My New Year's Resolution

New Year’s resolutions were popular when I was growing up. I think I’ve made a few resolutions through the years but I can’t remember any of them. I probably resolved to study harder yet I don't think I ever followed through on them.

Last December, my mother thought I was pregnant after I piled on 13 kilos. Since then I resolved to lose the weight. Prior to that, I tried tennis, jogging and gym and I hated those forms of physical torture. I would come out sweating, in pain and finding it difficult to catch my breath. I knew there and then that gym was not for me. I also love food too much to diet so I was doomed to growing fatter and fatter.

I tried out pole dancing once and I loved that to bits. My muscles were screaming in pain after I tried out the first fitness class but the excitement of pole-dancing was enough to encourage me to continue doing it. Strength exercising with cardio fitness routines two times a week and I got myself an exercise plan. On the 4^th of January, I walked into the dance studio and signed up a twelve month contract. It’s the end of 2010 and I’m still going strong. I lost the pregnant tummy and the huge butt and I now have the perfect bikini body. I’m not giving anyone an excuse to mistakenly think I’m pregnant anymore. And because I pay for it every month, I’ve been to almost all my classes including the ones that make me break out in a sweat.

It wasn’t always easy. I had a job that assumed I didn’t have a personal life. Leaving work at 4:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays weren’t easy and being busy on those evenings meant missing out on mid-week drinks that some of my friends like to have. Well on 10^th January 2011, I’m going to sign another 12 month contract. It’s no longer about losing weight or keeping it off – I know simply love the dancing.

That was a New Year’s resolution well planned and attained. I’m quite chuffed with myself. So now I’m wondering what else I need to work on with the same vigour. I noticed late this year that I stopped writing. I set up my blog this month to start writing. So my aim for 2011 is to maintain this blog in the hopes to regain a passion long lost.

Making resolutions stick is tough but losing weight worked easily because I just scheduled time for travel and classes in my diary for Monday and Wednesday nights. I’m going to do the same for blog. I initially wanted to write something every day but I don’t think juggling work, dancing and my social life will accommodate that so once a week’s a fair deal. I’ve put it into my diary and Tuesday nights shall now be blog nights. Done!

The hunt for a husband

I chatted with a single female friend the other day and predictably, the conversation turned into men; or rather the lack of a boyfriend. Have you met someone while in Durban? I’m at a wedding and there’s no one of interest there. The more single girls I meet, the more I realise with relief that I’m not the only one without a boyfriend and the more I realise how much pressure society puts on women to fit the mould of being married and raising the perfect kids in a house with a rose bush in the garden enclosed by a white picket fence.

In my traditional Indian family, all my female cousins have been married by the time they were 23, including the cousins who is my age. At 25, I don’t have a boyfriend and therefore I have no marriage plans for at least the next two years. I’m constantly questioned about my love life from my mother and the extended family. Understandably, they are concerned. After all, I am getting older.

Facebook is filled with girl friends from school whose last names have changed and photos of babies are uploaded every week. Getting married and having kids is what you do in the suburb I grew up in. Studying and having a career is a bit unheard of.

My varsity friends are more the type to understand that young people aren’t just rushing into marriage anymore yet more and more of them upload wedding photos on Facebook and change their relationship statuses to married.

I cringe when bumping into my friends from school and university as the catch-up conversation generally revolves around the husband they recently married, the place they’re living in now and how children are on the cards. Then I am asked, “And what about you? How have you been doing? Are you married?” The line of questioning quickly turns to, “But why?” My response of late has been that I just haven’t met him yet.

This morning I stumbled upon a blog entitled Stop Asking My Mom Why I am Single. Melissa Malamut is a 32 year old woman who is tired of her little community asking her mom why she hasn’t found a husband yet. She isn’t against marriage but she does explore the gossip on unmarried women, the rise in divorce rate resulting from young marriages, the reasons she isn’t married to her previous boyfriends and that they are other things on the priority list for women aside from a husband and kids. She concludes with, “The bottom line is that there is no specific reason why a self-proclaimed amazing woman in her thirties isn’t married. Maybe she isn’t sold on the institution of marriage in general? Maybe she’s had one too many broken hearts? Maybe the men she is interested in are not beating down her door? Maybe she doesn’t want to settle for anything less than an extraordinary love? Those may not be everyone’s reasons but they sure are mine. So please, stop asking my mom.”

A lot of single girls can identify with Melissa Malamut’s blog. I’m single. And while I am, I’m going to work on other aspects of my life like my career, spoiling myself and exploring hobbies that I’m passionate about. But what about the single girls who are tired of being alone? What about my friend mentioned in the onset who is tired of looking. She thinks she’s too old to keep waiting for Prince Charming to magically appear and whisk her off to his castle so she’s considering retiring the glass slippers for boots to go on the hunt.

Success is universally measured by the corner office and assets. Success for me is measured by happiness and quality of life. Quality of life is being able to spend time with friends and loved ones, having a beautiful home and being able to do what I want when I want. Yes, money is important but I don’t care much for excessive wealth and advancement of my career isn’t one of my ambitions. I love spending time with friends and spoiling my family and marriage is definitely on my priority list. I’m not unhappy with my life but if I could be transported into a beautiful home, woken up by my doting husband, I would be ecstatic. So, pressure from family and friends aside, what about single girls who genuinely want to be married?

The most common advice is to not think about it and wait. But for how long do you keep waiting for? Someone once told me that if she’s still waiting by 35, she’s going to become a nun.

Makeovers are said to be the best way to get guys attention. Girly magazines, movies and TV promote a well defined body and a pretty face. Looks are considered important but even pretty girls have trouble finding The One.

Go out more. I was once encouraged to join the gym – to work on my physical health by exercising and maybe find a guy there because guys go to the gym. I go out all the time and I keep fit with my dance classes. I don’t even like going to the gym so I refuse to pay gym membership fees solely in the hopes that I will meet someone. I’d rather spend that money on food and drinks at Newscafe and hope our paths cross there.

Sally Gray took matters into her own hands with her TV show How to Find a Husband. At 38, she embarked on 70 dates in 70 days with 50 different guys for the show. Coaching, speed dating, internet dating and blind dates didn’t find her a husband by the end of the show. She eventually got married a few years later. It’s incredible how hard she worked at finding at husband. A classic example of a woman on the hunt…but I don’t want to get married at 40. Did she start hunting for a husband too late?

It appears that waiting for Prince Charming to awaken us with a kiss isn’t working for some women these days. Does that mean we need to keep waiting like Sleeping Beauty? If Sally Gray didn’t try to find a husband, she might have been single at 40. Should we rather wake our inner Sleeping Beauty up and go in search of Prince Charming to remind him that we’re waiting to be swept off our feet? It’s a daunting thought though – where do you start? Of all my couple friends, I don’t know any girls that sought out their partner.  All my chic friends are shy about approaching a guy and the best they’ll do catch the eye of hottie and look away and catch his gaze again. If he’s interested, he’ll approach.

Men complain about the difficulty of meeting women which I really don’t understand. How difficult can it be? Spot a girl, strike up a conversation and ask her out. Men have evolved into the role of the pursuer. They have millennia of experience etched into their chromosomes. For women struggling to find a man, this is the first generation that the struggle exists. Our mothers seem to not be able to understand it. And if men allege that they struggle to speak to women, how are women supposed to do it?

I’m chatty, friendly and quite the extrovert yet I’m still afraid to approach a guy. This seems like the best option yet I don’t know if I can do it so how am I supposed to encourage my friends to do it. It is the advice I gave my friend who asked whether she should start looking for a man. Maybe we should be bolder – not too bold as in walking up to a table that a guy is sitting at but maybe striking a conversation when I’m alone in the lift with a strange man. There’s no harm in trying and I guess we’ll just wait to see if this approach works. If it doesn’t then we can go back to sleep for a hundred years until we’re woken up with a kiss…or woken up for mass at the convent.

Confessions

I stayed home last night with my mom and sister to watch the latest episode of Dance India Dance. I loved the first season and then the L’il Masters was simply adorable and now there’s Doubles which admittedly didn’t really keep me as entertained. My mother, though, was simply glued to the screen. She loves watching all forms of dance – especially if it is to music that she enjoys so Dance India Dance is perfect for her to watch while relaxing after a hard day’s work.

Music and dance is celebrated in Indian households and my mother comes from a very musically oriented family with her father and brothers able to make and play all sorts of Indian instruments. And whenever there's a family function, my uncles bring out the instruments to play and merrily sing along while my cousins and I start a bhangra to dance. I have no doubt that if money wasn’t tight while growing up, my mom would have sent her two daughters to classical Indian dance and music classes.

Over the past year, I too have appreciated the talent on these shows – the fluidity with which dancers easily transition from one dance movement into another, the technical difficulty that accompanies daring moves as well the entertainment they provide. I appreciate this now because I confess that I began dancing a year ago. It’s been kept a secret though – not something I easily divulge and kept well hidden from my family. My dancing isn’t classical Indian or ballroom or even hip-hop. My dancing involves an air of grace, sex appeal, extreme strength and flexibility – all this on and around a shiny silver pole.

Pole dancing understandably comes with its unique set of prejudices and even though I don’t dance at strip clubs or take off my clothes, it’s a difficult dance form to explain to people of my age, let alone my mother. I’ve already participated in Miss Pole Dance South Africa and I’m loving it more everyday so this certainly isn’t just a passing phase. I wonder whether my mother even knows what pole dancing is and what she would think of my sexy hips circling and the tossing and flicking of my hair that is extensively incorporated into my routines. Would she be as glued to my performance as she is to Dance India Dance?

The responses to the confessions of my hobby are varied. Guys generally seem to be appreciative of the sport – probably because they envision scenes of me scantily clad in a raunchy routine taking the little that I have on off. Some jokingly try to get me to perform a little dance for them.

Older women seem pretty wary of pole dancing because of its origins – and when I try to convince them to come with me to see what it’s about, the answer is a resounding no. Is it society’s view that girls should be prim and proper in the public eye?

I guess the proof is in the pudding. Younger women see how beautifully I’ve lost weight and toned my body; and this is a new craze worldwide to get fit. They also think that it provides amazing techniques to seduce their boyfriends with. A comment that I usually get is that I will someday have a very grateful husband…

And still some look down on it and on the girls who do it. These are the same girls who say they wouldn’t even dance for their own husbands. Perhaps it’s the social norms that place any forms and displays of sexiness as taboo. We love watching singers move sexily in their music videos yet we find it so hard to be able to move like that.

Generally though, when I coerce people into trying certain moves or I point out seemingly impossible moves like hanging on to the pole, upside-down, with only a knee, they do understand the strength required and that’s when some take it seriously.

After a year of trying to keep this secret, I’ve slowly become more at ease when talking to people about something I’m so passionate about. It's not always easy to tell people what I do but I love showing off my dance routines and proving that it isn’t sleazy. They’ll always be people set in their ways that wouldn’t understand and for them I shall keep my lips zipped – like my mother. Confessions, that only time will tell...

The beginning

Holidays! At long last J. For me it’s a time to relax, get away from my hectic life and chill out with my family. And since I’ve got all this free time, I’m about to re-engage in a passion long lost…

All through high school, I thought of myself as a budding Pulitzer prize-winning writer and then all of a sudden, my life turned into a busy science student working part-time, eager graduate frantically climbing up the corporate ladder and now balancing my career with a busy social schedule. Although, I like to think that I’m pretty happy with the choices I’ve made, I can’t help but wonder whether I should have followed my love of writing after high school instead of trading reading and writing for a less satisfying job with lots of partying.

So I’m creating this blog so I can start writing – about something, anything. I just want to write…and put my thoughts out there. So I hope you enjoy this as I start on my journey…