[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_96

Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo, 2019

“I can’t understand anything you write,” my new flatmate took the Post-it on which I had written the shopping list and brought it close to his eyes, “and you write so messily!”. He shifted his gaze to study me as if he had never seen me before, “Your handwriting isn’t like a woman’s!” he exclaimed, amazed. Then he added, “That’s not a criticism! It’s well known that people with terrible handwriting are the most intelligent,” he continued to look at me, expecting a sign of gratitude from me or a confirmation of his validation, which never came. I snatched the paper from his hands and left the house without saying a word, leaving him with the puzzled look of a talent scout betrayed by his young protégé. His name was Alessandro, and he was a 29-year-old boy who lived in Bologna; he had a law degree, and he was a lover of travel, good food, and good company, or at least that’s how he introduced himself in response to the ad I had put out around the city looking for flatmates. He had moved into the apartment where I was living a couple of days earlier, and that was the first time we had spoken. As far as I was concerned, it could easily be the last.

As I wandered through the supermarket aisles with the Post-it clenched in my fist, I wondered if Alessandro had realized what his words implied: women write neatly, those who write neatly are not intelligent, and women are not intelligent. I thought back to the total lack of restraint he had in taking and commenting on something of mine without even knowing me, to the great confidence with which he addressed me and judged me, to the offended expression he assumed when he didn’t receive a “thank you” for what should have been a compliment to my intelligence, which in his eyes was an exception of gender.

I shook my head in resignation. His behavior was that of someone who always feels at home in whatever house he is in because he is used to being in the space he lives in. He did not see me as a stranger who had lived in the same apartment before him and helped him with the rental contract, but as a girl, that is, as a well-defined category that always needs to be guided and advised. No, Alessandro was not the type to deal with syllogisms and implications. I opened my fist again, looked at my handwriting, which was almost illegible due to the crumpling of the Post-it, and found myself smiling: that wasn’t my handwriting!

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the phrase “female writing”: this phrase was a refrain that had lasted for years, throughout my middle school years. All my girl classmates wrote the way I wrote; we all had the same unmistakable style: incredibly tidy, measured, and controlled.

The letters were rounded and pot-bellied (the “a”s and “o”s, in particular, had to be perfect circles), the lengths couldn’t be exaggerated (the bars of l, f, g, q, and p couldn’t be too long or too short, and above all, too slanted); there couldn’t be taller or shorter letters, but they all had to be the same height.

There also had to be a certain harmony: all the letters had to hold hands in a balance that was pleasing to the eye, and there had to be no sharp strokes or isolated letters. Each word had to be separated from the other by the same distance, and the same was true for each line.

There were to be no cancellations or smudges: the text had to be written in a rough draft and then copied out neatly. I remember that the teachers got very angry with me because I forgot to dot the “I”s and never put the “leg” on the italic “A,” and this made it impossible to distinguish it from the “O.” The teachers often left notes in my notebook for my parents, to ask them to check my writing. For my family, this was a sign that I was not a good student. My father made it his crusade: for years, at the dinner table, he repeated to me that I had to write well for others, not for myself. Because other people had to read me, I had no right to write as I wanted. My writing had a moral value. I reached 12 years old with all the bars and all the dots in the right place, to the delight of my father and the entire teaching staff. All the girls in my class and I wrote the same way to the point that it was difficult to

distinguish whose handwriting it was. For the boys, however, it was different. It was very easy to recognize the ownership of their handwriting; their writing was very personal: there was Fabio, who wrote in block letters because he had never learned cursive; Simone expressed himself in microscopic characters or, as the teacher said, "like fly poop"; Johnny had a different size for each letter and there were more smudges than words he wrote; Nicola couldn't follow the line of the notebook, and every time the grammar teacher told him that his texts seemed to have been written by a seismograph. And so on.

None of the boys' handwriting was similar to the girls’. No one had ever asked them to be careful in writing; no teacher had left notes in their notebooks, asking for the alliance of their parents in disciplining their handwriting; no father had held tirades at dinner about how they drew the bar of the “o.” There was no such expectation, request, or pressure on them because, you know, boys will be boys! And the important thing for teachers and parents was that these young men sat at their desks and didn't make too much of a mess! This was the goal for which they were rewarded.

Probably so, it was also for my new flatmate, Alessandro. But for us girls, writing was just one of the many forms of gendered discipline at school. They told us: “Girls are more mature,” “Girls do better at school.” Everyone told us this, including teachers and parents, as if it were a given and part of our being girls. “Boys, you know, they’re boys,” they repeated us, “they struggle more… You can’t expect so much from them… You are a girl; you have to be good.” They also told us that we had to help the boys follow their lessons and do their homework because we were the good ones and good people help others. In addition to being good, we also had to take on the burden of caring. A convenience package, two for the price of one! But, in the end, that’s what we saw in our families, too, right? It was Mom taking care of Dad.

The truth was that our “being good” was the only possible response to the type of education and pressure we received and the kind of request we made: to obey, help, and excel. Our male peers were free from all this; they could “be.” Calligraphy was a form of military discipline for our “feminine” spirits. Our letters had to behave and present themselves as we had to act and present ourselves: respond to a canon and fit into a category. And just as the letters had to be all ordered and controlled, so we had to be. Just as the writing had to be pleasing to the eye, harmonious, and beautiful, we had to be. As my dad used to say, you have to write well for others, not for yourself. It also applies to our behavior and our presence. Being good at taking care of those who are not good. Beautiful writing was a moral duty like the beauty of our behavior (and appearance)—a gift of love for others. While filling the shopping cart, I crumpled the Post-it and crushed it in my pocket. For the second time, I caught myself saying, "That is not my handwriting!”.

I thought back to the day I decided to destroy the person I had been taught to be to try to create the person I wanted to be: I was 17 years old. I took a pen and paper and started with my way of writing. I was tired of seeing the pages of my diary full of round, tidy, reassuring words so dissimilar from the meanings they conveyed and the stories they told!

I wanted a handwriting that was mine, that spoke of my character, of my contrasts. So, first of all, I stopped drawing rounded letters: all my letters had to be angular and pointed, like mountain rocks. I wanted them to be uncomfortable and dangerous. Then, I started looking for the inclination that suited me: to the left. All my bars, big and small, had to look toward the past, reflection, and political struggle. Finally, I forced myself to fragment the letters: no more cursive, no more holding hands, no more harmony! My words had to take up all the space they wanted; they had to fly, get lost, and find themselves again. To hell with rules and lines! It was hard. It took me years. But in the end, I managed to erase a decade of graphic military terrorism and find a stylistic form that resembled me at least a little.

The result, however, was not what I had hoped for. That new writing was certainly more personal and responded well to all my tensions, but it remained artificial and forced. It was not automatic; it did not come naturally to me. It was an imposture. I had erased years of graphic military terrorism, discovering that those years had prevented me from finding my natural expression, my own identity.

Even today, when I have to write quickly when I am sad, angry, or nervous, my handwriting changes; it seems like a different person's handwriting every time. It looks as if I had never held a pen in my hands or learned to write. Like that day, on that post-it on the shopping list, that “not feminine handwriting,” as my roommate call it: that was not my handwriting, or was it? I do not have handwriting. I have many, and none of them are truly mine.

I wonder if this also happens with character. When you are imposed rigid canons to follow and try to destroy them to find your authentic way of being, doesn't the same thing happen? “The Barbies with their stick legs and rocket breasts were another problem Megan had to endure. She was supposed to spend hours dressing up or playing house with them, including the darker ones she was supposed to find more relatable. In a fit, she'd once tried to commit Barbicide, defaced them with colored marker pens, chopped off hair, extracted eyes with scissors, and de-limbed a few... The Barbie invasion proliferated on birthdays, and at Christmas, relatives talked about incredible collections, as if she'd chosen to have them in her life.”