossed her path. She concluded that it’s preferable to live with less libido than to shave and live furious.

  They also said there’s a certain looseness in being female. Men are trained to repress emotions; they are limited by the straitjacket of masculinity.

  One of the participants in my mini poll said that men have mothers who could have brought them up to be more gentle. I reminded her that only modern feminists can try to forge our sons’ mentality. Historically, mothers have not been able to oppose the patriarchy. Even today, in the twenty-first century, a submissive, isolated, uneducated woman, a victim of the male chauvinist tradition, which goes back millennia, doesn’t have the power or the knowledge to change social mores.

  I could do it. I didn’t perpetuate machismo by teaching a son to command and a daughter to endure. I did it differently with Paula, and especially with Nicolás. What did I want for my daughter? To have options and to live without fear. What did I want for my son? That he be a good companion to women, not an adversary. I didn’t impose upon my children the Chilean norm that girls serve the men in the family. Even today I see girls who grow up making their brothers’ beds and washing their clothes. Naturally, later on, they become servants to their boyfriends and husbands.

  Nicolás learned in the cradle the concept of gender equality. If I missed some detail, his sister instilled it in him. Now Nicolás is actively engaged in the management of my foundation—the whole purpose of which is to lift up women. He sees on a daily basis the consequences of machismo and he works to alleviate them.

  The most revealing opinion was that of Elena, the Honduran woman who cleans my house once a week. She has lived, undocumented, for twenty-two years with her children in the United States. She speaks very little English and lives in fear of being deported at any moment, as happened to her husband, but she manages to support her family. When I asked her if she liked being a woman, she looked at me puzzled. “And what else could I be, niña Isabel? God made me this way, so what’s the point of complaining?”

  This little poll among my friends gave me the idea of asking the same question of my male friends. Do you like being a man? Yes? No? Why? But that would require another fifty pages, so it will have to wait.

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  In most of the world, a woman’s value is tied to her youth and beauty. For any woman it’s difficult to navigate those waters; for most of us it’s a shipwreck. Beauty concerns almost all women in their youth. I barely survived that during the first fifty years of my life, when I thought of myself as not attractive at all. When I was at Paula magazine, I compared myself to my colleagues, all of them good-looking, to the fashion models who surrounded us, and to the candidates of the Miss Chile pageant, which we organized annually. What on earth was I thinking? Then I lived in Venezuela, the land of gorgeous and voluptuous women par excellence; they win all the international beauty pageants. Show up at any Venezuelan beach and you’ll leave with an incurable inferiority complex.

  It’s impossible to fit into the mold enforced by the market, the arts, the media, and social mores. By cultivating our low self-esteem, the powers listed above sell us stuff and control us. Objectification of women is so predominant that we don’t even perceive it, and in our youth it enslaves us. Feminism has not saved us from that servitude. We can only get rid of it with age, when we become invisible and are no longer objects of desire. Or when a tragedy shakes us to the bone and confronts us with what’s essential in life. That happened to me at fifty when my daughter, Paula, died. I applaud the young feminists who are eager to overthrow these stereotypes.

  I refuse to submit to the Eurocentric feminine ideal—young, white, tall, thin, and fit—but I celebrate our female instinct to surround ourselves with beauty. We adorn our bodies and we try to adorn our environment. We need harmony. We weave multicolored textiles, we paint murals in mud huts, we make ceramics or lace, we sew—it’s universal. Women’s creativity is called craft and is sold cheap; when men create, the result is called art and is costly, like Maurizio Cattelan’s banana taped to a Miami art gallery wall with a price tag of US$120,000.

  In our eagerness to adorn ourselves we are tempted by trinkets or by the illusion that a new shade of lipstick might improve our destiny.

  * * *

  As with many other species, human males are also vain. They spruce themselves up, make noise, and inflate their plumage to attract the best females and sow their seed. The biological imperative of reproduction is implacable. And to that end, beauty plays a fundamental role.

  A friend often sends images of exotic birds to my cellphone. Nature’s imagination is prodigious when it comes to combining feather colors and shapes. A tiny bird in the Central American jungle sports a rainbow of colors to attract an insignificant-looking female. The male of the species is promiscuous and showy, while the female is plain. Ah, the ironies of evolution! When that bird thinks there’s a possible girlfriend around, he chooses a spot with good light and proceeds to clean it meticulously. He removes leaves, twigs, and anything else that might compete with him. Once the stage is ready, he stands in the middle, sings, and magically creates a fan of fluorescent green feathers. The jungle vanishes out of respect for that conceited troubadour.

  Humans are sensual creatures; we vibrate in response to sounds, colors, fragrances, textures, flavors—everything that pleases our senses. We are moved not only by the beauty of a planet that offers us that little bird with the green fan, but also by what we can create. Years ago, when my grandchildren were aged five, three, and one, I brought back from a trip to Asia a voluminous wooden crate. We opened it in the living room. Inside, resting on a bed of straw, was a three-foot-tall alabaster statue. It was a serene Buddha, young and svelte, meditating with closed eyes. The kids abandoned their toys and contemplated the statue for a long time, silent and fascinated, as if they understood clearly that this was something extraordinary. Many years later, my grandchildren still bow to the Buddha when they enter my house.

  I had the sad task of dismantling my parents’ house after they passed away. My mother had managed to buy furniture, ornaments, and good-quality objects in each diplomatic posting. It wasn’t easy, because Uncle Ramón had to support four children of his own and three of my mother’s, and money was always scarce. Panchita’s argument was that refinement is not spontaneously generated and it doesn’t come cheap. Each purchase resulted in a fight. The stuff in that house traveled around the world so much that if travel added value, it would have been worth a fortune.

  I loved seeing my mother on the stage she had created for herself, like that tiny bird with the gree
n fan. I inherited from her the desire to adorn my house, but I am aware that nothing is permanent, everything changes, decomposes, disintegrates, or dies, so I don’t cling to anything.

  Trying to give away my parents’ belongings, I realized that so much of what she accumulated is no longer valued. There’s no time in modern life to shake Persian rugs, polish silver, or wash crystal by hand; nor is there much space for paintings, a grand piano, or antique furniture. Of all that stuff that my mother cared for so much, I kept only a few photographs, a portrait of her painted in Lima when she was a very unhappy young woman, and an old Russian samovar. I now use it to serve tea to my Sisters of Perpetual Disorder—a circle of friends who form a so-called prayer group, although we don’t pray at all.

  * * *

  One twenty-five-year-old young woman, the official beauty of her family and among her friends, who has the attitude and confidence to carry that title, once said to me: “I have some advantages. I am tall and I am in better shape than most; I am attractive. However, because of that I am more exposed to harassment. When I was a teenager a man took advantage of me. The sexual abuse and humiliation lasted more than a year. I was afraid of him. Fortunately, my family helped me unconditionally so that I could get out of that toxic relationship. I was weak, inexperienced, and vulnerable, but it was my fault because I was flirtatious and didn’t consider the risks.”

  I stopped her before she could continue along that well-trod path of blaming the victim for a predator’s actions. That didn’t happen to her because she was pretty; it happened simply because she was female.

  * * *

  According to popular myth, women are more vain than men because we worry about our appearance, but male vanity goes deeper and is costlier. Look at their military uniforms and medals, the pomp and solemnity with which they show off, the extreme measures they employ to impress women and make other men envious; their luxurious toys, like cars, and their toys of supremacy, like weapons. I think we can conclude that men and women share the sin of vanity equally.

  Panchita was always beautiful and that, we have to admit, is an advantage for women. In photos of her at the age of three, one could already guess the beauty that she would become; photos of her at ninety show undoubtedly that she was still a beauty. In her family, however, physical attributes were never mentioned; it was considered in poor taste. In general, children were not praised; it was a way of keeping them from becoming conceited. If they got good grades in school, they were just doing their duty; if they won the swimming championship, they should have beaten the record; if girls were pretty, they had nothing to boast about and genes were to be thanked. Nothing was enough. That’s the way it was in my childhood, and in truth it prepared me for life’s harshness. I don’t expect to be celebrated. When my grandchildren were little I tried to use this Chilean method on them, but their parents objected; they feared the heartless grandmother would traumatize the kids.

  Panchita didn’t value the gift of beauty until her mature years. By then she had heard people say she was pretty so often that she ended up believing it. When I took my then fiancé, Roger, now my husband, to Chile to meet my parents, he was impressed by Panchita’s looks and told her that she was stunning. She pointed to her husband and answered with a sigh that he had never told her so. Uncle Ramón interjected dryly: “It might be so, but I saw her first.”

  In the last months of her life, when she needed assistance for everything, even the most intimate tasks, my mother told me that she was resigned to accepting help and that she was grateful for it. “With age and dependency one becomes humble,” she confessed. After a thoughtful pause, she added, “But humility does not take away vanity.” She dressed with as much elegance as her immobility permitted; her helpers would massage her with lotion in the morning and evening, and a hairdresser turned up twice a week to wash and blow-dry her hair. Her makeup was discreet because, as she would say, there’s nothing more ridiculous than a painted old woman. At ninety-something she would look at herself in the mirror and smile. “I don’t look bad despite my age, do I? The few friends I have left look like iguanas.”

  * * *

  I inherited my mother’s vanity, but I kept it hidden in my bones for years, until I was able to get rid of my grandfather’s voice making fun of those who pretended to be what they are not. Pretending included lipstick and nail polish because nobody is born with red lips and nails.

  At twenty-three I got highlights in my hair, which had recently become fashionable. My grandfather asked me if the cat had urinated on my head. Ashamed, I didn’t visit him for several days until he called me to find out what was wrong. He never mentioned the highlights again, and I realized that it wasn’t necessary to pay attention to everything he said. Maybe after that incident I started cultivating vanity, not as the sin it was for my tata, but as the harmless pleasure it can be if not taken too seriously. I don’t regret having indulged in it since then. But I admit that I have spent energy, time, and money pursuing an ideal until finally I realized that the only reasonable option is to exploit what nature gave me. It isn’t much.

  I don’t have Panchita’s physical attributes, so my vanity requires discipline. I jump out of bed an hour before everybody else to shower and put on makeup because when I wake up I look like a defeated boxer. Makeup is miraculous. The right clothes help me conceal the collapse of certain parts of my body; they are down there but I can’t find them. I avoid fashion; it’s risky. Old photos show me seven months pregnant in a miniskirt and with enough big hair for two wigs. Fashion seldom suits me.

  Why such a fuss about my appearance? What about feminism? Because it gives me pleasure. I like fabrics, colors, makeup, and the routine of putting myself together every morning, even though I spend most of my time locked away in the attic writing. “No one sees me, but I see myself,” my mother would comment philosophically. She was not referring to her looks only, but also to her deeper character traits and her behavior. It helps me a lot to have a sweetheart who sees me with his heart. My husband, Roger, thinks I am a supermodel, only much shorter.

  * * *

  As the years go by, my idea of sensuality has shifted. In 1998 I wrote a book about aphrodisiacs, a sort of memoir of the senses that is called, naturally, Aphrodite, named for the goddess of love. Aphrodisiacs are those substances that increase desire and sexual performance. Before drugs like Viagra became available, people trusted in certain foods that supposedly had that effect. A good example is eggplant. Turkish brides had to learn dozens of eggplant recipes to guarantee their future husband’s enthusiasm for cavorting. I think husbands now prefer a hamburger.

  Aphrodisiacs developed in countries like China, Persia, and India, where a man had to satisfy several women. In China, the nation’s prosperity could be measured by the number of children the emperor begat. He had hundreds of young concubines for that purpose.

  I spent a year researching that book—reading, looking for inspiration in erotic shops, experimenting with aphrodisiac recipes in the kitchen and testing them. Aphrodisiacs are like black magic. I recommend that if you are thinking of using them, you’d better inform the victim if you want results. I learned this when testing my dishes among friends who acted as guinea pigs. The recipe would only work for those guests who had been told that it was an aphrodisiac. I assume that was the case because they left in a hurry. The rest didn’t even notice. Suggestion works miracles.

  * * *

  Before, I used to fantasize about a night in the company of Antonio Banderas, but now that remote possibility seems like too much work. More sensual is a long shower before lying down with Roger and the dogs between two ironed sheets to watch TV. And for that there’s no need to bother with silk lingerie to cover my cellulite.

  I was fifty-six years old when I wrote Aphrodite. I couldn’t write that book now; the subject seems too fanciful, cooking bores me, and I have no intention of administering aphrodisiacs to anybody. I use
d to say that I couldn’t write an erotic book because my mother was still alive. After Panchita passed away, several readers asked me to do it. I am sorry, now it’s too late. My mother took too long to bid farewell to this world, and now eroticism interests me way less than kindness and laughter. Maybe I should increase my estrogen dose and start rubbing testosterone cream on my belly.

  I wouldn’t want to commit again the epic idiocies I engaged in from my thirties into my fifties because of sexual passion, but I don’t want to forget them either. They are like merit badges.

  I confess, though, that sometimes my passionate heart clouds my understanding. If it’s not one of the causes that I obsess over, like justice, the defense of the poor and animals, and, of course, feminism, then usually what clouds my reason is fulminating love. That happened in Venezuela in 1976 when I fell in love with an Argentinian musician who had escaped the so-called Dirty War in his country. I left my good husband and my two children and followed him to Spain. It was a huge mistake and I returned to my family heartbroken and with my tail between my legs. Ten years would pass before my children forgave that betrayal.

  That Pied Piper of Hamelin was not the only lover for whom I have done crazy things. On a book tour in 1987, I met Willie, a lawyer from California, and I left my home in Caracas and my children (who by then were adults and didn’t need me) and moved without hesitation to live with him, without luggage and without an invitation. Shortly after, I managed to force him into marriage because I needed a visa to be able to sponsor my children so they could come to the United States.