EARLIER TODAY, my father told me that my forehead acne made me look dirty. About a few weeks ago, my mother also told me that it was my responsibility as a lady to wear “more appropriate” clothes to be respected.
My parents have been criticizing my physical appearance for as long as I could remember. Every time I called their comments hurtful and sexist, they argued that I should just feel grateful to have caring parents instead of being too emotional. I never understood this claim since they were able to nurture my two brothers just fine without being overly critical of their looks. It wasn’t long before I realized that I merely had to fulfill two obligations as the only daughter in my family: To be pretty and to be silent.
If I was scolded for not being ladylike enough at home, I was called a slut for being too feminine in high school. I noticed that female adolescents who liked conventionally girlish things such as make-up or mini skirts were shunned by fellow women for being “easy.” Meanwhile, my male friends would pride themselves as advocates of women’s rights, going on and on about how they wanted to date a “strong woman” unafraid of making the first move without being “desperate enough” to actually do so.
I honestly wasn’t at all surprised that some people acted this way, as we were conditioned to normalize subtle forms of sexism not only at home, but in school as well. I’ve heard plenty of stories about educational institutions enforcing stricter dress codes for female students specifically. They are taught that certain outfits are distracting to boys despite numerous studies disproving that modest clothing prevents rape. Furthermore, due to a lack of transparency from school administrations, students still turn to social media to discuss their personal experiences with faculty members’ inappropriate and predatory behavior.
Beyond the educational sphere, women are also sexually objectified in the media for the pleasure of heterosexual male audiences. There are supposedly more empowering depictions of females nowadays, but these portrayals promote internalized misogyny and commodified feminism, therefore excluding women of colored communities and lower socioeconomic classes from the conversation.
In spite of the problems I mentioned above, we still claim to have built a progressive and gender inclusive society. Our current views on women’s rights have greatly improved with the approval of the Safe Spaces Act and the Expanded Maternity Leave Law, but we have a long way to go. Although laws like these are meant to empower and protect women, they can only do so much in a societal system that is designed to be patriarchal and capitalist at its very core.
With this, we are clearly in dire need of systemic reform. I believe that directly targeting the system is the best way to address the discrimination and violence against women—from tolerance of sexist microaggressions to complete dismissal of female autonomy. Indeed, the personal is definitely political.
