If you ever get a chance, listen to
Greg Laswell's version of the
Cindy Lauper classic,
"Girls just wanna have fun". Compare and contrast with the
original. I'm writing this because i read something somewhere.
Basically the whole article was on gender stereotypes, most if which i fit into. You know, the ones where girls are shopaholics and wonderful cooks; throwers of tantrums and emotional fits; the use of feminine wiles to get what they want. What bothers me about these statements is not so much that 'oh, all girls are like that' generalization, but the subtle suggestion that boys aren't allowed to be shopaholics, brilliant cooks, get
emo or use emotional blackmail. That these traits girls' exclusively and, god forbid, a boy who does these things are to be labelled
*gasp* gay. The use of the word gay here is to denote
lameness and not homosexuality.
I realize that i
shouldn't stereotype, but hell, i do. I have this
weird ideal picture of a
"real man" in my head, and it kinda fits into a super masculine,
uber gentleman stereotype. But, i accept that these stereotypes aren't always right (but not entirely wrong). That men are allowed to be weak,
emo and care about how they look without losing any masculine points or making them less than a
MAN. But enough about boys and the manly man stereotype.
Being a girl in the 21st century is hard.
Generations ago women were expected to be great wives and mothers. Period. All you had to do to be a good woman was keep your man and the kids well fed and run a decent home. If you managed it smiling than
woohoo, extra brownie points for you.
Now we're expected to keep up the good work of great grandmother's generation in addition to having a proper complete education, a great career, being a well-rounded, wholesome individual with varied interests and looking 20 years younger than our real age.
What the fuck happened? Who upped the expectations without telling us? Some people say feminist and women liberation have made it tougher for girls by putting all this pressure on us to be as good as the boys and also fulfill our unique role as women. And look fabulous doing it.
I'm not saying that the right to vote and equal opportunities is wrong- it's fantastic. It is brilliant how a girl can now be anything she wants to be and that her gender is not an issue.
The whinge is that too much is expected of girls.
Girls can't be fat, ugly or hairy. Girls have to be 'pretty', wear make-up and be nice. Who made up those fucking rules? The fact is i am miserable because i am ugly, fat (and sometimes hairy). I try to starve myself thin because i blame my social dysfunction on me being overweight. I doubt that if i were a boy, my misery due to my physical inadequacies would be this profound. I know i shouldn't be miserable just because i didn't win the genetics jackpot but it feels
wrong to be comfortable as fat, ugly ole me.
I'm too tired to think and i need to be somewhere in an hour. Yes, my treatise on the effect of feminism on the psyche of young women and their life expectations is unfortunately cut short. I need to read more to say more. For every 200 pages i read, i make one good sentence.
