It’s hard to be a woman, and it’s even harder to like things as one
Two summers ago, I went to the park with my dad to teach my little brother baseball plays. Back home, my brother told the rest of the family about our afternoon and our uncle warned him, sternly, “You gotta practice more so you don’t throw like a girl.”
Since early in my life, it was clear to me that being a girl was a bad thing. People would call each other “little girls” or use the offensive version of the female genitalia to refer to each other when being cowardly or weak. Boys were encouraged to “be a man” and to “man up” but never to be anything like the opposite gender. When they would play fight, break things or be plain mean, that was just their nature because “boys will be boys.” On the other hand, girls were scrutinized and criticized just for being girls.
I was never into playing sports or doing too much physical activity, but one of my favorite things, when I was around 10 years old, was to watch video game playthroughs on YouTube. After I spent hours on my computer watching a famous YouTuber play a game, I tried to talk about it with guys in my grade who I knew played it. “You didn’t even play it, so that doesn’t count,” one of them said. “I mean, of course you didn’t play it because you’re a girl.”
One would think that things are different now, in this day and age, but according to the host of the podcast “Good Bro Bad Bro,” Jack Denmo, it seems women today don’t do much with their free time either. In one of the episodes, Denmo sits with his co-host and poses the question, “How many girls do you know actually have hobbies?” to which his friend responds, “Like, some girls, they knit, or they read or something like that.”
Anyone can notice the pattern in all these examples. If a girl reads too much, she’s a nerd. If she likes to do her makeup, she’s vain. If she likes sports or video games, she is seeking boys’ attention. It doesn’t matter if your thing is hiking up mountains or learning all the decimals of pi, if you’re a girl, it’s wrong.
The root of the issue is misogyny, but the connotation “girl” carries is also a result of gendering hobbies and likes. Faiza Altaf writes in her article in the InStepp Blog she believes the labeling of interests as masculine and feminine sets “a precedent that excludes people.” We limit everyone’s ambitions by putting them into one of two boxes, forcing them to fit a binary. Even worse, in an attempt to encourage certain activities, we bring down others. Like when a father prohibits his son from playing Barbies with his sisters and tells him to go kick a ball.
This is an issue because it is embedded in our society, and it becomes clear when we look at the amount of discouragement and discrimination that women face when liking and pursuing “masculine” interests.
This June marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX, the law that bans sex-based discrimination in schools or education programs that receive federal funding. Amid the anniversary, the NCAA report showed rising participation opportunities for women in college athletics, but a stark difference in funding: Men’s sports received more than double in allocated resources, according to NPR.
This discrimination is the reason so many women are discouraged and pushed away from careers in STEM. Legal scholar Joan C. Williams writes an article about her research for UC Hastings Law regarding the biases that push women out of STEM. According to Williams, the five main biases are that women need to repeatedly prove their competence, they can’t be too feminine that they seem incompetent or too masculine that they are dislikeable, they are pushed out of the workforce once they become mothers, they are often competing against other women in the field for the “woman’s spot” and they feel the need to isolate from their co-workers to maintain authority and respect.
We don’t have to go that far to see the problem. We just have to walk into a gym, try out for a local sports team or just tell someone we like Formula 1.
When I like something, I am passionate about it. Recently, I have become infatuated with F1 because of watching the Netflix show “Formula 1: Drive to Survive.” My friends liked it too, so I rushed to tell them about my new interest, and unsurprisingly, I was received with cynicism. “How can you say you like Lewis Hamilton? You don’t even know the name of his teammate,” one of them said. (I didn’t know his name at the moment but in my defense, George Russell is not that fun of a guy.) There was the same reaction, and suddenly, I didn’t want to like F1 anymore because I felt I didn’t like it enough, as if I wasn’t worthy of it.
The issue is not about the majority or minority either because the ratio of women to men in the world is almost 50:50. As of 2021, about 50.42% of the world population was male and 49.38% was female, according to Statistics Times. We are almost evenly divided by sex in the world, and yet, men hold powerful positions because they are considered “masculine.”
In sports, we admire LeBron James, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lewis Hamilton. In business, we aspire to be Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos. In politics, we look up to Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Donald Trump. Whereas we love women who cook, like Martha Stewart; the ones who model, like Alessandra Ambrosio; the ones who create internet drama and reality TV, like Kim Kardashian; and the ones who serve as the peak of femininity, like Marilyn Monroe. The moment a woman tries to cross the line between these feminine interests and the powerful areas dominated by men, we are shut down, attacked and shamed back into our corner.
However, the one thing this binary separation of likes and hobbies does not account for is female stubbornness. It doesn’t matter that they were pushed away from a passion, some of the best people in these “masculine” fields are women. Like Michelle Obama, who has become a figure of her own in fighting for equality and justice in the U.S. Like Serena Williams, who holds 23 grand slam singles titles and four Olympic gold medals. Like Mary Barra, who was the first female CEO of a “Big Three” automaker, General Motors, and has an estimated net worth of $194 million. No matter the criticism or the backlash, in every male-dominated, gate-kept, interest and field, there is at least one woman doing everything in her power to become the best.
After all, I still like Formula 1; although, I switched my favorite driver to Charles Leclerc after watching his success this season. More guys might tell me I don’t like it the right way, but I like it my way, and that’s what matters. Just like, regardless of what my uncle said to him, all that mattered to my brother was that the person who taught him to throw the best pitches was his mom.