In honor of Women’s History Month, we are challenging ourselves to go against what we were taught. This month is all about empowering other women and our internalized misogyny often goes against that. Internalized misogyny, also called internalized sexism, is defined as, “sexist behaviors and attitudes enacted by women toward themselves or other women and girls,” by Wikipedia.
These beliefs and behaviors can manifest themselves in many different ways. Think of the “Mean Girls” movies: the girls tear each other down, calling each other names and competing for attention from boys. Additionally, think of girls you were jealous of in middle school. What did you think of them or call them? Likely, you would say they’re slutty, fat or ugly. These are the easy and sexist insults to go for, the ones that you see the most when you’re young from the media and boys your age.
While I hope that we have all moved past publicly slut-shaming women, it can still be hard to stop that internal monologue gut-reaction of thinking negatively about other women. I like to think about this quote I saw on Tumblr a few years ago. It said that your first thought is what you’ve been taught to think, and your second thought is what you truly believe.
For example, if your first thought after seeing a girl dressed in revealing clothing is, “Ugh, she looks totally slutty, why does she want all this attention?” that would be your first thought that you were taught to believe. Your second thought might be something more like, “No, she looks great and should wear whatever makes her feel best, I wonder where she got that top.”
This is simplified, as it is difficult to challenge what your brain says unconsciously. By following up negative thoughts like the first one with something more positive, you can slowly change your train of thought and hear the things like the first line less. Additionally, this can help you to notice how you think about women in general. Do you assume something about a woman who is wearing makeup? Or dressed in a business suit? Because of a lack of representation of multi-faceted women in media, you likely have preconceived notions of any kind of woman you see.
Practicing this two-thought idea can help with how you think about yourself as well. If you look in the mirror and your first thought is about something you dislike about yourself, you can follow it up with a positive thought about yourself. Challenging your internalized misogyny will help you to see yourself in a more complete way, allowing you to think about what you do like about yourself and what you are good at.
If you don’t like how you look and you see commercials filled with products promising to fix those insecurities, you might think about buying those products. This means that it is very profitable for capitalism if you are insecure. Commercials and media are meant to make you feel like you’re never skinny, pretty, tan or smart enough. By challenging those created beliefs, your confidence will grow and your internalized misogyny will shrink.
Lastly, to break your internalized misogyny, you can actively bring other women up. When you have those positive thoughts about other women, tell them. Let that girl at the coffee shop know that her hair looks great today, tell the woman walking to work that she looks like a badass. By bringing up the women around you, you will begin to see them as more complete people and your community of women around you will become stronger.
It’s too easy to bring other women down like we have been taught to. In the long run, this doesn’t make us or the women around us feel any better and just makes us all feel more alone. If everyone challenges their internalized misogyny a bit each day, the culture of women would completely change and we would all feel more empowered by each other.