As you probably know if you’ve talked with me recently, I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant with a girl child. I spend a lot of time thinking about what she’ll be like, and how I want her life to be, and how she’ll negotiate the world around her. And thinking about all of this makes me feel panicked.
Because society hates young women.
I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill misogyny of the “all women are whores” variety, though that’s certainly a problem. I’m talking about a specific brand of hatred focused solely on young, generally attractive females. This hatred manifests itself through three basic concepts which are propagated rampantly. I will discuss below.
1) Young women are stupid, frivolous and silly.
I am ashamed to admit that I’ve been guilty of propagating this myself. My husband has shameful taste in music and I have said – more than once – that his taste is like a “thirteen year old girl’s”. I have since mended my ways, but society has not.
Think about it. Anything that is popular among young women immediately becomes an object of scorn, simply because young women like it. I call this the “Justin Bieber Effect”. Now, to be fair, I’m not familiar with Justin Beiber’s oeuvre, but I have heard him sing, and he does have a nice (thought not particularly masculine) voice, and a genuine talent for singing. His music is certainly not worse than many other pop singers – but these other pop singers do not receive the mass hatred that Justin Beiber does. So why do people hate Justin Beiber, but not Pop Singer X? Because little girls like him, and therefore he is representative of all that is vapid, inane and silly.
I’m not saying Justin Beiber has a lot of depth to his music. I’m saying ALL pop music is vapid and silly, and singling out Justin Beiber is unfair, and is based solely upon the fact that young women like him, a lot.
Recently, I read an Onion article stating something like “Yahoo Saved By Acquiring the Blogs of 13 Year Old Girls”. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was sort of funny. But the sentiments behind it are sort of fucked up. The idea is that 13 year old girls are not capable of caring about, much less writing about, important issues or anything weighty. The idea is that the blogs of teenaged girls are full of trite nonsense and idiocy. Now, that may be true a lot of the time. But it is not always true. And when it is true, it is usually because the girls simply don’t have the life experience required to give their writing depth – it doesn’t mean that they’re stupid or shallow.
If my daughter was a teenager and was writing her feelings and thoughts in a blog, I would stab anyone in the face who dared to insinuate that she was shallow and stupid, simply because her blog isn’t about starving Somalians or crafting for Jesus or whatever people think is worthy of a blog nowadays.
2) Young Women Are Immoral
This is a big one, and far more serious than the notion that young women are silly and stupid.
In Southern California, there is a popular radio program on in the mornings called “Kevin and Bean”. When I first moved to California, I was told to listen to it, because it’s “so funny”. Like, everyone in the OC has a total boner for this show. So I gave it a listen – I gave it a shot for a full two weeks, and then I shut it off forever. Here’s why.
Kevin and “Bean” are two old men who spend their mornings saying cruel, judgmental and not particularly funny things about young women. When I first moved here, those women were Britney Spears and Paris Hilton mostly, but there were many other young women discussed. The entire show was devoted to bashing young women – seriously. The entire show. Every day. And their judgments typically focused on one of four things:
A) Young women drink and behave scandalously.
B) Young women have sex, which makes them whores.
C) Young women wear slutty clothes.
D) Young women are stupid and make bad decisions.
People down here love this show. They love it.
Another example of what I mean is the “Teen Mom” phenomenon. If you have never seen the show, it is a “reality show” that follows the lives of teenaged mothers. Now, we all know that being a teenaged parent is difficult, and is certainly not an ideal situation for anyone involved. But if you ever want to feel sick to your stomach, go on the internet and read some of the comments about these poor girls. Actually, don’t. Just take my word for it. It’s awful. Suffice it to say, the commenters all obviously have perfect morals and the teen moms are just worthless sluts who don’t care about their children or anything at all, because they –
A) Drink and behave scandalously.
B) Have sex before marriage, as teenagers, which makes them whores.
C) Wear trashy clothes/have ugly hair, etc.
D) Are stupid and make bad decisions.
Look, I’m not saying these girls do make good decisions all the time. I’m not saying they’re perfect. I’m saying that the level of vitriol spewed at them is completely over the top, and is rooted in some backwards and unrealistic notions of how young women “should be”.
Now of course, my daughter will not become pregnant until she’s good and ready, because I am putting her on birth control as soon as she gets her first period. (Ask me why, if you like, and I’ll explain. But it’s a topic for another blog.) But if she WERE to get pregnant, I would hope that people would judge her as they themselves would like to be judged. Did you have sex before marriage, when you were in high school? OF COURSE YOU DID. Did you ever have a drink too many, and do something stupid? OF COURSE YOU DID. Have you ever made a mistake as a parent? OF COURSE. You aren’t better than the teen moms. You might say “Well I was smart enough to use birth control” but so what? That doesn’t make you morally superior, it just makes you a better planner.
3) A young woman is only a worthy person if she adheres to standards of sexual “purity”.
I can remember being told as a young girl to cover my body in modest clothing to avoid rape. The people who told me this weren’t trying to make me feel bad, nor were they actively misogynistic. That’s just the way they themselves were raised, and it’s the way people thought then. Things are changing a bit now, but unfortunately, the notion still remains that a woman can prevent being raped if she dresses and behaves chastely. The implication being that if she doesn’t dress or behave chastely, she wants to be raped. Obviously. The other implication is extremely insulting to men, in that it insinuates that men’s default setting is “rapist” and they simply can’t control themselves if they see a little exposed skin.
An extreme version of this is seen in societies that require the burqa. The idea being that a woman’s “purity” is so important that it must be protected at all costs. We all remember that school that burned down, and all the girls inside died, because they were forced to stay inside because they weren’t “properly” covered. Better to die than show a little skin.
I once knew a girl who’s parents told her that they’d rather see her dead than lose her “chastity”. That happened in the USA.
This all stems from the messed up notion that women are responsible for restraining men’s sexual urges. Do men have powerful sex drives? Yep. Is that our problem, as women? Nope.
But if you ask some men, it IS women’s responsibility to keep men’s sex drives restrained. They seem to believe that women are conspiring with their penises against their wills to get them in trouble. It’s not MEN’S fault that they have sexual impulses that are intrusive and nagging. It’s the fault of the WOMEN for being so sexy. Yep.
I once heard this quote to illustrate why a it’s a woman’s responsibility to maintain purity. “A key that can unlock any lock is a very good key. But a lock that can be unlocked by any key is a terrible lock.” Aside from the fact that humans are not locks and keys, this quote is stupid for another reason. It insinuates that the entire purpose of a woman is to keep penises out of her, and the entire purpose of a man is to stick his penis into women. That’s it. That’s all we are.
Here’s another stupid “purity” quote. “Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?” The meaning of course being that a man will not want to marry a woman who has sex with him before marriage. The implication is that the only reason for a man to marry a woman is because he wants to have sex with her. Sex is a TERRIBLE reason to get married, first of all. Second, A WOMAN HAS VALUE OUTSIDE OF HER ABILITY TO HAVE SEX WITH A MAN or “milk” as it’s euphemistically called. You marry a woman because she will be a good life partner for you – someone who will help you out through thick and thin, someone who complements your personality, etc. You don’t marry a woman for her vagina alone, unless you want a miserable marriage.
So why is “purity” so important to so many? Well first of all, back in the days before birth control, sex was the ability to create life, which IS a pretty big deal. Having heterosexual sex outside the bonds of marriage was actually a dangerous activity, because it created children who did not have families to care for them. So a woman who had casual, recreational sex was making a very, very bad decision. That’s why so many religions prohibited sex outside of marriage – it wasn’t because sex is “bad” or “dirty” – it’s because back in the day it created bastards, and was thus bad for society. In those days, it was unacceptable for a woman to be a single mother, and she would be shunned from society, as would her unfortunate offspring.
Nowadays, of course, as long as a woman is on birth control, sex outside of marriage is not problematic. I’m not advocating promiscuity – obviously promiscuous sex increases the risk of STDs, and can often carry with it emotional baggage. I’m saying that birth control has eliminated the major problem caused by premarital sex. I’m saying that the notion that a woman must be virginal in order to be “worthy” or “good” or “right with God” is absurd. It’s a notion that is rooted in patriarchal, pre-birth control values, and male resentment over female power.
Because young women don’t have a lot of power. They don’t have wealth, or political power, or physical strength. What they do have is their beauty and sexuality. But beauty and sexuality are not to be sniffed at – their power is quite real. Like I read in some book, “beauty is power like money is power like a gun is power”.
Many men don’t like that. They don’t like that a pretty girl can get them to do things that they normally would not do. They don’t like that a pretty girl can control ANY aspect of their behavior, so afraid are they of being “whipped”. So what can be done? Should men learn how to gain mastery of themselves? Nope. Young, pretty women need to cover their bodies. They need to keep their legs closed and stop being sluts and whores.
And woe to the girls who don’t fall in line. The girls who wear makeup and clothes that accentuate their sexuality and who care about their appearance will be called “shallow” and “stupid” and “slutty”. The girls who have sex will be called “tramps”. The girls who drink will be called “wild” and “irresponsible”. They will all be called stupid and silly. They will all be hated.
I will never tell my daughter that she is responsible for the sexual behavior of boys and men she encounters. I will never tell her that she is responsible for any behavior other than her own. I will not fill her head with outdated notions of what is is to be a “good girl”. I will encourage her to wait to have sex until she is psychologically ready for the emotions that come along with a sexual relationship, but I will never give her the impression that if she does have sex she is somehow “ruined” or “bad”. If she gets drunk and makes an idiot of herself in a bar somewhere, I’m not going to harp on it – the embarrassment is its own punishment, as we all know. If she wants to wear a miniskirt, that’s her own fucking business, and anyone who has a problem with it can take it up with me. A young woman should be proud of her beauty, and should have fun flaunting it while she can, before she’s old and it’s not cute anymore.
But heck, who knows? I could have a son, and all of this worry will be for naught. His blog will be praised, because he’s obviously a budding genius of exceptional sensitivity – after all, it takes courage for a young man to express his emotions like that. And if my son has sex or gets drunk, you know – boys will be boys.
Like an Astronaut, but Braver 