Funny Emails And Funny Cell Phone Forwards and a bit of Self Improvement Tips For Smart Teenagers

I had always been proud of being a girl. I went through life, being a self-proclaimed feminist and an admirer of Women’s Liberation. I applauded proudly when I came across an apparently successful woman who had struggled to overcome life’s adversities and emerged triumphant, a winner in the world’s eyes. Yes, I believed I was equal. Until I started studying gender.

At sixteen years of age, the great feminist was confused, her myths shattered. I looked at the puzzled wreck that was me and I was determined to study why and how I had gone wrong. Why I still couldn’t be equal.

I started with myself. Slowly, painfully, I unravelled the entire personality that was so gender oriented.

The greatest weakness was the need to be appreciated for my looks. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not the issue, I know that most people like to be good looking. But my idea of “good looks” was so conditioned by gendered expectations that I could not appreciate what I really had, and thought myself ugly. The stereotype of the hourglass figure and the doe eyed beauty had “got to me”, as they say. My thin frame and small eyes did not match this idea of “beauty. This led me to question the whole concept of beauty, and what is considered “good” or “bad”. This also made me think of the way I responded to compliments and criticisms about me.

That brings us to “how a girl should be” – this is one of the most infuriating aspects of being female.

We are associated with the colour pink when we are born. We are given Barbie dolls while our brothers are encouraged to play aggressive games with toy trucks and guns. If we wear our hair short or take interest in sports, we are labelled as a “tomboy”. Come to think of it, the idea is laughable after a while, and ceases to be infuriating. Just think, the difference in the quantities of a couple of hormones, sex organs and boom! The whole world goes crazy. We don’t see ourselves as human beings first. It’s always, I’m a man or I’m a woman. We become so entrapped in our expected gender roles and stereotypes that we begin to think of them as right and natural. We forget that nothing is absolute. What we see as appropriate and right might not necessarily be the ultimate way of doing things.

As I realised these things, I saw how “un-equal” I had really made myself. I saw that though many women have overcome these problems, we could really only be equal when we don’t have to fight to have careers or happy lives. Why should we have to go through all that just to get a life? That’s not fair.

The psychological control that patriarchy exerts is worth pondering about. I might never ever get raped in my lifetime, but the fear psychosis wreaks havoc in my mind every single time I’m late. I tend to avoid lonely roads and to try and get home before dark. I tend to avoid wearing particular kinds of clothes, which might label me as “available”. And yet so many salwar kamez and sari clad women are eve-teased and raped. Patriarchy controls my mind and constrains my actions. You see, how can I be equal?

The famous phrase “wine, women and song”, that indicator of life’s pleasures, really demeans half of the world’s population. I begin to wonder as I see a half naked girl in a cell phone advertisement whether we have come a long way from the time when we were all supposed to wear veils. What perturbs me is not her nakedness, but the fact that she has to be naked in order to attract people to buy a product, which has nothing to do with her being naked or otherwise. We tend to focus on issues like rape, bride burning, dowry, sati, female foeticide, etc. Agreed, these are major issues. But look beyond the façade of the success of some women and see how patriarchy constrains them, too. Until this control disappears, until the phrase “wine, women, song” is destroyed, until the fear psychosis of rape ceases to exist, until then, I will not be equal- no matter how equal I proclaim to be. Until we stop needing 8th March, I cannot be equal.

[Tags]Feminism, Confidence,  Women Rights[/Tags]