expre-ssion - Tumblr blog

expre-ssion · 3 years ago

Text

OFFICIAL MANUSCRIPT

Unfortunately, due to time constraints and overall book constraints, the most cost efficient way for me to have delivered a book that truly emphasized what I wanted to showcase led me to using an existing text—or rather, transcript—instead.

Disclaimer: The following text is rightfully belongs to Sarah Z. It does not belong to me. All credits to Sarah Z.

[a head] CONTENTS

2. Introduction x

3. The “NLOG” x

4. What is the “NLOG” x

5. Basically, it’s Misogyny x

6. Actually, It’s Misogyny, But… x

[a head] Introduction

“Not Like Other Girls” refers to the viral phrase that circulated around the internet particularly on websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumbly and free meme imageboard websites such as 9GAG and iFunny most especially from the late 2000s to the mid 2010s where social media had begun to dominate the world. It was most spread across fan pages that sought to bring out experiences for girls that were “uncommon”, but later on devolved to alternative meaning that led to mocking the average “quirky, nerdy and different” girl in society.

The most common reason for this is attributed to internalized misogyny. The phrase refers to the idea of young girls being raised in an environment that forces them to reject or abhor femininity—and putting women against each other for indulging in what society views as traditionally feminine. This refers to hobbies such as shopping, putting on makeup, indulging in self care or talking about romantic experiences.

However, I believe the problem is much more complex than that.

Sarah Z is an online influencer and youtuber who reviews and studies internet culture and media. She, alongside other youtubers such as Tiffany Ferg, Kurtis Connor, Jordan Theresa and the Book Leo have all commented on the viral internet meme while dissecting it as a whole. Sarah Z introduces another take that goes beyond the attribute of internalized misogyny, which she highlights in her video, “Not like Other Girls”. She also brings in a new argument that adds an extra layer to the phenomenon regarding gender conformity.

[a head] What does “Not Like Other Girls” even mean?

Have you ever noticed how to some people, the worst thing you can be is “like other girls”? Whether it’s comparisons to rotten apples, being called derogatory terms based on one’s clothing and hair, or having assumptions made about your character and intelligence because of how you dress, there’s a significant backlash, largely by young women, against other women who look or dress in traditionally feminine ways or primarily enjoy popular TV and music.

This often takes the form of phrases like “I’m not like other girls,” comics that compare an archetypical antagonist embodying femininity and conformity to our usually “alternative” protagonists, and videos on social media emphasizing how special and unusual it is to be a girl who isn’t girly.

Almost as soon as this phenomenon began to take hold, the backlash against it exploded. There exist entire internet groups exclusively designed to make fun of women who claim they’re “Not Like Other Girls”, or, NLOGs for short. One of such groups, r/notliketheothergirls on Reddit,

[caption] Internet social media service “Reddit” and the r/notlikeothergirls as of 2022.

has a little under half a million subscribers, where Facebook groups calling women who act this way “pick me”s reach around twenty thousand. It’s also been discussed a couple times on YouTube, with creators like Tiffany Ferg and Kurtis Conner offering their own analysis as to why it’s bad and why it’s common.

In particular, a lot of this backlash tends to come from women who are classified as “other girls”. No one enjoys feeling like they’re being shamed for enjoying parties or pop music, and many people feel as though NLOGs are simply pitting women against one another. One Odyssey think piece by writer Kelsey Dilling called the phrase “I’m not like other girls” sexist, citing the idea that it imposes an artificial binary on women which fuels the notion that women should be shamed for choosing to look or dress in a certain way.

This phenomenon is a particularly interesting one to examine largely because a lot of us have been on both sides of the NLOG trend at different points in our lives. Many girls have at some point gone through a phase of hating this archetypal idea of “other girls” and eschewing anything feminine, and getting over this hatred is often considered a signifier of having grown up. On the other hand, even though many of us used to be NLOGs to a certain degree, I find there’s a pretty tangible lack of empathy towards them, and a lack of cohesive, agreed-upon reasons as to why this phenomenon is so popular in the first place.

I mean, we’re not seeing a mass occurrence of teenage boys claiming there’s something wrong with “other guys” and actively striving to be as little like “other guys” as possible. Arguably the closest thing to this is the “chad vs virgin” meme, which in its popular usage, is typically making fun of this dichotomy instead of really reinforcing it.

[caption] The “Chad Stride vs Virgin Walk” internet meme which is plays on the stereotypes for men and how they walk. Originally first posted on the website 4chan, creating the internet joke under the label of “virgin memes”.

The people who do take it seriously tend to belong to a very specific subculture of redpillers and incels, and this doesn't seem to be a mass phenomenon across a huge number of young boys same way the NLOG phenomenon exists for young girls.

So what’s up with that? Why is this such a specific and gendered phenomenon? And are the people claiming they’re “not like other girls” deserving of widespread hatred and mockery, or do they have a point?

Well, let’s look a little deeper.

[a head] What is a NLOG?

[caption] A meme by former tumblr user “macabre-delirium” which went viral in the early 2010s.

No two “NLOGs” are exactly the same, as there are multitudinous ways to be “not like other girls”. One might highlight her preference for the darker things in life, her outdoorsiness, her distaste for makeup and health food, or her enjoyment of creativity and reading. It’s difficult to group women who are “not like other girls” into any one specific social category, although some people have certainly tried.

Rather, the common thread tying all of these posts and comments together isn’t about any unique identity that the NLOG has. The central focus of these posts isn't really on what they are, but what they are not. So what we really shouldn’t be asking isn’t, “Who are the NLOGs”. It’s “who are the Other Girls”? Indeed, while what NLOGs are tends to vary by subculture, the universal image of what she isn’t tends to be pretty consistent.

That’s The Other Girl, and regardless of whether you’re a hunter who loves camo and mud, an alternative girl who loves Billie Eilish and chokers, or a girl who would rather read Harry Potter than go to a club, these posts seek to define you in opposition to the Other Girl.

[caption] A meme by former tumblr user “kidechi”.

The idea of the Other Girl isn’t particularly new, and it hasn’t significantly evolved over time besides some slight aesthetic changes as to what it means to be popular. We see the Other Girl in all kinds of popular media; she’s typically blonde, thin, popular, beautiful, dressed in expensive and revealing clothing, primarily enjoys mainstream movies and music, and is often implied to be sexually active, with negative connotations attached to that activity. Take this passage from literary classic My Immortal, which provides a key representation of the quintessential Other Girl.

[Quote] “We all went outside the Great Hal and looked in from a widow. A fucking prep called Britney from Griffindoor was standing next to us. She was wearing a pink mini and a Hilary Duff t-shirt so we put up our middle fingers at her.”

[Definition] My Immortal is a Harry Potter fanfiction infamous due to its poorly written structure and the author’s personal life making direct effects into the story, creating a convoluted narrative.

The Other Girl is also represented as an archetype in a good number of movies and TV shows, typically as antagonists. If you grew up in the 90s and 2000s, you’d typically find yourself hating Cecilia from Aquamarine, Regina from Mean Girls, Taylor from She’s All That, or Amanda from Addams Family Values. They’re bad because they’re mean and rich, but also because they’re popular, vapid, and fundamentally shallower people than our multifaceted protagonists, who are often valued for their wit and lack of conformity to cultural norms.

When these representations translate to other cultural contexts, like this meme about celebrating Eid, the aesthetic of the Other Girl changes slightly, but the central idea, that she’s popular and beautiful while you’re an authentic human, persists. Not all comics and posts that seek to distinguish between Other Girls and Real Girls actively include negative value judgments towards the Other Girl, although most do. Some mostly serve to highlight the protagonist’s awkwardness compared to the flawless beauty of the Other Girl. Even here, though, the comics seem to impart a level of authenticity upon their protagonists that isn’t awarded to the rest of society. While they’re generically pretty, our protagonists are real, relatable humans.

[caption] A meme by former tumblr user “macabre-delirium” which went viral in the early 2010s.

And this lack of authenticity is really a common thread of criticism against Other Girls.

Take this image here, where all of the girls are dressed the exact same, are all more interested in makeup and revealing clothes than intellectual pursuits, and don’t seem to be capable of any individual, rational thought. Conversely, our protagonist prefers to read and wear modest clothing. She’s a fully fledged human who is actually capable of thinking for herself, an “error” in a society that values conformity. Unlike “other girls”, who are mindless drones, she’s a real, authentic human.

Keep in mind, these comics and posts aren’t just about people positioning themselves in opposition to one attractive, vapid woman. This woman is an archetype who’s supposed to represent virtually all of female society besides our protagonist. They’re insipid and unoriginal. I’m unique. I’m not like them. Unsurprisingly enough, the idea that this archetypical Other Girl even exists at all has come under a lot of fire. Like, sure, she has blonde hair and likes parties and makeup and Taylor Swift, but why does that also somehow mean she’s a bad person or incapable of deep, rational thought? Indeed, this concept tends to rely on a lot of false binaries when distinguishing between the protagonists and Other Girls. You can either be an independent human who likes reading and hoodies, or a vapid Other Girl who likes lipstick and miniskirts. The idea that you could be both is never really something brought up or addressed; thus, the implication is that our protagonist is the only woman capable of deep thought and empathy.

Indeed, this Other Girl isn’t a real human being. She’s a strawman embodying everything the author hates about society. So, the Other Girl generally represents mainstream society’s idealized image of what an attractive, desirable person looks like, that’s then applied to other women in general. There’s also this portrayal of these women as very vapid and unintelligent people, as opposed to our multifaceted and intelligent protagonists. But once again, why does this phenomenon seem to almost exclusively exist within women? It’s not like there are no cultural ideas of what an acceptably attractive man looks like. But broadly speaking, we’re not typically seeing men who prefer listening to Blackbear over partying to Drake feel the need to excessively draw comics implying Other Guys are dumb and shallow and they’re theonly multifaceted guys in the world. So why is that?

Well, let’s look at the first argument; basically, It’s Misogyny.

[a head] Basically, It’s Misogyny

Hey girls. What if the “Other Girl” is Good, Actually? What if the main reason NLOGs don’t like Other Girls is because society is fundamentally misogynistic? This is the thesis of a lot of arguments discussing NLOGs, including that of a very good video by YouTuber Tiffany Ferg on the issue. Basically, she argues that we’re taught from a very young age to hate all things typically associated with women - nail polish, pink clothing, and anything else traditionally feminine- and deride it as stupid or unimportant.

Consequently, we associate those negative descriptors with women who prefer traditionally feminine things as well, which is why we have such a hard time believing women can be both intelligent and feminine and why Elle Woods is the greatest film protagonist of all time for using her knowledge of hair perms to catch a murderer. Growing up in a society that often makes fun of women for “girliness” might lead us to believe that women are lesser, which we might apply both to ourselves and to other women. This is typically called “internalized misogyny”, which is a controversial term but I’m gonna use it anyway cause I’m feeling bold.

According to this approach, our dislike for women is reinforced in a few ways. One of those is popular media. We’re from a young age inundated with female protagonists who are notable for being the standouts in a group of Other Girls. It’s all over, especially in coming-of-age movies. A female protagonist, and possibly a couple of her friends, are intelligent and empathetic people, whereas every other girl in the story is the stereotype of an Other Girl, with little to no capacity for inner depth. Through her own positive characteristics, which are portrayed as more or less unique to her, she manages to overcome her circumstances, show up all the Other Girls, and occasionally find romance. With the advent of feminist lingo increasingly finding its way into our collective consciousness, there are a lot more movies these days that actively try to disrupt this, and present the Other Girl as someone with a lot of inner depth. But for most of us who still didn’t grow up onthis type of movie, we’re still socialized by the other stuff.

“You’re not like other girls” has been a compliment from men in romance movies and books for ages, and in-universe, it’s typically considered to be a very high compliment. I have never seen a woman in a movie respond to that with “okay, well, what’s wrong with other girls? Why do you think so poorly of my whole gender that being as little like a girl as possible is a high compliment”? Just once, I wanna see that.

But alas: internalized misogyny.

[b head] Internalized Misogyny

When you see and absorb these messages from a young age, it’s easy to be tacitly taught that girls, on the whole, are bad, and that not being like them is desirable. It’s thus unsurprising that some women react to this lesson by trying very hard to distance themselves from other women. When the TV and movie representation of Other Girls is generally as shallow, unlikable people, while our female protagonists are portrayed as unique in their depth and intelligence, it makes sense that a lot of young girls are going to start to believe they are the only girl out there with intelligence and depth.

That would also serve to explain why this is a phase a lot of women grow out of as they get older. While we never fully stop being susceptible to media messages, once our worldview becomes shaped a lot more by the people we interact with than by what coming of age movies tell us other women are like, we can gain a much more accurate and fair understanding of how our peers actually work.

The fact that romance tends to factor into a lot of this media is also particularly interesting. Generally speaking, when love is involved in this kind of media, our protagonists tend to be praised by men for their lack of traditional femininity, which some might argue can kind of teach us to hate on femininity and other women for male approval. And the idea that NLOGs are primarily seeking to distinguish themselves from Other Women so that men will like them or see them as cool is a really prevalent one.

I already talked a bit about groups on Facebook and Reddit designed to make fun of NLOGs, but also notable about this is the fact that many of these groups specifically allude to the fact that NLOGs are primarily seeking out approval from men. We have Facebook groups like “imagine being such a pick me ass bitch”, who primarily criticize, in their words, “women who degrade, humiliate, and shame other women in an attempt to get picked”.

[caption] An satirical piece by Instagram artist @yudoridori.

“Get picked” tends to mean being romantically desired by a man, although this can also more broadly mean wanting to be seen as “cool” or “one of the guys” by men. There are also groups with names like “your shipment of male approval is on its way”, which are common to invoke in response to women deriding other women; once again, the implication is that NLOGs are doing so explicitly to have men approve of them.

I think overall, this is the most popular perception as to where the NLOG phenomenon comes from, and it’s definitely the one that gets talked about the most. Part of that, I think, comes from the fact that there is some truth to it. We do grow up with media representations of girls who are extremely shallow, feminine, and unintelligent being people we should mock, and while it’s not like films that celebrate women in all their forms don’t exist, it’s still a prevalent enough problem that it definitely shaped many of our perceptions of what women were like when we were younger.

However, I’m not entirely convinced that the primary reason the NLOG phenomenon exists is because women with internalized misogyny are trying to get “picked” by men. To be honest, and, no offense to the guys in my audience, but to me this just feels like it’s further reinforcing the idea that no matter how a woman acts, she's doing it to impress a man.

I mean, when we have prominent cultural figures asserting that the only reason a woman wouldwear makeup or high heels at work is to attract men, while we simultaneously have people claiming the only reason a woman would aggressively reject makeup or high heels is to attract men, it kind of makes you wonder whether people think we have any agency at all. And the idea that just because a woman is doing something shitty, it must be because she wants to have men approve of her just furthers the notion that men are the central factor in all of the decisions we make. While that might be why some women choose to vocally distance themselves from Other Girls, I don’t think this is broadly true.

[b head] Ignorant Experiences

I have a horrible confession to make to you guys: from when I was about 14 to maybe 15 and a half, I considered myself an anti-feminist. I pulled away from it about a year before Gamergate happened mostly because I realized most of what I was getting outraged about was carefully designed to make me angry and didn’t represent the bulk of what feminism actually was. I only followed “anti-social justice warriors”, most of whom claimed to be leftists who thought “social justice warriors were making us all look ridiculous” so the only real representations of feminism I ever saw were the worst of this movement, carefully curated by those people. I would see TERFs who claimed all trans women were evil colonizers, people claiming air conditioners were sexist, and people saying they straight up didn’t care about men’s problems and only wanted supremacy. Now, in retrospect, obviously much of what I saw was either made up or taken out of context, and of the stuff that was true, it turns out you can hate TERFs while still believing in the tenets of intersectional feminism. But at the time, this is what I thought feminism was.

And when I did venture into tags like “anti feminist women”, I would see a lot of posts essentially claiming that any woman who didn’t call herself a feminist was only doing so to make men like her. And at that time, that pissed me off so much.

Like, you want to further the idea that women have autonomy, but you’re saying women can’t form independent beliefs without trying to impress a man? Who’s the real sexist here? Now, obviously in retrospect, I was the real sexist here, but the idea that women’s primary motivations for what they do have to center around trying to impress guys is still a kind of shitty one, which at least in my experience, wasn’t true, and being told that was why I had my beliefs was one of the reasons I didn’t realize sooner that I was being a massive dingus.

So why else might women end up being NLOGs? And is the idea of the quintessential NLOG just as flawed as the idea of the quintessential Other Girl?

Well… it’s complicated.

[a head] Actually, It’s Misogyny, But…

I think the idea that the main reason women might seek to distance themselves from more feminine women is internalized misogyny has some validity. But I think it also goes down a little too easy for my taste. It’s easy as to see a woman loudly and actively declare, “I’m Not Like You” and conclude that the problem is endemic to her.

She’s experiencing internalized misogyny. She’s infected with the same sickness society as a whole has, and she’s in the wrong for shaming us for doing what we like. It’s not… entirely wrong, but it’s overly simplistic and doesn’t permit any introspection on our part.

For one thing, I think it’s worth taking a look at which women feel the need to claim they’re not like other women and push themselves away from feminine things.

Let’s look back at that tweet that asserts growing up means getting over your unnecessary hatred of pink. Sure, some of that comes from the fact that women in movies who wear a lot of pink are portrayed as objects of our mockery. But for those of us who had NLOG tendencies when we were younger, try to think back to what your relationship with pink clothing was like as a kid. For a lot of people, pink clothing, pink school supplies, pink birthday parties, and pink toys were pushed on us like nobody’s business. As you grow up, there’s a lot less active pressure to dress like a Disney princess all the time, but for a lot of young girls who grew up having long hair and pink clothes and Barbies foisted upon them with no alternative, there was something powerful in rejecting that.

Now, a child saying “I hate pink because pink is dumb” is not necessarily going to be the most articulate about her feelings, but for a lot of people, that hatred of feminine things didn’t explicitly come from the notion that Feminine Things Is Bad so much as from the notion that Feminine Is What You Must Be. Of course, those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, but I think it’s fair to say there’s quite a bit more pressure in society for little girls to be feminine than for little girls to not be feminine. As a result, it makes sense that you’re going to have a lot of people react by rejecting that pressure as vocally as they’re able, even if they aren’t always the most articulate and #woke about it.

Like, yeah, women who Aren’t Like Other Girls can be really shitty to women who like keeping their hair long and painting their nails and wearing makeup, but this characterization that Hating Feminine Things explicitly means you always have internalized misogyny misses out on a big part of the picture, and that’s that there’s a real pressure for many women to conform to society’s mold of femininity.

Of course, “society’s mold of femininity” for grown-ass women doesn’t look like frills and pink and Disney princesses, which is why it’s a lot easier to not vocally hate those things when you’re 25 as opposed to when you’re 8. But there’s still a pressure to look effortlessly beautiful, to wear makeup just enough that people can’t tell you’re wearing makeup, to have your hair done just right so it looks like you woke up looking perfect, to be perfectly smooth while never alluding to having to dedicate any time to it lest you look high maintenance.

In effect, that means there exists a pressure to be the effortlessly beautiful Other Girl.

This is reinforced both systemically and on a personal level. For one, there’s real evidence to suggest that women who wear makeup in the workplace and are perceived as “attractive” are paid more and are treated better than women who don’t do this. This isn’t universal in all jobs; you’re probably not going to get a promotion for wearing heels on the jobas a female welder.

But societal pressure for women not to appear overly masculine is a real thing, and it absolutely hurts women who want to cut their hair or not shave their legs or go makeup-free. Certainly, a lot of that pressure comes from society on the whole being misogynistic, but many women can and do reinforce those pressures on each other as well. The idea that you can apply this dynamic of oppression where less feminine women are somehow the oppressors of more feminine women doesn’t really hold up.

That doesn’t mean women are never bullied for being “too feminine” and “too pretty”.

If you bully someone, you are a bad person. But a lot of the conversations surrounding NLOGs are too quick to frame it automatically as less feminine women always bullying more feminine women, which just doesn’t reflect a lot of situations. People are quick to apply the term “internalized misogyny” to a woman scoffing at another woman for wearing heels, but the term “internalized misogyny” doesn’t really get to refer to women bullying other women for being lesbians, or disabled, or trans, or not feminine enough.

A lot of the time, when an NLOG says “I’m Not Like You”, it’s because she’s been told repeatedly by her peers, “You’re Not Like Us”. And while, yes, the stereotype of the airheaded dumb blonde mean Other Girl is just that- a stereotype- there absolutely do exist girls who exclude and bully other girls on the basis of how they look and how they dress, and it makes sense that many people, especially many young people, who have been severely bullied and socially excluded from Other Girls, are not going to have the most favourable view of Being Like Those Other Girls.

In effect, when “misogyny” in this context is used more for a hatred of femininity than of women, that can equate “being a woman’” with “being feminine”. And that can really screw over women who don’t conform to gender roles in a variety of ways by implying they’re somehow privileged or that their desire not to be feminine is a result of the hatred of women.

Of course, that doesn’t mean a girl who says “ugh, all the girls in my school are so stupid and airheaded and I’m the only one who’s smart and reads books” is in the right. That’s still an exceptionally narrow view to take on other women, and it still re-enforces the idea that you have to somehow choose between being a multifaceted human being and looking a certain way. But a lot of people do act and feel this way because they feel bullied and socially excluded- and while that doesn’t excuse someone implying everyone in their gender but them is bad, it does mean we should broaden our scope in terms of who we criticize and why. I also think it’s worth mentioning that creating this stereotype of the evil, less feminine woman who universalizes all other women as silly and trivial misses out on part of the picture. And that’s that implying women are dumb and only care about boys and makeup and aren’t capable of rational thought is 100% not unique to women.

Guys do it too, and we don’t have specific negative labels we ascribe only to guys for implying women are bad and dumb. Take this whole meme about guys vs girls in the locker room. Generally the framing is that girls are busy gossiping and talking about frivolous things, while guys are being quirky! Look how unique the boys are, guys! They’re so quirky!

In addition, we also have people making fun of women on the basis of how they dress andwhat music they listen to- AKA the whole problem with NLOGs in the first place- under the guise of “Making fun of NLOGS”- even when they haven’t said or done anything to imply that about themselves. See: memes like this, that make fun of girls who…. uh, wear chokers and say they have a mental illness and listen to the Arctic Monkeys! See, if she smokes and dyes her hair and listens to Billie Eilish, that's bad! We don’t like girls who do that! This is a thing many girls do! But not me. I don’t do that. I don’t listen to Billie Eilish and wear thigh-highs.

Because I'm not like other girls.

In effect, what happens is that in our attempt to criticize women who mock and shame other women, we’ve just created another archetype of women who it’s okay to make fun of. And in doing so, we’ve created a really specific image of the type of person who shames women and is bad. Which means we’ve completely ignored the fact that a) many “feminine” women also bully and shame less “feminine” women, and b) many men also bully and shame both more and less feminine women, and in both those cases, that’s not the behaviour we’re focusing on. Instead, we're focusing all our energy on criticizing the archetypical NLOG.

[a head] Summary

The whole phenomenon of women loudly and aggressively insisting they’re “not like other girls” is a really complicated one that happens in a variety of ways and in a variety of contexts. We’ve constructed this archetypical idea of what an Other Girl is, and she often gets mocked and treated as a representation of what all women are like. Attempts to explain why this happens range from “those women are taught femininity is bad” to “those women are trying to attract men” to a combination of those reasons. And, certainly, insisting all girls but yourself are bad is a really shitty thing to do. It essentially implies your whole gender is lesser, and ends up shaming women for harmless traits like enjoying certain music and certain styles of dress. If you talk about other women like this, that is bad and you should stop.

That being said, while we’ve created this persona of a quintessential Other Girl to mock, we’ve also created this persona of a quintessential Not Like Other Girls Girl to mock, and that’s not better. In effect, that leads to us deciding that because some women who shame other women possess certain traits, like dying their hair or wearing thigh highs, it is now acceptable and okay to mock women who have those traits.

This is harmful for a few reasons. For one, it frames the bulk of women making fun of other women as NLOGs shaming Other Girls, even though a lot of this bullying actually happens the other way around, and is a motivating factor for girls to distance themselves from other girls in the first place. “Some women who dress like this bully other women sometimes, so it’s moral to make fun of all women who dress like this” is bad logic whether you’re talking about the girl in wears combat boots or the girl in kitten heels. It also obfuscates the fact that there are many men do this to women too, and effectively creates a socially acceptable type of girl to mock under the guise of feminism. When there are men who make fun of women for being too girly, and there are also men who make fun of women for trying too hard to be quirky, it’s not great that the only face of “people who make fun of women for how they act and dress” is another woman.

Of course, many women do bully other women, for a variety of reasons, and we also shouldn’t pretend it’s only men doing it either. On the whole, we just need to be more not shitty in terms of how we treat each other. Part of that means we need to move away from the societal pressuresthat reinforce the idea that there’s only one way to look or dress, and that rejecting that perspective means there’s something wrong with you as an individual.

We also need to take a broader outlook in terms of understanding why large groups of people all feel a certain way, instead of just assuming they’re inherently bad as individuals. When there’sa massive gendered phenomenon of women seeking to distance themselves from other women in a way that doesn’t really exist for men, we shouldn't and can't stop short at assuming it’s just because women are somehow naturally predisposed to hate each other. Usually when this degree of hatred for one another is happening, it’s because someone benefits from it. Even just something as simple as “we push little girls into playing with aggressively pink toys and boys into playing with aggressively blue toys” tends to happen because someone’s making money off of it. And they don’t want us to leave these made-up roles and social pressures because not pushing one another into spending hundreds of dollars on makeup designed to make it look like they’re not wearing makeup doesn’t make them a billion dollars.

I watched a movie from Norway the other day called Blind, about an author who loses her sight and begins to stay in her apartment all the time. As she isolates herself from the rest of the world, she becomes more and more paranoid as time goes on that her husband doesn’t care for her any more, and she begins to imagine these complex scenarios about what’s going on away from her. She quickly begins to lose hold on what is and isn’t real; at times we don’t even know. It gets really complex and really cool very quickly, and I won’t spoil it, but in effect, it’s about the harms of isolation and the necessity of connecting with others, and the whole time I was watching it, I was just thinking about how when we’re young girls who feel socially isolated from our peers, the ideas we construct of what their social lives must be like are so warped to the extent that we think we’re the onlypeople in the world with real feelings.

We need to fight that, and we need to understand that there are entire industries predicatedon pressuring us to look and be certain ways. Our kindness to one another and to ourselves is a necessary antidote. Starting from a place of love for one another isn’t ever going to be universal, because there are some people who are going to be dicks no matter what. And you’re not going to dismantle every harmful social force in the world through kindness. But you also can’t dismantle every harmful social force in the world without kindness, and it’s a necessary starting point for treating one another with respect.

[a head] References

Sarah Z. (2019, November 1). "I'm Not Like Other Girls" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNCWW80WTPY&t=1068s

Ah, shit, here we go again [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491313-boys-locker-room

ASSAULT VECHILE ACQUIRED. [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491314-boys-locker-room

At least here… [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491308-boys-locker-room

People whomstved watched kingsmen [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491309-boys-locker-room

Please ignore the girl [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1494859-boys-locker-room

*Rip and Tear plays* [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491315-boys-locker-room

Hmmmmm [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491318-boys-locker-room

Both at the same time [Digital Image]. (2019). Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1642622-boys-locker-room

Objective: survive [Digital Image]. (2019) Retrieved from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491324-boys-locker-room

After PE: [Digital Image]. (2019). https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1491317-boys-locker-room

Ellis, A. (2018) OmG I'm NoT LyKe OtHeR GirLz!!! [Artwork]. https://www.instagram.com/p/BnByiJLgYcb/?hl=en

Geerts, P. (2018) Going Out [Artwork]. https://www.instagram.com/p/BokAf8NngI8/?hl=en

Kidechi. Me & Girl [Artwork]. n.a

Yudoridori. The perpetual loop of other girls within me [Artwork]. https://www.instagram.com/p/BbxDfYwhTLe/?hl=en

Macabre-delirium. I guess I just don’t fit in [Artwork]. https://heritageposts.tumblr.com/post/634700593763696640/macabre-delirium-i-guess-i-just-dont-fit-in

Macabre-delirium. Being somewhere wondering… [Artwork]. n.a.

#cm pataka #process

0 notes