Nothing is more terrifying than being born a woman.
That's a strange way to look at something as simple and seemingly irrelevant as your gender, but gender changes everything about your life: your clothing, your expectations, your obligations--a simple walk down the street is terrifying for a woman: every man you meet is a stranger or a potential sex offender, even if you logically know it's impossible for all men to be so 2-Dimemsional. That's sounds like a hyperbole--it sounds like I'm full of myself . You'll probably imagine me as either a less-than-average-looking or "ugly" person staring into a funhouse mirror to explain my arrogance, and I really hope that's the case, because if not I'm even more scared.
It doesn't help that women are societally trained to be insecure with impossible expectations, or that nothing else but what's emphasized in advertisements are appreciated--not by our culture. Not by the glaring eye of the media.
To put this into perspective, children TV shows--cartoons--are largely constructed to appeal to boys, because it's assumed boys won't watch girl shows, but girls will watch boy shows. All of girls toys advertise beauty products and glorify nothing else: essentially, you learn to measure your self-worth via your looks.
We have very serious problems in our society, many of them with Catch-22 natures, and not one of them is more abundant than misogyny. Some lovely creators at Vemo managed to explain everything ever argued against culture's aggressions in eight minutes in a video called Missrepresentation.
There's really not much of anything I can personally add onto this video, spare my own frustrations at kicking and screaming against the prevailing nature against the "anything-other-than-'pretty' girl" (particularly the "smart girl" for me). The "smart girls" aren't the ones asked out to prom. They're not the desired ones. They're not even celebrated. I was always labeled the "smart one", and was damn proud of it until I realized it would socially get me nowhere--or at least nowhere in the way I thought I was supposed to be going. I can't explain why I never gave that "fact" a second thought and kept on my "smart girl" ways, but I'm glad as hell I did. The more the "truth" was reveled to me, the angrier I got, the louder I became. I became so loud I physically lost the ability to control my volume when given attention. In fact, I've grown to unknowingly demand attention (according to teachers, one of which actually told me he assumed I was only ever introverted in the womb).
And once your resolutions are set around being outspoken--even if they'll never ask you out, they'll know your name, and they'll never mess with you considering your "reputation"--there will still be those around you whom chose to ignore what's burning your heart: "It's too deep for me", "You're always saying things I don't understand", "Honey, we're eating dinner! Quit talking our ears off!", "You're so weird!"
"You're so weird!"
For all those in need of a lifeline: Don't give up. Man or woman, don't give up. Even when they're going to eat you alive if you don't change, don't give in! You're just as important as anyone else in the room, and you can command the stage better than anyone else there--even when another person's trying to usurp the role of "most influential", laugh it off and turn up the volume.
And though I keep this mentality close to heart, there were always moments where I felt inadequate. There will probably always be moments where I feel inadequate. In where abandoning myself (or this current version of myself) in favor of feeling the sun was something someone built in their shed for me.
And there's still a large part of me that wishes to go back and make this post gender-neutral. Yet I know I can't. Not without defeating the purpose at least.
Whatever you're doing now--even if you're just trying to get to the end of this sentence, watch the video now!
That's a strange way to look at something as simple and seemingly irrelevant as your gender, but gender changes everything about your life: your clothing, your expectations, your obligations--a simple walk down the street is terrifying for a woman: every man you meet is a stranger or a potential sex offender, even if you logically know it's impossible for all men to be so 2-Dimemsional. That's sounds like a hyperbole--it sounds like I'm full of myself . You'll probably imagine me as either a less-than-average-looking or "ugly" person staring into a funhouse mirror to explain my arrogance, and I really hope that's the case, because if not I'm even more scared.
It doesn't help that women are societally trained to be insecure with impossible expectations, or that nothing else but what's emphasized in advertisements are appreciated--not by our culture. Not by the glaring eye of the media.
To put this into perspective, children TV shows--cartoons--are largely constructed to appeal to boys, because it's assumed boys won't watch girl shows, but girls will watch boy shows. All of girls toys advertise beauty products and glorify nothing else: essentially, you learn to measure your self-worth via your looks.
We have very serious problems in our society, many of them with Catch-22 natures, and not one of them is more abundant than misogyny. Some lovely creators at Vemo managed to explain everything ever argued against culture's aggressions in eight minutes in a video called Missrepresentation.
There's really not much of anything I can personally add onto this video, spare my own frustrations at kicking and screaming against the prevailing nature against the "anything-other-than-'pretty' girl" (particularly the "smart girl" for me). The "smart girls" aren't the ones asked out to prom. They're not the desired ones. They're not even celebrated. I was always labeled the "smart one", and was damn proud of it until I realized it would socially get me nowhere--or at least nowhere in the way I thought I was supposed to be going. I can't explain why I never gave that "fact" a second thought and kept on my "smart girl" ways, but I'm glad as hell I did. The more the "truth" was reveled to me, the angrier I got, the louder I became. I became so loud I physically lost the ability to control my volume when given attention. In fact, I've grown to unknowingly demand attention (according to teachers, one of which actually told me he assumed I was only ever introverted in the womb).
And once your resolutions are set around being outspoken--even if they'll never ask you out, they'll know your name, and they'll never mess with you considering your "reputation"--there will still be those around you whom chose to ignore what's burning your heart: "It's too deep for me", "You're always saying things I don't understand", "Honey, we're eating dinner! Quit talking our ears off!", "You're so weird!"
"You're so weird!"
For all those in need of a lifeline: Don't give up. Man or woman, don't give up. Even when they're going to eat you alive if you don't change, don't give in! You're just as important as anyone else in the room, and you can command the stage better than anyone else there--even when another person's trying to usurp the role of "most influential", laugh it off and turn up the volume.
And though I keep this mentality close to heart, there were always moments where I felt inadequate. There will probably always be moments where I feel inadequate. In where abandoning myself (or this current version of myself) in favor of feeling the sun was something someone built in their shed for me.
And there's still a large part of me that wishes to go back and make this post gender-neutral. Yet I know I can't. Not without defeating the purpose at least.
Whatever you're doing now--even if you're just trying to get to the end of this sentence, watch the video now!
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