Women of the South and Why I Love Them

I just finished reading a book called "Crazy Ladies" by Michael Lee West.  It wasn't until the end of the book that I realized the author was a woman.  That peeved me slightly, because I thought a man had finally cracked open the psyche of a woman.  Anyway, I digress about that. 

I am relentlessly nosey and reading helps satisfy my unnatural wonder for how other people live.  I generally lean towards biographies or historical drama type books with one exception.  Southern Woman Fiction.  I can hardly get enough of it.  I think I actually cried when I realized I had read all of Rebecca Wells' books. 

Obviously, the writers of said books have talent or else I would not get past the first few pages, but what draws me in is some deeper level of understanding.  These women say "ya'll" and kitchy things like "hells bells" or "Lordy Jesus".  They drink iced tea and never have to include that it's sweet tea (it's just understood here in the South).  They wear cotton dresses and look effortless, even if they spent an hour doing their hair.  They talk about butterbeans, babies and being crazy as if each were a rite of passage. 

There is rarely anything more important to a Southern woman than her family and in these books I love, family takes on every form of cohesion.  Whether it be the family you were born into, the family you marry into or the family you make for yourself, out of friends and sister women, each of these characters clings to them for better or for worse.  Of course, in most of these books, the family you were born into is full of crazy drunks, the one you marry into is full of snotty people that never accept you and the one you make is full of gay men or women that are tragically ill/beaten/crazier than you (and any combination thereof). 

I love how these Southern women just take it all in stride.  Nothing is too big or too awful to handle.  Granted, there is a lot of bourbon and "nerve pills" swallowed down with the gravity of the situation, but to me that is the mark of a tough as nails kinda gal.  One that can down a jigger of Wild Turkey, swipe on some lipstick and say "Hells bells that was a close one".  I guess some would describe it as gracefulness.

So why do I love Southern women?  The way they talk, the way they look and the way they handle life.  I was born and raised in the South.  I once took a minor detour to the Pacific Northwest, felt like I was a catfish out of water and promptly returned to the heart of Dixie.  And even though I can feel the roots of the South deep in my bones, I am still working on being a true Southern woman.

A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.   -Tennessee Williams