'Burnt Toast'

Teri Hatcher, of Desperate Housewives fame, is also the author of  "Burnt Toast: And Other Philosophies of Life,"  a book in which she explores the proverbial 'burnt toast' metaphor for women who too often take the leftovers for themselves -- something, Hatcher says,  she is guilty of, and is trying not to do as much, but still does. This malady is so widespread that I believe that it merits being called a 'syndrome'.  

What is there in a burnt toast? a charred slice of bread that deserves to be thrown away but so often you see the woman of the house attempting to salvage it by scraping off the black, or hiding the burnt parts with jam. Almost never is this slice of bread offered to anyone because she keeps it for herself to eat it later. In so doing what she is saying to herself and to the world -- is that the piece of bread is worth more than her own satisfaction. To move away from the literal interpretation, what this means is placing everyone and everything above oneself. This is pattern behavior that is passed on from one generation of women to the next. I learnt it from my mother, she must have imbibed it from her mother and so on. Each woman in turn is well-meaning but ends up giving a mixed message to a child, irrespective of gender. The male child grows up seeing the mother in a sacrificial rôle and learns to expect the same from other women who come into his life. The female child on the other hand gets the message that she has to carry on the stereotype, unquestioningly accept that in the order of priorities the last place is hers, that self-sacrifice must be habitual to her.


This pattern behavior is present across cultures and I firmly believe it has no ethnocentrism associated with it. In simpler words, that women have to be habitually sacrificial is not a characteristic of the Indian woman alone; it is prevalent the world over. I have had personal experience of my male foreign colleagues boasting about how sacrificial and therefore 'sweet' their wives or mothers are. If you come to think of it, this fact alone makes this an issue worth taking a re-look at. Psychologists say that there are certain behavior patterns that we inherit from our fore-mothers, that we are born with an intuitive cognizance that if we are women, we are to behave this way or set our expectations in such and such a way. Therefore if this behavior pattern is intuitive, it would appear that there is very little we can do about it because we have very little, if any, control over our unconscious minds. Having said that, I would like to hold out a ray of hope insofar as educated conscious beings, we owe it to ourselves to break free from this pattern, to make a choice for our dignity, for the dignity and the inculcation of a proper value-system for our daughters and sons.


So Ladies, the next time around throw away the burnt toast and tell yourselves with a smile that you deserve better, much better.