(no subject)
I wrote a thing! Well, a bit more than a thing. See, for my sociology paper, the topic is to write on power. Now, I had a bit of trouble thinking about what exactly I wanted to write on. The school system, I thought to myself, that would make a good topic. But then I got honked at on my way home from school today and then it came to me that societal expectations for women and how it affected me would be a good one. I only meant to jot down the first two paragraphs tonight, for I have another paper due... today, yikes, but it all kind of came out in a rush. No, I won't be handing this in, but I'll likely be looking at this and stealing bits and pieces of it for my final paper at some point.
Ugh, I hope it doesn't sound overdramatic. It's midnight! Everything is dramatic! AND UNEDITED. XD
I realized my place in the world as a woman from a young age, not from the men that surrounded me, but from my own mother. I was in all a child unremarkable in appearance, scarcely different from the other rosy cheeked children who flocked around the playground around me aside from one thing that had struck me early: puberty. Puberty came with several unpleasant notions and the development of breasts seemed the least unpleasant of them all, yet that is what my mother had focused on, for they had to be covered up. I would have gathered their importance early enough on my own, however, for it was not the sort of thing that goes without notice in a small elementary school.
Doubtlessly wishing only for my safety, she took me aside the day of my dance recital and kneeled beside me though I was already rocketing upwards in height. Her eyes took in the modest swell of my breasts, then she looked back at my face, far too young for my body. Every year prior to this one, I walked to the gas station with my friends - half my size at the time, both in height and girth, something that troubled me to no end - to fetch slushies in the scorching sun before going on-stage. This year, my mother had a warning for me. She warned me of men. I did not know the nature of this warning yet, for I was too young to comprehend the notion of sexual assault, but one thing became clear at a young age: men were more powerful than women, and they were dangerous.
Though it was my mother who catalyzed this realization, the world around me did little to appease it. The movies that I watched would show a bloodied eye hanging halfway out of a man’s socket and a woman gasping her last breath, but shied away from allowing me to see something as obscene as a woman’s nipple, or a consensual couple entwined in the merest suggestion of sex. The girls of my dance school leafed through Cosmopolitan Girl (or racier still, a Cosmopolitan snatched from their mothers’ washrooms, which told these girls on the cusp of puberty how to best pose to attract men, and if that wasn’t enough, which sexual positions that would provide him the most pleasure) and soon began to parrot what they had learned. Soon, they were hiking their skirts up shorter and brought make-up bags to class. In dark blue bodysuits, these girls sat crosslegged in front of the mirrors, yanking their eyelashes upwards, smearing their lips in dark red and tracing their eyes in black, eyes that did not yet even know what a penis looked like. I stood by the side, wondering why it was they had suddenly taken an interest in this when we had commiserated for years how much we hated stage makeup and afraid of this sudden change.
High school was a learning experience. It was there I learned that my waist and hips were too thick, my appearance too plain. Running shoes and t-shirts were no longer an option for a budding girl, and those who wore it were treated with thinly veiled disdain. I could never gather where these thoughts came from, but after a year or two, I followed suit. In high school, I learned what a slut was and how it was wrong, but how it was equally as wrong to be a prude and to be plain. I learned that to be heavier than everyone else was not a physical trait, it was a personality flaw that was deserving of laughter and scorn. It appeared that there was only one right way to be a woman, which was the way to attract the same men we were warned to be afraid of. These men, who called girls who had never had the first kiss a slut without thinking about it, for that was all they could think of to call a woman. I remember how appalled I had been to be called that for the first time, by a boy with too much hair gel and mean eyes and quivering fists. All of nineteen years old, he is now the father to a two year old girl now, and I wonder now if she will ever have to hear the word spat with such venom from her father’s mouth.
I recall my first cat call well. I was walking along the highway with my two best friends at the time, those who were considered to be sluts despite their virginity. They strutted along the highway in their short white skirts, their high heels and their tank tops. Loud men in even louder cars leaned out of their windows and whooped loudly, shouting out things that made me look at the ground instead of where I was going. I knew then that they could not possibly be yelling at me and wondered how my friends could bear such humiliation until I saw them whipping their hair about and winking, twin coy smiles upon their young faces. They liked the attention, I discovered, and was even more mortified to realize that a part of me wished that I had attention too if they liked it so much.
Later on, retelling these stories, I learned that short skirts particularly coupled with thongs were not to be trusted and that such behavior was appalling and lessened your worth as a human being. What I saw around me only strengthened these ideas. Women scoffed at other women when they dressed like that, and men spouted out things such as “be careful what you ask for”. The women dressed as such on television and on movies were treated as little more than objects, and canned laughter greeted their entrance on screen with their knee high socks and short skirts and vacant gazes. We were not laughing with these sitcom women, I knew. We were laughing at them. The road down to internalized misogyny seemed to be the only road available to me at the moment, for not even the self-proclaimed feminist that I knew disagreed with these notions.
It was my mother, who had warned me against these dangerous men, who encouraged me to fit in. My pock marked face was sent to a dermatologist, crooked teeth set in metal, tubes of lip gloss pushed gently but insistently into open hands and skirts hung prettily in my closet. I cannot say that her choices were ill, for my teeth caused breathing problems, my pimples were embarrassing and painful and those skirts were enchanting to look at. The make-up, however, was a problem. I wondered why it was necessary for both my mother and my dear friends to tell me to wear make-up and after some cursory resistance, I eventually gave in. For all my hard work in the academics and my attempts to discover my own future, I dearly wanted to be what those around me strove to be: pretty. Such an innocuous little word, symbolizing so little, yet it meant the world to those around me. And yet -oh, and there was always a yet! - we were warned even further about men. E-mails circulated and women shared tips that we didn’t know the source of. Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail, for attackers will grab onto it, you must move in packs, your keys are a weapon, the lists went on and on.
Of course, I eventually began to receive cat-calls of my own, walking to the bus station or simply down the street from my first job as a hostess of a breakfast restaurant. Our uniform was a skirt, no matter what the weather, and evidently this was enough for men on the road to take notice. They called out, and this time it was certain that it was at me. It was not as pleasant an experience as my best friends had made it look every time we went walking together. Instead, I felt afraid. I shrank back by the wall of the buildings and yanked my skirt down as low as it could go, yet that never stopped the hooting. I pledged at the time to never wear skirts or shorts or outfits with cleavage ever again, but I never kept to my promises. When I told others of this, they would roll their eyes and tell me to stop bragging. Come on, they would say. It’s flattering. Weren’t you even a little bit flattered?
Today, I would tell them that no, I was not. That this hooting meant that they saw me as an object, that it was ridiculous to think that they were even appreciating me as a person. Back then, I did not know what to say, so I simply stammered my assent and resigned myself to this fate. Little did I know where I was to end up in a couple years time, only knowing strawmen (or women) feminists, and none personally. Feminist was not a dirty word, and yet that was what I was told, for they hated people holding the door open for them and did not shave their armpits (and for that, I envied them - what a chore!).
Once I learned more about feminism, I soon became appalled at my past beliefs and unspoken assumptions that what I heard was true. Now, I wonder how I could have regarded being overweight as such a sin as my parents did, I wonder how I ever let myself sink down into the depths and scoff at another’s sexual choices. With so much information at my fingertips, how did I manage to remain so ignorant?
Of course, I am not free of it now. I will go outside without any make-up at all (which my mother does not, will not and will never do), and I don’t have a problem going out clad in sweatpants. It’s but a small improvement, but an improvement nevertheless. Yet, I still find myself mentally correcting myself much of the time and wish I didn’t have to. I still wish I was skinnier, and I wish I didn’t do that either. And when I hear catcalls, I can still see my mother kneeling before me, and a part of me rages, DANGER!
Now, I look around me and wonder about my someday-daughter, if she will stand in front of the mirror and pinch at the skin of her thighs as I did, and if she will be more at home with scenes of violence than her own body. I wonder if she will be catcalled as I was, or if she will learn that there is only one right way to be a woman. I wonder if she will forget that she is intelligent or funny or kind or compassionate or just all around amazing and yearn only to be pretty.
I hope not.
Ugh, I hope it doesn't sound overdramatic. It's midnight! Everything is dramatic! AND UNEDITED. XD
I realized my place in the world as a woman from a young age, not from the men that surrounded me, but from my own mother. I was in all a child unremarkable in appearance, scarcely different from the other rosy cheeked children who flocked around the playground around me aside from one thing that had struck me early: puberty. Puberty came with several unpleasant notions and the development of breasts seemed the least unpleasant of them all, yet that is what my mother had focused on, for they had to be covered up. I would have gathered their importance early enough on my own, however, for it was not the sort of thing that goes without notice in a small elementary school.
Doubtlessly wishing only for my safety, she took me aside the day of my dance recital and kneeled beside me though I was already rocketing upwards in height. Her eyes took in the modest swell of my breasts, then she looked back at my face, far too young for my body. Every year prior to this one, I walked to the gas station with my friends - half my size at the time, both in height and girth, something that troubled me to no end - to fetch slushies in the scorching sun before going on-stage. This year, my mother had a warning for me. She warned me of men. I did not know the nature of this warning yet, for I was too young to comprehend the notion of sexual assault, but one thing became clear at a young age: men were more powerful than women, and they were dangerous.
Though it was my mother who catalyzed this realization, the world around me did little to appease it. The movies that I watched would show a bloodied eye hanging halfway out of a man’s socket and a woman gasping her last breath, but shied away from allowing me to see something as obscene as a woman’s nipple, or a consensual couple entwined in the merest suggestion of sex. The girls of my dance school leafed through Cosmopolitan Girl (or racier still, a Cosmopolitan snatched from their mothers’ washrooms, which told these girls on the cusp of puberty how to best pose to attract men, and if that wasn’t enough, which sexual positions that would provide him the most pleasure) and soon began to parrot what they had learned. Soon, they were hiking their skirts up shorter and brought make-up bags to class. In dark blue bodysuits, these girls sat crosslegged in front of the mirrors, yanking their eyelashes upwards, smearing their lips in dark red and tracing their eyes in black, eyes that did not yet even know what a penis looked like. I stood by the side, wondering why it was they had suddenly taken an interest in this when we had commiserated for years how much we hated stage makeup and afraid of this sudden change.
High school was a learning experience. It was there I learned that my waist and hips were too thick, my appearance too plain. Running shoes and t-shirts were no longer an option for a budding girl, and those who wore it were treated with thinly veiled disdain. I could never gather where these thoughts came from, but after a year or two, I followed suit. In high school, I learned what a slut was and how it was wrong, but how it was equally as wrong to be a prude and to be plain. I learned that to be heavier than everyone else was not a physical trait, it was a personality flaw that was deserving of laughter and scorn. It appeared that there was only one right way to be a woman, which was the way to attract the same men we were warned to be afraid of. These men, who called girls who had never had the first kiss a slut without thinking about it, for that was all they could think of to call a woman. I remember how appalled I had been to be called that for the first time, by a boy with too much hair gel and mean eyes and quivering fists. All of nineteen years old, he is now the father to a two year old girl now, and I wonder now if she will ever have to hear the word spat with such venom from her father’s mouth.
I recall my first cat call well. I was walking along the highway with my two best friends at the time, those who were considered to be sluts despite their virginity. They strutted along the highway in their short white skirts, their high heels and their tank tops. Loud men in even louder cars leaned out of their windows and whooped loudly, shouting out things that made me look at the ground instead of where I was going. I knew then that they could not possibly be yelling at me and wondered how my friends could bear such humiliation until I saw them whipping their hair about and winking, twin coy smiles upon their young faces. They liked the attention, I discovered, and was even more mortified to realize that a part of me wished that I had attention too if they liked it so much.
Later on, retelling these stories, I learned that short skirts particularly coupled with thongs were not to be trusted and that such behavior was appalling and lessened your worth as a human being. What I saw around me only strengthened these ideas. Women scoffed at other women when they dressed like that, and men spouted out things such as “be careful what you ask for”. The women dressed as such on television and on movies were treated as little more than objects, and canned laughter greeted their entrance on screen with their knee high socks and short skirts and vacant gazes. We were not laughing with these sitcom women, I knew. We were laughing at them. The road down to internalized misogyny seemed to be the only road available to me at the moment, for not even the self-proclaimed feminist that I knew disagreed with these notions.
It was my mother, who had warned me against these dangerous men, who encouraged me to fit in. My pock marked face was sent to a dermatologist, crooked teeth set in metal, tubes of lip gloss pushed gently but insistently into open hands and skirts hung prettily in my closet. I cannot say that her choices were ill, for my teeth caused breathing problems, my pimples were embarrassing and painful and those skirts were enchanting to look at. The make-up, however, was a problem. I wondered why it was necessary for both my mother and my dear friends to tell me to wear make-up and after some cursory resistance, I eventually gave in. For all my hard work in the academics and my attempts to discover my own future, I dearly wanted to be what those around me strove to be: pretty. Such an innocuous little word, symbolizing so little, yet it meant the world to those around me. And yet -oh, and there was always a yet! - we were warned even further about men. E-mails circulated and women shared tips that we didn’t know the source of. Don’t wear your hair in a ponytail, for attackers will grab onto it, you must move in packs, your keys are a weapon, the lists went on and on.
Of course, I eventually began to receive cat-calls of my own, walking to the bus station or simply down the street from my first job as a hostess of a breakfast restaurant. Our uniform was a skirt, no matter what the weather, and evidently this was enough for men on the road to take notice. They called out, and this time it was certain that it was at me. It was not as pleasant an experience as my best friends had made it look every time we went walking together. Instead, I felt afraid. I shrank back by the wall of the buildings and yanked my skirt down as low as it could go, yet that never stopped the hooting. I pledged at the time to never wear skirts or shorts or outfits with cleavage ever again, but I never kept to my promises. When I told others of this, they would roll their eyes and tell me to stop bragging. Come on, they would say. It’s flattering. Weren’t you even a little bit flattered?
Today, I would tell them that no, I was not. That this hooting meant that they saw me as an object, that it was ridiculous to think that they were even appreciating me as a person. Back then, I did not know what to say, so I simply stammered my assent and resigned myself to this fate. Little did I know where I was to end up in a couple years time, only knowing strawmen (or women) feminists, and none personally. Feminist was not a dirty word, and yet that was what I was told, for they hated people holding the door open for them and did not shave their armpits (and for that, I envied them - what a chore!).
Once I learned more about feminism, I soon became appalled at my past beliefs and unspoken assumptions that what I heard was true. Now, I wonder how I could have regarded being overweight as such a sin as my parents did, I wonder how I ever let myself sink down into the depths and scoff at another’s sexual choices. With so much information at my fingertips, how did I manage to remain so ignorant?
Of course, I am not free of it now. I will go outside without any make-up at all (which my mother does not, will not and will never do), and I don’t have a problem going out clad in sweatpants. It’s but a small improvement, but an improvement nevertheless. Yet, I still find myself mentally correcting myself much of the time and wish I didn’t have to. I still wish I was skinnier, and I wish I didn’t do that either. And when I hear catcalls, I can still see my mother kneeling before me, and a part of me rages, DANGER!
Now, I look around me and wonder about my someday-daughter, if she will stand in front of the mirror and pinch at the skin of her thighs as I did, and if she will be more at home with scenes of violence than her own body. I wonder if she will be catcalled as I was, or if she will learn that there is only one right way to be a woman. I wonder if she will forget that she is intelligent or funny or kind or compassionate or just all around amazing and yearn only to be pretty.
I hope not.