Read Online My Invented Country by Isabel Allende - Free Book Online Page A

good companions to men whooften do not deserve them. Under their wings they harbor their own and others’ children, friends, relatives, and hangers-on. They are always bone tired, weary from serving others, always putting off what they should do for themselves; the last among the last, they work tirelessly and age prematurely, but they never lose their capacity to laugh at themselves, their romantic hope that their partners will change, or the small flame of rebelliousness that burns in their hearts. Most are martyrs by vocation: they are the first up to wait on their families and the last to go to bed; they take pride in suffering and sacrificing. They sigh and weep with great gusto as they tell one another the stories of abuse from husband and children!
    Chilean women dress simply, nearly always in slacks; they wear their hair down and use little makeup. On the beach or at a party they all look the same, a chorus of clones. I took the time to go through old magazines, from the end of the sixties to today, and I find that in this sense very little has changed in forty years. I think that the only difference is the volume among various hairstyles. Every woman has “a little black dress,” which is synonymous with elegance and which, with few variations, accompanies her from puberty to coffin. One of the reasons I don’t live in Chile is that I wouldn’t fit in. My closet has enough veils, plumes, and glitter to outfit the entire cast of Swan Lake; furthermore, I have tinted my hair every color chemicals have to offer, and have never stepped out of the bathroom without my eye makeup. Being permanently on a diet is a symbol of status among us, though in more than one poll the men interviewed have used terms like “soft, curvy, with something you can get a grip on,” to describe how they prefer their women. We don’t believe them: surelythey say that to console us . . . which is why we cover our protuberances with long sweaters or starched blouses, just the opposite from Caribbean women, who proudly display their pectoral abundance in low necklines and posteriors sheathed in fluorescent spandex. But beauty is a matter of attitude. I remember one woman with a Cyrano de Bergerac nose. In view of her lack of success in Santiago, she went to Paris and in no time at all she had appeared in France’s most sophisticated fashion magazine—eight pages, full color—wearing a turban and in bold profile! From that time, this woman-attached-to-a-nose has passed into posterity as a symbol of the crowed-over beauty of Chilean women.
    Some frivolous thinkers believe that Chile is a matriarchy, deceived perhaps by the strong personality of its women, who seem to carry the lead in society. They are free and well organized, they keep their maiden names when they marry, they compete head to head in the workforce and not only manage their families but frequently support them. They are more interesting than most men, but that does not affect the reality: they live in an unyielding patriarchy. To begin with, a woman’s work or intellect isn’t respected; we must work twice as hard as any man to earn half the recognition. Don’t even mention the field of literature! But we’re not going to talk about that, because it’s bad for my blood pressure. Men have the economic and political power, which is passed from one male to the next, like the baton in a relay, while women, with few exceptions, arepushed to the side. Chile is a macho country: there is so much testosterone floating in the air that it’s a miracle women don’t grow beards.
    There is no secret about machismo in Mexico; it’s in their rancheras, their country ballads, but among us it is much more veiled—though no less injurious. Sociologists have traced the causes back to the Spanish conquest, but since male dominance is a world problem, its roots must be much more ancient, it isn’t fair to blame only