Lauren Northcote is a Year 11 student and blogger from Darwin, Australia. She wrote the following guest post about gender equality for Country to Canberra.
In rose pink, taffeta dresses and elegant bows, I was told I was pretty, well dressed, with quiet manners. This was well-suited perhaps, if only for the reason, that it was to set the very tone for the rest of my life.
I soon learnt to cross my legs, not to shout and to filter my words before they rolled off my tongue. I was no longer the sanguine girl who spoke her mind, discouraged by constant criticisms of being bossy and boisterous for taking the reins.
Instead I learnt to smile, be polite, placid and pretty. I discarded the idea of being prime minister. After all, girls were for nurturing and boys were for leading. I learnt to accept, on a daily basis, flippant compliments like, “You are gorgeous,” which had nothing to do with me as a person, and everything to do with the DNA on the card that I happened to receive in the genetic lottery.
As an adolescent it was not the first blood that announced that I had entered womanhood. Instead it was the constant and palpable weight of the male gaze. It was the crude leers from men who unashamedly whistled and called out, “Hey sexy” as I was jogging, barely thirteen years old. It was my mother scolding my unintentional cleavage and being sent home from school for showing my shoulders. I learnt that my body was shameful; that a man’s thoughts and actions were my responsibility and that my body was primarily a sexual object in need of covering.It was not long before this message was internalized. I longed to be the women posing in lingerie selling products from cars to couches. I began to see myself as a sum of my body parts, believing that that I was my body and that my body defined me.
Gradually I discovered that these imposed standards were comically paradoxical, impossible by nature and that this age of ‘equality’ was not really equality at all.
With information came knowledge, and with knowledge came empowerment. Now I know that there is so much to be done to address such gendered injustices if women are to be truly equal.
We need to silence the use of sexist slurs, which are dividing and damaging. We need to stop blaming victims for incidences sexual violence or street harassment. We should be demanding that women and men are on an equal playing field in the workplace. We should be refusing to accept the media’s ridicule of women in power and the over-sexualisation of women’s bodies to the point of dehumanization should not be tolerated. Both men and women need to start the tricky conversations and lead by example. Only then will we see a cultural shift in attitudes towards women.
And now…
In whatever I choose to wear, I know that I am confident, well-informed and empowered. This is well-suited, perhaps, for the reason that, it is to set the very tone for the rest of my life.
For more of Lauren’s work, check out her blog: ingenueme.wordpress.com
