I don’t demonize trends. I, like many other teenage girls, bought Uggs and spent a ridiculous $8 to see The Fault in Our Stars, among other “common girl” things.
I don’t demonize Twitter trends either. Oftentimes they can be hilarious, and sometimes they even bring to light important issues going on in current events that many young people wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise.
If you’ve scrolled through Twitter within the last few weeks, you may have stumbled upon tweets with the hashtag “YesAllWomen,” which usually accompanied some sort of message about either gender inequality or “girl power.”
Being a strong feminist myself, I was thrilled to see this development, although at the same time, I was disheartened and sad.
This trend did not just appear spontaneously; it was a reaction to the disturbing actions and manifesto of Elliot Rodger, who murdered five people in a spree killing before taking his own life, and was quoted to have said that if women had just done what they were supposed to do, which was to satisfy men, specifically him, then the killings would never have happened.
There are two negative aspects to current issues, such as this one, being turned into Twitter trends: 1. The message gets twisted and 2. It’s a trend, so it does what all trends do – it disappears.
If I chose any #YesAllWomen tweet, some of the responses made me want to cry. They were thoughtless, ignorant, and even cruel. This wasn’t the late 1900s wave of feminism, when feminists were characterized as “man-hating, bra burning, ugly, and fraught with ‘penis envy.’” Not only that, but there were ridiculous uses of the hashtag, such as a picture of a girl in a bikini with the caption “#YesAllWomen should do squats.” It was sadly ironic that a hashtag meant to promote gender equality and women’s rights was being used to objectify women and focus on women’s appearance.
#YesAllWomen went on strong for around two weeks, which is a decent amount of time for a trend, but it lagged behind more “funny” trends, such as #ThisCouldBeUsButYouPlayin or #RelationshipGoals. It was a trend, and as a trend it began to fade. The worst part of this particular trend fading was that it showed the blatant bandwagon-ing of so many young women. Alongside tweets promoting women in leadership and tearing down rape culture/slut shaming, there were tweets such as “I don’t need to do well on my finals as long as my husband does well on his,” or “If you’re a woman and you don’t know how to cook and clean, you need to reevaluate your life.” I found this incredibly disheartening, and I was only further disappointed when a week later, a freshman girl made a mistake on social media with a picture she posted, and everyone suddenly had a strong opinion on “self-respect” and began to demonize her for her actions. The hypocrisy was astounding as many of these girls ranting about “self-respect” posted numerous pictures of themselves in bathing suits and I was confused at how one type of picture was deemed “okay” and another was deemed “slutty.”
I had really hoped, somewhat naively, that a trend like #YesAllWomen would make a difference in how girls and women viewed themselves and each other. However, as I saw Twitter regress back to its old slut-shaming mean, I realized that many took the trend as just what it was: a trend. While it was popular, it was “cool” to support women’s rights and equality, but when it “got boring,” it was forgotten and the idea of women’s rights was put on the back burner once again.
I would never want to discourage the further pioneering of the cause of women’s rights, which is something too often ignored because it’s not “as bad” of an issue in the United States as it is in other countries, where women are still regarded as property and it’s dangerous to attempt to gain an education as a woman. With every cause, there must be action. Typing 140 characters and using the #YesAllWomen hashtag when it’s considered a “trend” and then going on to slut shame other girls or women does nothing but make a negative impact.
So I urge you, whether you regard yourself as a feminist or not, to understand that women’s rights is not a #trend; it is a real issue that still has quite a ways to go around the world. I also urge to understand that it can be other girls and women that perpetuate rape culture and slut-shaming more often than men do. I urge you to allow social media to open your eyes to the problem, but I also urge you to not let your action stop there, to let that be only a springboard, and not the end of the road, because #YesAllWomen should take action and demand equality.