The second week of the month is upon us, and with it comes Mother’s Day. If you participate, you are probably searching the internet relentlessly for the perfect gift. It can be hard to know what that gift is, especially during stressful times like midterm season, which demands our full attention. For this reason, I wanted to provide our readers with three gift ideas that they can use to light up their mother’s day and make them remember the awesome aspects of being a woman in today’s society.
A Spa Day/ Spa Kit
This gift idea encourages moms to take a day off from their busy schedules to slow down and relax. They can be treated with some massages, face masks and more! This gift could be an appointment at a local spa or a spa day kit. If you decide to go with the second option, in a box, provide self-care products that allow them to have an at-home spa experience.
Our mother’s ability to make their jobs look easy makes us believe that everyone could do it! But apparently, the job is not as easy as we think, statistics show how women experience higher levels of stress than men, but they are less likely to feel understood since they usually internalize their stress. This misunderstanding of women extends across all types of medical branches, from mental health to physical health. The world does not understand women’s bodies, and it’s harming them. Joanna Thompson writes for Scientific American about this in an article called “No One Studied Menstrual Product Absorbency Realistically until Now.” She details how menstrual products were tested with saline instead of real blood, leading women to be misdiagnosed for diseases such as bleeding disorders, cancer and fibroids.
Crazy, right? Many stories like this show how uneducated the medical field is about the female body and how it needs to be reconstructed in order to provide women with the best quality of life possible. Well, what a better way to tune out the problems surrounding us than with a relaxing and quiet time in a sauna. By providing your mother with an opportunity to relax and have time to herself she can forget about the stressful things in her life for at least one or two hours!
A Beauty Makeover
If a spa day is not something mom likes, consider a makeover! It can range from getting mom a new makeup set, taking her to buy new clothes or booking a salon appointment for her. Our mothers do a lot for us and oftentimes they don’t have time to think about their appearances. It is our job to remind them how looking good is a form of self-care not only for ourselves but for the people around us!
This is a popular sentiment among other countries. In South Korea, women have opened up about how rigid beauty standards are in their country. They mention how it becomes tiring and costly to be beautiful and most of the time they feel like they’re doing it for other people and not because they want it.
Because of this they used these rigid rules for their advantage and they have incorporated them into the 4B movement. In the article “A World Without Men,” Anna Louie Sussman describes it as a campaign that supports women’s decisions to eliminate the risks of heterosexual relationships by avoiding contact with men as a whole.
The movement came to be after the rising statistics of domestic abuse, revenge porn, sexual harassment and the growing number of incel groups scared Korean women to the point of alienation. For these reasons women in the movement have rejected any heterosexual relationships and have rejected beauty standards by wearing loose clothing, no makeup and wearing shorter hairstyles.
Surprisingly, statistics show that this movement is working as South Korea reported the lowest fertility rate in the world in 2023! We obviously do not want this to happen in our country, so for this Mother’s Day the perfect gift can be giving mom an opportunity to feel beautiful again.
A Purse
One of the best gifts for Mother’s Day is none other than a girl’s best friend—a purse! This accessory helps every woman stay organized and prepared for anything the world throws at them. By treating your mom to a brand new purse, you’re not only making them feel loved, but you’re also giving them an item that they will cherish and use for years to come.
Not only is a purse a cute addition to an outfit, but it’s also practical and can be life-saving! Women have had to adapt to carrying many self-defense devices, such as pepper spray, window breakers, seatbelt rippers and sometimes tasers. This is all due to the increasing amount of female crime and femicides happening around the world. For instance, Mexico, which is now considered a second-world country, still has one of the highest numbers of femicides in the world. However, this number is unreliable since a lot of crimes against women go unreported because of fear from the victims, states journalist Almudena Barragán in an article from El PaÃs.
A bag, at this point, is not only an aesthetic gift but a way to save someone’s life. So give mom an opportunity to have a superhero moment with a brand new purse!
I hope this gift guide helped you think of the perfect present for the most important women in your life and I hope it reminded you how lucky we are to be in a country where women can be relaxed, pretty and superheroes. Thank you for your time and happy Mother’s Day!
Writer’s Note: In all seriousness, there are still other places around the globe where women are being killed for the simple reason of being women. The United States has reached a point where misogyny is almost invisible, but there are still so many societal changes that we have to make in order to make it a safe place for women. Everything starts with us and our mindset. For this Mother’s Day, the biggest gift you can give is an understanding of how long the path to peace for women is.
Angela Serna-Norzagaray is an Opinion Intern for the spring 2024 quarter. She can be reached at asernano@uci.edu.
Edited by Trista Lara and Jaheem Conley.