Why women find it hard to just be
By: Peta Garside
Tags: Feminism, Growing Up, Adolescence, Gender Expression, Equality

We are told that in order to reach a final goal or checkpoint if you will, within history, we need “equal rights” and then the world will be fixed, men and women will join hands and forever rejoice in world peace while we look back and gasp at the horror of delayed voting rights and restrictive household roles.

A future we see now, to some extent, however, we have seldom achieved equality, even in its most basic sense. Women in Australia (as of May 2020) earned “$1,558.40 compared to men’s average weekly ordinary full-time earnings of $1,812.00”.

I am well aware that women tend to choose lower-paying jobs but why isn't the drive behind that decision being discussed as open and fervently as the numbers themselves? Are women inherently more maternal or are we just taught to be?

I recognise I am a young, extremely privileged white woman high on the desirability scale yet the disdain for a society that should, by eurocentric and racist standards, treat me well, seems to overwhelm my perspective I have structured on the world.

I don't get told to give up on my dreams of independence or blatantly turned away from opportunities because I am a woman, although many women do every day. I am only shoved into a corner, suffocating under the values of feminity and how I must simultaneously fit into them and reject them.

I was eight the first time I really felt different from the boys, my mixed soccer team only had two girls, me and my friend. We didn't know it then, but we felt we had to constantly prove ourselves; be tougher, stronger, faster, and better behaved, especially when the boys would have tantrums in the goals when they didn't score. it wasn't until a father, yes you read that correctly a grown man, of one of the boys made a sexist remark about me playing to my own mother, needless to say, she wasn't very happy, just deceivingly polite back, like a good woman.

We were always made to feel small and we were taught that to be accepted in our society we were never allowed to just be. We are told that we have to be kind, told that we have to be polite and more measured, then have the labels of emotional and dramatic shoved back in our faces, a hypocritical and dismissive slap in the face, and it reminds me every time that I can never win.

An amazing explanation of the struggle to fit into the male fantasy and be accepted is a monologue from the 2012 Novel, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex… Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.

2014 movie adaptation

This idea of the “cool girl” and more recently the ‘pick me’ girl is a stifling but somewhat universal phase that even I, myself have gone through. I don't, however, blame girls for thinking this way, I get it, its a survival strategy.

It is not that we hate other women or feminity, we are taught to hate it when expressing it ourselves. I'm so tired of hating myself.

The feminist movement to me is so incredibly scary because it means I must step out of my blissful ignorance and into a world where I may have to be impolite, loud, and take up space.

With the fear comes hope

The hope that I can be both feminine and masculine in energy, the hope that I might one day be able to be both seen and heard, desired and respected all at the same time, something that I have never seen come into fruition. Most importantly the hope that my opinions can be expressed without fear because yes, I am scared of being ‘too opinionated’ but you know what? if I'm going to be a ‘bitchy feminazi’ at least I’ll be a happy one.