It’s 2016, and women today enjoy much more freedom than they did less than a century ago. We’re able to hold jobs that were once dominated by men, wear pants instead of skirts, be any shape or size, go out with friends without a chaperone, and even propose instead of be proposed to. Those used to be exclusively for men. And now we women have access to them. Now we do them. We have nothing to complain about, right?
Wrong. I’ll skip over the whole we get paid less, obvious favour of the patriarchy, etc. You’ve heard it a million times before, will a million times more, and trust me, enough people are bringing the still persistent gender inequality to light. Instead, I’m going to focus on how society’s “freedom” is only skin-deep. Meaning? Yes, we can do these things. No one’s physically stopping us. No one has any legal right to say No, you can’t wear those shorts. But freedom is also freedom from judgment, from being shamed. And we don’t seem to be able to get that.
It seems that nothing women do is acceptable. You like flower crowns? Too hipster. You like punk-rock or metal? Be more lady-like. You like staying at home? You can’t accept society’s stereotype, get out of there! You like partying? You must be some kind of slut. Are you a little round or overweight? Go on a diet. Are you too thin? Anorexic. You like fashion? Are you some shallow airhead? You like science? NERD.
The list goes on and on. Girls just can’t do anything right. I mean, even when we’re being harassed, we’re the ones to blame. These are our new chains. We’re expected to conform to a certain image, and when we reach that, we’re expected to be the opposite—in other words, we’re constantly held to double standards.
For the other girls reading this, you feel it too, don’t you? For the boys—I’m sure you’ve noticed, even a little. She’s either a prude or a whore. A dumb follower or a try-hard. Too insecure or too proud. There is no balance. There is only one wrong, and another wrong.
And the thing about it is: after a while of enduring that kind of shame, that kind of degradation, and you start believing it. Enough being told your choices are mistakes, and you start thinking you are the mistake. You start forgetting to do things for you, and not for the world around you. In this culture, women learn to feel alone, and not good enough for anything, and in some cases, depressed. Women learn to hate their bodies, their passions, learn to bottle them up and to change themselves to fit society’s unrealistic ideal.
It’s almost identical to the way women were treated before the 1920s—worse, even. At least at that time, as long as women adhered to the standards of the culture, they were accepted, or sometimes, praised. Today, there is almost no acceptance at all, and yet, we are still fed the same lie: we are free to be who we want.
This can’t be true. The way we dress is criticized, the way we eat is criticized, the way we feel is criticized, the way we walk or talk, the places we go, the things we love. And when one of us is driven so far as to suicide? Strangers and loved ones alike murmur about how she was beautiful, too young, and the world was cruel for forcing her into a mold she didn’t need to fit in, despite the fact that it was they who made the mold, they who forced her into it—they who shoved and shoved and shoved, until she broke in her attempts to be what they told her she ought to be.
We need to stop thinking about how people—not just women—should be. We need to stop holding them to impossible ideals, stop holding them to a “balance” that’s impossible for any human to reach. We need to see people, and see them as they are. We need to accept them. And maybe, one day we won’t be divided by races, genders, or any of the things we’ve grown to use as reasons to be separate. Maybe one day, we’ll just all be people, with our own beliefs and loves and rights.