"Ew. Why don’t you shave your underarms and legs?!” people always ask me with commotion. I respond with “why should I?” and get the same reply every time: “because you are a girl...”. I noticed that people never quite question why it is wrong for women to show masculinity, or even for men to show femininity. By not shaving, women display the masculinity that only a man “should” possess in this society. However, men and women are both feminine and masculine, so what is the point of covering up what is naturally there?
People often don’t realize that they sacrifice their humanity when they conform to such societal standards. Society expects a man to be hard-core; strong and unemotional, while a woman can be as emotional as she likes, and try her best to look feminine. Men and women both posses humanity, but society separated the womanly and manly traits amongst people’s humanities so that only one role pertains to one gender. But taking away what naturally exists, through selection of gender roles, is quite systematic. It’s like making the idea of preferred gender roles into a mathematical function- for every input there is one output. Yet, women and men are not functions; they are human beings. Society dehumanizes men and women through isolation, thereby turning them into single-purpose beings as if they are functions of life.
Throughout history, women have always been praised for their beauty and their usefulness around the house. Women are made out to be fragile decorations that don’t need a purpose in life aside from being pretty. Likewise, men have a strictly particular role as well. They live as the fierce upper hand to provide for and to protect women. Furthermore, women already have a purpose, without having to gain one like men. Human beings are not a bunch of mathematical functions trying to have one gender role apply to their humanity.
gender role apply to their humanity. So then why does society make it out to be this way? It’s funny how diversity plays such a huge role in our nation and yet the diversity of gender has not been fully dispersed in society from what I’ve learned and observed.
So, what exactly is so mortifying and shocking about hair being on a womans body? Hair exists on the human body for a reason. But the way with which society has defined beauty, has shown to be so relevant in peoples’ eyes, that the hairy nature of a person is criticized if they are a female. Likewise, society deters men from embracing many of the emotional qualities women posses due to the stereotypes regarding gender roles. For example when I attend gym class, girls are expected to do less work than boys, they are also not always evaluated to the same critical degree when emotions are involved. This tells me that society views femininity to be weak in physical and mental aspects. The way in which society regards such presumptions is through commercialism and propaganda, belittling many women.
Consequently, when connecting the past to the present, society sets up limits and expectations for women which ultimately shape their lifestyles. In the past, such restrictions of humanity wore out the strength within women, as propaganda and stereotypes started to surface in mainstream society. For instance, women began consuming a chalky dietary substance called metrecal, rather than eating supplementary food. They did this to shrink in size and appear to be parallel to the figures of thin young models. As commercials and propagandas about women’s weight were becoming more popular, it troubled women so much that they found themselves eating chalk for the portrayal of a “pleasant figure”.In 1939 the results of this chalk caused women to become 3 to 4 sizes smaller (Friedan). It is this kind of propaganda about women, that restricted them from being themselves. Quite similarly, today’s young female teenagers that I see, some at school, some on shows, some on the streets, reflect similar lethal habits as those of women throughout history. A lot of women today as in the past, starve themselves to fit society’s perfect image of a woman.
An Unfortunate Equation.
A high school view on femninism by Kristi Bezhani.