1. Propping up at work.
A birthday, a wedding, a promotion? Be sure to set the table for your coworkers. Going on vacation? You're going on vacation? Coming back from vacation? All the more reason. Decided to quit your job? It's a shame not to have a farewell party. Otherwise everyone will be offended and will talk behind your back about what a stingy and bad man you are.
A similar situation, by the way, is observed with mandatory fees for birthdays, weddings, births and gender-specific holidays: often a person is simply confronted with the fact that it is necessary to surrender the money. And if he has the courage to refuse, he may even be forced out of his job.
However, any informal relations between colleagues should be a voluntary matter. If you want to give someone an envelope or a birthday party at work, that's fine. If you don't feel like it, that's fine too. Otherwise it looks like tyranny.
2. Making a cult out of food.
We tend to organize lush feasts on every, even if small-small-sized meaningful holiday. A feast is not a feast if there is no on the table homemade casserole, five different salads, a few kinds of hot food and, of course, alcohol.
And it's one thing if you really adore cooking and think that the best way to celebrate something is to eat and drink from the heart. But more often it happens that feasts take a lot of time, energy and nerves, and as a result, tired and angry owners do not want to celebrate anything. Not to mention the fact that overeating is not the best way to affect health.
The traditional feast is no longer the only way to celebrate an important event.
You can arrange a light buffet or, if the weather allows, a picnic. Or organize a candy bar. You can eat at a nearby cafe between skating and bouncing on trampolines. There are many options, and you can choose any, without looking back on how it was used to. After all, the holiday should bring joy, not mountains of dirty dishes.
3. Sending greetings in messengers and social networks.
No, we are not talking about sincere and warm congratulations, which you write yourself for each of your acquaintances. That's always nice and appropriate. But sending the same poems to everyone, or sending ugly postcards and gifs... We don't want to make people happy, but we want to follow some stupid formalities and check the box: congratulations to everyone, I'm good.
And congratulations on religious holidays deserve special attention. One thing if you know exactly what your recipient belongs to this denomination and observes all the rituals. And quite another thing - when you simply run the same picture-congratulatory throughout your list of friends. Without regard to whether the person is celebrating the date or whether they believe in God at all.
Take note.
4. to communicate with all relatives
Just because they are relatives. And it doesn't matter whether these people are interesting to you, whether your views on life coincide, whether such communication brings joy.
You have to put up with it all, simply because you and these people have a certain amount of genes in common.
Yes, it used to be necessary for survival to be friends with all the relatives up to the seventh tribe. People lived in large families, and in case of trouble, they could only count on each other. And even 50 years ago, it was family ties that helped to get a job, find the right specialist or find a place to stay in a foreign city.
But now these problems are much easier to solve. And real family often becomes complete strangers, it would seem. And there is no reason to communicate with those who are not interesting to you, just because "blood is not water.
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5. Steal brides or pay a ransom for them
There's this "cute" wedding custom: in the middle of the celebration, guests suddenly pick up the bride under their arms and drag her away so the groom can look for her later. Some may find this funny, but the roots of the "Russian Wedding: History and Traditions" tradition are actually terrible. In ancient times girls were often kidnapped against their will and forced to marry. And even now the custom of stealing brides has not been eradicated either in Russia or in the CIS countries.
That is why attempts to depict abduction, albeit in playful form, look rather ghastly and take us back to the days when a woman was considered a thing.
The same refers to the bride price, without which few weddings do. It used to be that the groom would pay for the girl because her family was deprived of labor, but in today's world it's already kind of humiliating.
However, there is another meaning of this custom Traditions of the Russian folk wedding, more romantic: passing the symbolic tests, the groom as if sent for the bride to the other world and showed that he is ready to overcome any difficulties for her sake. But modern redemption parties do not resemble fairy tale plots much, but the theme of money and payment for the bride (albeit symbolic) is played up quite often. And living people are not commodities.
6. Changing your last name after marriage
It used to be that after marriage, a girl ceased to be part of her family and passed into her husband's family. So she renounced everything old, including her surname. But now this tradition seems like atavism.
First of all, strong relationships are built on equality and partnership: a woman is not the property of a man and his relatives, he does not take her into his family, but enters into an equal union. Secondly, to run through different instances and change a whole mountain of documents is still a great fun. Third, changing your last name can damage your career.
If it is convenient for a person - for example, the name of a spouse likes more than his own - why not. But to give up part of your name, just because someone once decided so, makes no sense. By the way, nowadays women more and more often keep their maiden name after marriage, and it is quite logical.
7. Strictly divide responsibilities into male and female
Washing the plumbing, the floor or the dishes is definitely not a man's job: "What am I, a sissy?" And hammering nails and assembling cabinets - it's definitely not for women: "Well, you're a girl, not a horse with balls. And in this harsh and ruthless division of household duties lies several problems.
First, assembling cabinets, nailing shelves and changing faucets are not as often, but you have to cook and clean every day. And as a result, housework is still under the responsibility of men to help their women in the household mainly on women, and traditionally, men's duties are considered only removal of garbage and maintenance of the car. However, if a lady at the same time works on an equal footing with her partner, it is unfair.
Secondly, because of such stereotypes, no one teaches girls how to change those unfortunate faucets or build stools, and no one teaches boys how to cook, sew and clean. And any attempts to change this situation are met with a wall of indignation.
Although knowing how to bake a cake or fix furniture is useful to anyone, regardless of gender.
Third, it just doesn't make sense. Yes, there are tasks that require great physical strength or height, and it is harder for women to cope with them, but they are negligible. But it's much more efficient and faster to do the housework equally, without dividing it into male and female.
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8. Dress girls in pink and boys in blue
Newborn girls are given pink hats and wheeled around in red and pink strollers. Male babies are entitled to different shades of blue and other discreet colors - for example, gray. Toys, too, are clearly divided by color. And in the adult world, this distinction, though erased, is not completely erased.
No one knows exactly how or why colors became gendered. Perhaps it all began in the 1950s, when pink was suddenly declared a female color. Joe Paoletti, professor at the University of Maryland and author of Pink and Blue, suggests Why Is Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys? that it was a marketing ploy to get people to buy more children's clothing.
However, dividing colors into men's and women's makes no sense, to say the least.
In addition, this stereotype is very uncomfortable. Men are embarrassed to wear a bright pink shirt or socks, and women overpay the "Pink Tax": Why do women pay more? for pink goods, which only differ from similar ones in the color of the package.
9. Following traditions for a tick.
We do many things for one reason and one reason only: it is the custom. We repeat rituals that have long since lost their meaning, and we base our lives on guidelines and principles that are centuries old. But we forget that we are not supposed to do this at all.
For example, we shouldn't invite 150 distant relatives to a wedding just because our parents want us to. And we shouldn't have to have a ceremony at all if we don't want to. They shouldn't refuse to wear ripped jeans or colored hair because "that's not the way it's done at your age. And they certainly shouldn't have children or get married because "it's about time.
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