It’s Friday night, and you have plans to go bowling with a group of friends. After a long, stressful week of school and work, a low-key night of fun is exactly what you need. You look in the mirror; apply a second coat of lip-gloss, and head out the door, feeling cute and ready to forget about your responsibilities for a while.
When you arrive at the bowling alley, your friends greet you with smiles and laughter, but one friend looks at your mini-skirt/crop top ensemble paired with strappy wedges and scoffs, “That’s what you decided to wear bowling? Figures.” It’s just a joke, so you laugh it off, but you feel a little more self-conscious.
During the entire game, you barely hit any pins and never make a strike, but you’re having fun, despite the playful ridicule from your friends. “You’re too stiff,” someone laughs. “You look like a Barbie doll!” It’s all in good fun, so you smile and give a shrug and apologize for being “such a girl.” At the end of the night, you had fun, but you’re left hoping that they pick something you’re better at next time.
For as long as I can remember, I have been shamed for my femininity. From choosing pink bands for those awful braces in middle school to stopping at Starbucks before class in college, anything I do that has been deemed “girly” or “basic” by our society is laughable and reduces me to a walking stereotype. If I gasp at a spider, if I call something cute, my tone is instantly mocked—repeated in a high pitched, whiny caricature. It doesn’t matter if I make an intelligent comment in my literary criticism class or give a well-informed presentation in history, the second I compliment someone’s outfit or do something “ditzy,” I instantly become an airhead.
In our society, we see patterns like this on a regular basis. Girls who act “girly” are ditzy, vapid—high-maintenance. Men dream about “cool girls”: supermodel pretty, but in an effortless way; smart, but not overwhelmingly so; thin, but not a calorie-counter and totally down to get a burger anytime; virginal, but sexy; sporty, but nonthreatening. Even other women perpetuate this impossible standard, chastising girls for being “sluts” when they date around, or “bitches” when they do settle down, but dare to ask for respect from their boyfriends. A woman’s behavior is constantly monitored, judged, and ridiculed, and no girl is exempt.
Feminism has undeniably helped to call out these harmful standards in order to correct the media that perpetuates them, however, we have a long way to go. There is such a large emphasis on being “strong” and a whole slew of definitions of what exactly strength is. Unfortunately, a new persona has been created from this expectation, which is just as harmful as any other ideal. The “strong woman” keeps herself aloof, detached. She never cries, she dresses in all black, swears like a sailor, and scoffs at the poor, un-empowered women who wear makeup and buy Kate Spade purses. On one hand, girls are expected to be ideal for men—beautiful and “cool”—and on the other, they’re expected to be completely detached from femininity—the “masculine” ideal imposed on women. In both cases, being feminine or “girly” is shamed.
It’s not just explicit comments that perpetuate these ideals; it’s the implicit attitudes that surround them. If you look around, you’ll see women sitting cross-legged, raising the ends of their words like a question when talking to men, and constantly apologizing. From the time we’re young, we’re raised to be polite, ladylike—to make ourselves as small as possible. Comments like “don’t get your clothes dirty” and those “little talks” given by older women on covering up for the boys formed our identities—our habits, the way we talk—yet, as we grew up, we began receiving contradictory messages in the media.
Beautiful actresses constantly pop up on our TV screens and proudly proclaim, “I’m not like other girls,” “I’m not one of those picky girls who eats salad instead of pizza,” or “I just don’t get along with girls; they’re too much drama.” We’re told to look the part of “girl,” yet with the stereotypical interests of men; we’re supposed to be giggly and outgoing in our social lives, yet to be considered professional we must be stoic and consistently assertive. We glorify certain habits and attributes and shame anything that is different, resulting in a society full of eating disorders, negative self-image, identity confusion, girl-on-girl shaming, and the perception of women as lesser—malleable, controllable, replaceable; objects, rather than people.
I am a woman who likes the color pink and wears makeup daily; I cry when I’m scared or upset or angry, I try to be nice to others, I care about how I look. But wearing pink clothes and makeup doesn’t make me less capable, my emotions aren’t invalidated by their “girly” presentation, my kindness doesn’t make me any less strong, and my adherence to a stereotype doesn’t negate my humanity. I gasp when I see a puppy, I scream when there’s a spider in my room, and I have a floral phone case and love Lana del Rey. But none of that makes me any less intelligent, powerful, or creative. I am a girl who isn’t ashamed of being a “girl.” Femininity is not a sin, so let’s stop treating it like one. The next time you march into a bowling alley in high heels and a mini-skirt, keep your head held high, and don’t say sorry.