Are We Equals? (Hint: Are We Women?)

Are We Equals? (Hint: Are We Women?)

It’s funny how things come up all at once sometimes. A friend linked this yesterday.

This is where I draw the line. This is where I asks moms all over the world who are SICK OF PINK to take a stand and make it stop. I’m making it stop. I’m asking you to say no to saccharine hues of fuchsia and cotton-candy daydreams and obsessions of anything anything anything princess related, my god, my god, say no.

…And say yes to real princesses. Say yes to princesses that will kick your ass. Say yes to princesses doing good. Princesses from history. Princesses from real storybooks- you know, the stories as they were before Disney got their clammy hands all over them. Teach your daughters about Diana and Kate Middleton. Teach your daughters who Pocahontas and Mulan really were. Teach your daughters how The Little Mermaid really ends. Teach them about reality. About strength. [The Craning Gap]

I read. I cheered. I passed it on. You see, I have a daughter. She is brilliant. She is funny. She is creative and amazing and yes–she’s beautiful. And sometimes she wants to Not Care about looking pretty. She wants to look tough. Or boyish. Or carefree. She wants to wear neon green cargo capris and a baggy Adam Lambert t-shirt and not bother with make-up.

She feels like she has to explain to everyone she meets why she doesn’t look pretty (though she is just as beautiful as ever.) Sometimes she revolts against all the fucking pink. Don’t get me wrong–she likes pink. She likes purple. She just gets a little sick of it being shoved down her throat.

I’ll tell you a secret–sometimes we shop in the boys’ clothing section, because they have more choices. And, as I’ve told her many times, if you want comfortable clothes–go for boy stuff. No one making clothes for women is particularly concerned about comfort.

Today my friend linked this.

I want to live in a world where little girls are not pinkified, but where little girls who like pink are not punished for it, either. We can certainly talk about the social pressures surrounding gender roles, and the concerns that people have when they see girls and young women who appear to be forced into performances of femininity by the society around them, but let’s stop acting like they have no agency and free will. Let’s stop acting like women who choose to be feminine are somehow colluders, betraying the movement, bamboozled into thinking that they want to be feminine. Let’s stop denying women their own autonomy by telling them that their expressions of femininity are bad and wrong. [meloukhia.net]

I cheered again. My daughter does like pink, and she does like to wear a skirt fairly often, and she lives in anticipation of the day I allow her a real pair of heels. None of those should ever hold her back from anything she wants to do (except possibly marathon running IN heels.) None of those indicate her intelligence or her commitment to herself and the rest of femaledom. She can handle a wrench, people. She takes great pride in telling people she built her own bike “almost.” She can wear a damned pink shirt if she wants to.

And then–hells, and then. I was reading an article on something else and the headline “Daniel Craig in Drag” caught my eye, and I found this.

I showed it to my daughter. I told her it’s because this is what she’s up against. You know what she said?

“I can take them!”

She can, but she shouldn’t have to do it. I say we need to stand together. Our daughters, our nieces, our brilliant neighbor kids are growing up in a world that still doesn’t see their value. The more we stand together, the stronger we fight our battles, the less they have to fight. The less time they waste fighting a war that should have been over long ago, the sooner they can get on with their mighty lives.

Let’s GO, girls.

4 thoughts on “Are We Equals? (Hint: Are We Women?)”

  1. Sadly it is true. I tend to go galloping off after my causes–I care about an awful lot–but this one I don’t think about until I am trying to find a swimsuit for a curvy 12-year-old and everything is either granny or sex-kitten. Or an older co-worker tells a girl-student it’s not lady-like to raise your voice when she’s trying to not be drowned out by a boy-student.

    It’s 2011. Time for this shit to end.

  2. Sing it, sister!

    As a Canadian woman, I can vote and own property, I have equal access to education, I can’t be discriminated against due to my gender, I am guaranteed access to maternal leave, and I was raised to believe that I can have a career in anything I want–lawyer, police officer, tradesperson, soldier, astronaut. As an Ontarian, I can choose to give birth at home with a licensed midwife if I want to, and it’s covered by health care.

    But I don’t have equal pay. I don’t always feel safe when I walk down the street (when I visited Denmark and Norway ten years ago, I DID feel safe all the time, and that was amazing). If I have kids, I still have to deal with a patchwork of expensive child-care options, with long waiting lists and the occasional horror story, that present a barrier to my becoming a mother with a career. Some careers are still really, really tough for women. Some areas are still bastions of white males.

    [Warning: pro-choice comments in next paragraph]

    As an urban dweller, I can get a safe, confidential *bortion if I need one. But if I lived in a rural or remote area, that wouldn’t be true.

    [end pro-choice comments]

    If I didn’t live in a first-world country, I might not be so lucky.

    The fight’s not over yet.

  3. We’re NOT there yet–and it’s terrifying how easy it is to backslide. In Utah a woman who has a miscarriage can be investigated to make sure she didn’t…do it on purpose? I don’t even know.

    A pregnant woman in a bar in Chicago was asked to leave recently for fear she might get hurt. She was celebrating with friends, sitting in a chair and drinking water. It was not, by any account, a rowdy bar.

    In my school district, many of the administrators are women–up to a certain level. Assistant principals and elementary school principals are nearly all women. Right at the level of middle school principal, it flips, and there are slightly more men in the job. Then you go higher and it’s nearly ALL men.

    Judges in Italy claimed a woman must have consented because no one could get an unwilling woman out of a pair of jeans. A judge in Canada said a rapist wasn’t a rapist, just bad at social cues. (And she was asking for it, out in the woods with him and a few of her friends.)

    “Boys will be boys” but girls have no excuse for unladylike behavior. I could go on. And on. And on.

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