Lad vs Lady
a girl meant I couldn’t dress comfortably or play
should be worried past our 20’s if we haven’t
with my friends? This was the beginning of my
managed to rope down a guy just incase a flat
never-ending battle against gender stereotypes.
pack wardrobe appears and we can’t handle the DIY alone or worse what if we don’t give birth?!
This stereotyping of genders continued into my
This portrayal of women as feeble and dependent
teens, with a lot of new rules and validations
is incredibly damaging, leading strong, indepen-
of identity that I still don’t quite understand.
dent women to be scrutinized and attacked for
Suddenly, I was in a world where women MUST
being able to live their own lives freely. Even
be thin, beautiful, sexy and quiet. The ideal
in lesbian couples, there is ridiculous pressure
image of beauty is splashed onto magazines
for one of the couple to be the more dominant,
and newspapers. When a woman is in control
and therefore male figure in the relationship.
of her sexuality and has many partners happily,
And even when this pressure succeeds, they’ll
she’s seen as negatively sexually promiscuous
still be labeled some new stereotype of ‘butch’,
and they are labeled with ‘Slut’. When a woman
and will be expected to have tattoos, a cropped
gains a few pounds, which is natural and com-
haircut and a whole lot of flannel shirts. And in
pletely healthy as we grow older, she’s labeled as
gay couples alike, society expects one of them
‘Fat.’ Or ‘Ugly.’ This kind of bullying of women
to be the more submissive and therefore female
out side of the ‘perfect woman’ image is incred-
role in the relationship. And this person will be
ibly unhealthy, leading young women and girls
expected to love musicals and theatre, flower
everywhere to hate themselves and their bodies
arranging and drink ‘girly’ drinks like Appletinis.
just because they don’t fit the media’s portrayal
It seems the media and society itself can’t handle
of ‘beauty.’ What happens to the girls who aren’t
the thought of a woman being able to take care
the high-cheekbone-blonde-haired-clear-skinned-
of herself or even more ghastly, being able to
big-breasted-beauty that is portrayed everywhere
take care of both herself and her partner. And
we look? It is insane how tiny that bracket of
the thought of happy relationships outside of the
perfection is, and how we try to squeeze roughly
‘hetero’ bracket must try mirror their image of
3 billion + women into the same small category
perfect love as closely as possible, even at the de-
of ‘beauty’ instead of creating for ourselves our
struction of a person’s true identity and feelings.
own ideas of what beauty really is, and is it even actually important, not just following the me-
And women are not alone in this horrible stereo-
dia’s ridiculous portrayal of women.
typing war against real life and perfect imagery. Men, as a result of needing to be the stronger
We are also told we are ‘the weaker sex.’ We
sex, are under horrible pressure to come out on
are led to believe through TV shows and movies
top, no matter what. They will receive abuse as
that we need a man in our lives to handle all the
kids for showing interest in ‘feminine’ things,
bills that of course a woman wouldn’t be smart
such as dresses or dolls or playing ‘House’ with
enough to figure out. We are led to believe we
the girls. I remember another story from when I
151