From #metoo to the Women’s March, millions of women are questioning the unwritten rules that have restricted us for so long. And that’s great, but we as women can’t upend just some of those expectations while we continue sacrificing our time, energy and money to others. We can’t selectively liberate ourselves.
So in addition to the worthy work we’re doing, let’s resist the social expectation of thinness that, BTW, male advertisers and fashion designers created to turn profits. Let’s stop following low-fat weight loss diets that literally make us stupid, destroy our bones, and disrupt our hormones. Let’s stop spending our (lower) salaries on green juices tummy tucks, all to satisfy some impossible ideal that, again, men created.
Let’s resist the pressure to “have it all,” on social media, to spend precious minutes of our lives curating and filtering every aspect of our existence on social platforms that won’t exist on five years. And when we inevitably fall short on some dimension, we waste even more energy self-flagellating because don’t “don’t stack up.”
Let’s resist the image of the woman as the sole nurturer, the caregiver. The one to plan the office party, to care for her elderly relative, her own work duties be damned. The woman as the one to sacrifice her salary, health, and sanity for the sole purpose for procreation.
Let’s keep resisting the limiting representations of women (and men!) in media, the ones planting unconscious gender biases in little boys and girls before they have a chance to grow into their identities and create change. The damsel in distress, the Mary Janes, the “one of the guys who hates other girls,” every female fantasy that male screenwriters put on screen and present as reality.
And most importantly, as women, we need resist the temptation to internalize these expectations and impose them on them on our friends, mothers, sisters, and daughters.
Lest you think I’m exaggerating or whining, consider the opportunity cost. The more time, energy, and money women spend battling these barriers and more, the fewer resources we left for the big stuff—the patriarchal policies (and presidents), the sexual abuse scandals, the systemic inequality across every work industry and country.
But biases work pretty similarly to shame; speak them into existence and they start to lose their power. So once millions of women start the conversations, and spread them to their mothers, their daughters, their sisters, friends, and male allies? Women and men can both rise above those limiting ideals, and instead shift their time and talents exclusively to the things that give them life.
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Kathleen McAuliffe 