ABSTRACT
Growing up in small-town Mississippi, the author was exposed to an expectation that most women have to be prim and proper at all times. They were expected to always be “put together.” Her grandmother was, and still is, the best example of this today. Growing up with her father, the author never really had women in her life to enforce this expectation of what it means to be a successful woman. Her father did not hold her to the traditional gender roles practiced by many southern women and, though she did not practice these traditional gender roles, her father still respected her. Once she moved to college, the author certainly did not follow the norms of most of the women in her family, even though some of the cultural upbringing is still a part of who she is today.
