Your Plants Need Fresh Air.

@cityofwomen did an interesting questionnaire on their Instagram account about Unsolicited Advice, something all of us have been at the receiving end of. The title advice of this post was the last one I remember receiving: "Your plants need fresh air". This by a house guest who walked into my studio; she was going through a bad phase in her life and had tearfully asked me to have her over for two nights. During her stay I got quite a lot of unsolicited advice from her but this particular one was memorable for its absurdity, uttered as it was in my leafy studio with windows left wide open during the day. When I recall this moment I also associate it with the whiff of something burning.

 Unsolicited advice is almost always the by product of Envy and the desire for control. When I read the answers to @cityofwomen question about unsolicited advice, most of the advice was to "get married" or "have a child" or "have another child". What makes its presence strongly felt  in such advice is a staggering lack of imagination over the decades, not to mention the stagnation of thinking i.e. The sole purpose of a woman's existence is to be a breeder and caretaker.

Unsolicited advice carries with it an undertone of disapproval, thereby diminishing from a position of implied superiority - I have the right to tell you what I think you ought to do because I know more than you. It almost always leaves a stain of humiliation and the advice can be given precisely in order to do that - I envy you, I am uncomfortable with some aspect of you (your body, your freedom, your success) therefore let me try and control you by bringing you down a notch or two by telling you what is best for you, or as in the case of my former friend, let me shit all over your house, your life and your gesture of friendship, thereby dousing my own discomfort at my insecurity.

I have to resort to that very thing I cautioned against in this post - advice giving, because I have seen it once too often among women as a kind of point scoring. The biggest irony shows itself when women who decide they are Feminists resort to doling unsolicited advice to do so. Before you clamor for equality and accuse men of "mansplaining", do consider giving your female friends  basic respect, dignity  and acceptance of their choices during your interactions with them. Be married, grow your child, but do it without crapping all over my life by giving me advice on how to grow my plants and being rude in so many other ways. You cannot undo your choices so accept it instead of getting consumed by hate and envy and the need to resort to petty one-upmanship because you resent my autonomy. As women, let's start with each other, Shut Up with the unsolicited advice.