on being a woman

One cannot be a woman in this world and not acknowledge the terrible burden to be beautiful.

Anne Simone

The majority of this post was pieced together from a paper I wrote some months ago, and if you're interested in where these sources come from I am more than happy to dig out my works cited page from somewhere in my files.

I can tell you that this one isn't kind. It isn't about flowers and daisies and how everything will be okay, so if that's what you're expecting or what you need come back to this one another day. Really do, come back though, because this needs to be heard. This needs to be said and left on repeat until what is going on starts to change. I promise you this post will make you uncomfortable, and that's about all I can give you as a warning. Peace and blessings, xoxo— Danielle

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One afternoon while I was working the back window at a popular fast food chain a customer gazed at places other than my face while I hurriedly fumbled to count his change. “You’re sexy, you know that,” he purred. “Are you a virgin? Have you ever had a boyfriend?” he teased. I was too afraid then to argue he was a stranger, too afraid to argue for something I’d been told wasn’t justifiable, because even though uniform isn’t flattering at all as a woman in society I am still taught to believe that it is my fault for attracting that kind of man.

Another customer, as I handed him his coleslaw, said, “You would be pretty with your hair down. I like my women with long hair. It’s a shame they don’t let you have your hair down.” I would be pretty if I wanted to please him, if the chain really wanted to please their male customers they would let them wear their hair down. Forget the health codes; let’s please the men! Girls and women across the world are being subjected to the vulgar comments of men just passing through, but their comments stick, they always stay ringing and saying: you are a piece of flesh to be looked at, to be commented on by a random stranger, you are nothing more than the skin you present to the world.

Girls who some nights are afraid to walk out to their cars because that man who asked them for a blow job might be waiting to collect it, and the customer who talked to her breasts like they could type in his order might still be sitting out in the parking lot. They aren’t irrational fears, girls get raped on their way out of work, or get followed to their homes, all the time. I have friends (plural, not singular, not just one girl— women of all shapes and heights and hair colors) who have lists of comments made by absolute strangers to them that the devil brings out to play whenever they’re feeling worthless. I have a friend who was told by a boy, a child, someone she’d never met that he wanted to kill her and then fuck her, if that would be okay with her. Tell me that does not reap fear into the heart of a young teenage girl, tell me that doesn’t make every bone in your body wonder where anyone could get the audacity or privilege to say that to another human being. Having grown up in a society where being a woman is synonymous with being afraid, I’ll admit: it gets tiring having your own back while walking solo in the dark. Being on edge, being afraid get’s tiring—in and out of the dark. And the statistic that seems to get over looked is that most women are raped by people they know. Reports show that 4/5 women are raped by someone they know closely— by the people they trust to walk them home in the dark. Which basically says that because we are women we cannot trust ourselves to be alone due to the fact that we are incapable of protecting our own flesh, and we also cannot trust those we thought we could because they are incapable of controlling their flesh. Seriously, 1 in 5 rapists admit to being so sexually aroused they just couldn’t help themselves. (Laurie Penny)

Aside from my coffee addiction and piles of novels I’m reading, I’m a photographer and more often than not I’ve been shooting a girl when all of the sudden a truck drives by with a few teenage males cat-calling. A few minutes later the same truck will drive by again and whistle, only to be back a third time calling vulgar things. Men are often surprised that women don’t like this sort of appreciation. Often it is meant to boost their confidence or make them feel better about themselves. (?) However, most women have been taught to believe that if they have not already been raped, they will probably be raped. So the guy cat-calling and driving by as we shoot makes us want to cover ourselves, because after the third drive by we’re packing up our things. We’re being extra careful not to bend over too far and expose ourselves, or lean too far forward and show too much cleavage. Because who knows at what point the men who can’t control themselves reach the breaking point, who knows when the boys driving by will decide to pull over because they just cannot control themselves any longer? At what point are we supposed to start running? Or are we even supposed to run— if defiance is apparently a turn on, wouldn’t running just make it more exciting? And isn’t it our fault for being too arousing, too sexual, too provocative? At what point will female refusal not be a point that drives men further?

The most recent personal experience with males cat-calling took the form of another animal noise— barking. A friend and I were walking to her car in the parking lot of the local country club when two male teenagers in their high end polos and sleek sports car took the time to roll down their windows and emit the nicest little barks in our direction, presumably to make us giddy and put smiles on our faces as we fell asleep knowing our mere existence had made two men resort to animal noises. I don’t know why I still get surprised every time this happens but my mouth never fails to drop open and my brain never misses a: ‘did that really just happen?’ We were either to stunned to respond or responded in such a way I wouldn’t admit with my mother reading this, that part is to be left up to interpretation. Other girls when relayed the story responded with anger, but more often then not the men who heard us shook their heads at our angry rants telling us it is just a part of life. It is a painfully popular belief that catcalling is and always will be a part of life, that we, as women, ought to just grow thicker skin. Women and men alike have this idea in their heads that they are allowed to comment freely on a woman’s sexuality, whether positively or negatively, like it’s an item on a menu. They tell you whether you’re sexy or not the way they complain about their chicken being burnt or tasting just right. And cat-calling is just another outlet for that.Cat-calling is the basic beginning of degradation of a human. Cat-calling, whistling, barking, meowing— these are all animalistic actions that pull the subject of such affections down to a less than equal position. And the car that circles, is a man chasing his tail.

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I do not hate men. In fact, I love many men and I know a great deal of men who ought to have plaques or statues in their honor. But the society we live in has given men the upper hand where women are concerned, and that I do hate. A friend of mine got caught in an awkward situation with a man who was really eager to take what wasn’t his and her immediate response was, “It’s probably because my dress was so short.” I don’t know where modesty lies in the fight for women to be able to not blame or hide themselves; I don’t know where the line is between privacy and ownership. I still have a lot of questions that I haven’t gotten answered yet. But what I’m learning is that it doesn’t matter what you’re wearing or how fat or skinny you are, if you are a woman, you’re fair game. And I want to know why that makes it acceptable, why people don’t get distressed when they see it happen to women on the street. There are so many girls and women who have been raped that sit in front of me weeping, saying, “And no one believed me, and if they did: they said it was my fault.” I know girls who were kicked out of their homes because no one would take the time to see the hurt in their eyes enough to believe that they really hadn’t been asking for it, in fact they’d been drugged or forced or all of the other million ways it can happen. I know girls whose fathers raped them for years, and when it comes out, their family sits back on their heels asking: why didn’t she say anything sooner? As if it were her fault that it went on so long.

There are these stories everywhere— creaking and groaning in the hearts of girls/women who have been oppressed for so long. In the Middle East there are the women who must cover everything but their eyes, who cannot talk or have a say in their future. Those women are bought and sold as property. They cannot drive or get an education; some of them are physically harmed for getting angry when a man gropes them on the street. Some of them are physically harmed in their marriage— disbelieved by their family, until one day they see she can’t walk, until one day she’s stuck on the other side of the world and can’t even let people know her real name for fear that he’ll find her, that man who owns her. In the western world most people shrug off feminism, most people shrug off catcalling. We forget that somehow this equality thing is worth talking about, even if it is more than a little uncomfortable. We don’t ignore it because we think it isn’t worth talking about, but because “it’s just the way things were.” A lot of the boys we see cat-calling or feeling girls up when they aren’t wanted are actually solid young men looking for a future— for careers and lives and dream cars. They’re just looking for fun, and I guess that’s where the problem lies: that they need to realize that getting their fun is not ok if it is infringing on someone else’s freedom. Or essential human rights.

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There is a young girl resting in her mother’s arms, her tiny head peeking over her mother’s shoulders as they wait for their drinks next to my table in Starbucks. She gazes at me intently the way children do. Little does she know that as I gaze back I pray fervently that she will grow to be a woman who can walk where she wants at whatever time she wants without being afraid of getting molested, that she will own her femininity, that she will pay the bill on dates sometimes and not shrink from men who belittle her. I pray that she will know that being a woman is not synonymous with being less than, with being submissive, and instead presents equal opportunity to change the world as any other human being.

Her little face makes me think of the quote by Katie Makkai, "This is about my someday daughter, already stung stained with insecurity begging, 'Mom, am I pretty?' I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, "No, the word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be and no child of mine will be contained in five letters. You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing, but never just merely 'pretty’.”

That girl, a stranger I’m spending too much time thinking about, will grow up the same as all of the other girls in this country, striving to be prettier, posting countless selfies on instagram and standing in front of the mirror for hours trying with all of their might to be ten pounds skinnier or three inches taller or whatever it is the magazines will convince them to believe they need to be in order to be more desirable.

I want to take every young girl I meet who plasters her face with makeup before she even has her period and shake her saying, “Don’t buy into it. Don’t hide yourself in order to make some boy believe you’re good enough for him when you’ve always been so much more than what he’s asking you for.”

And then to the girls who like makeup regardless of what boys say I want to shake them harder and tell them, “Don’t you dare stop doing what you love because that pretty boy tells you he likes girls better without make up. Don’t stop obsessing over lipstick, because it makes you feel confident or watching makeup videos because that’s what you love.”

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Being a woman in this world means every time you leave your house you are in danger of having someone take from you what is not theirs. Being a woman in this world means that what you wear is always up for talking about, it means that your amount of makeup is always up for being commented on. It means that you will be blamed for whatever happens to you if you dress a certain way— even though the way you dress or act does not mean yes when verbally you say no. Being a woman means you won’t get hired because you might have children; it essentially means choosing between your dreams and your family, because there is a slim chance of you making it up the food chain if you have to take a break for maternity leave. It means that men will get paid more than you do, not because your employers are sexist necessarily but because they have the courage to ask for more because they feel they deserve more whereas females are less confident in their abilities. (Kay, K., & Shipman, C.)

Being a woman here and now means that you will never only be your own. It means that you will be afraid for most of your life because that is what you are taught to be. It means that you will be given extra safety sources such as mace or pepper spray or a taser because in real life you actually will probably have to use those things. It means people will tell you not to go places by yourself or walk alone in the dark, and that you need a man to go with you to make it safer.

Being a woman means that you are constantly on show, it means you will constantly be given extra clothing guidelines in order to help prevent rape when really it isn't what you are or aren't wearing that should change. It is not the womanhood at fault and it never has been. It is the socially constructed opinion that such men are at the top of the food chain, allowed to devour anything lower than their special status that makes living freely as a woman, in every sense of the word, impossible.

This is what it is to be a woman, whether we want to believe it or whether it makes you cringe or not, these are real life statistics and honest stories from girls my age and younger. The purpose of this is not to point fingers at men and say they do everything wrong, because that isn't true. This is to say that it's time we raise our heads up and open our eyes and realize what we are raising our daughters and sons into. This is for the one's who have been stuck in silence about that which has wrecked them. Sexisms and rape culture are real, raw things and they aren't funny or normal, they're desperately wrong and it is way past time that they started to change.