ISFEMINISM FETCH

Do these girls even know who they are, or are they just another product morphed by who society tells them to be?

There are several studies that show the link between social media and a decrease in mental health. These studies show that the fewer likes a person gets when they post, the lower their self-esteem becomes. Lower self-esteem can lead to self-harm tendencies, like starving oneself or cutting. So much of who we are as people is dependent on how the world sees us through social media, especially women. Next time you’re scrolling through Instagram, like a girl’s picture that you wouldn’t normally like. Maybe it will make them smile. Women need to encourage women in order to diminish the stigma of how perfect we have to seem to everyone else, especially men.

And while we’re at it, let’s scribble down “the nice guy” in the Burn Book. Recently, there’s been a shift in perceptions of men and how they should treat women, and some behaviors that aren’t special at all are now treated as emblems of the ideal guy. I would argue that there are some behaviors and actions that should be expected of every single person, including men, such as, asking for consent, treating others with respect, and taking a hint once somebody expresses that they are not interested in you. Yet, men who do all three of these (or maybe even just one or two of these) things are idolized as “men written by women,” and are put on a pedestal. Yes, that is behavior that should be modeled and that others should follow. However, it is also the bare minimum that a man should do: anything short of that is simply behaving poorly and in ways subpar to the normal and expected.

After all, there are so many men who like to paint themselves as the “nice guy,” someone who is so different from other men, simply because he does things such as respecting another woman’s bodily autonomy when she says, “no.” These behaviors are not glorious, nor are they the pinnacle of chivalry; they are how each and every man should act and treat women, without failing to think of other ways that they can behave even better.

Furthermore, women shouldn’t feel obligated to validate men who behave in these ways. If you search, #NiceGuysBeLike, on TikTok, you’ll find countless stories of “nice guys” that behave kindly towards women, all the while expecting a romantic or sexual relationship in return. A lot of women love to show off the kind things their male partner does for them; when in reality it is something as simple as cooking a meal or taking out the trash. I, for one, had a great time scrolling through the posts under the hashtag #BareMinimumTwitter on (you guessed it!) Twitter.

Why are we idealizing the bare minimum? Long story short: don’t settle for that crap, people. Especially in your partner; they’re a partner, after all, not a child that needs positive reinforcement for achieving a task as simple as emptying the dishwasher or respecting your right to say “No” when they want to have sex.

While it’s of course important to acknowledge how far we have come as a society in regards to the rights and opportunities of women and femme-presenting people, we also have a responsibility to identify attempts made to co-opt the movement and therefore disrupt its messaging, and by extension, its mission. There is certainly not a monolith for a feminist, nor should there be a sole signifier for feminism as a whole. But the danger lies in prescribing ideas–ones motivated by culture and by our own preconceived notions–to women who are supposed to have the agency bought by social progress to choose whether or not they wish to subscribe to it. To sum it up, feminism is fetch. Inhibiting a woman’s right to choose based on individual ideas of what feminism “should” look like? So not fetch.