Can we take a moment to appreciate the beauty that is Clementine Ford’s article in today’s Sunday Life?
“It’s a double-edged sword. Despite wanting them to conform to those stereotypes, society doesn’t like girls very much. Girls are frivolous and sappy. They care too much about shoes and frills and vampires who sparkle in the sunlight. They’re manipulative and emotional, but they’re also weal, throwing, running and crying like girls.
‘Girl’ is an accusation that’s used against boys to humiliate them. And the absolute proliferation of this in sitcoms, movies, books and pop culture has resulted in 50 per cent of the world internalising the idea that not only are they somehow less than their male counterparts, they also occupy a state that’s shameful and gross.
[…] Taking up arms against the demonisation of girlhood isn’t about reclaiming our right to love lipstick or dresses or have the occasional conversation about Ryan Gosling’s bottom—although those things are perfectly fine.
The fierce determination to distance ourselves from anything perceptively ‘girly’ only furthers the stereotype that women who like ‘girly’ things are stupid and one-dimensional—and indeed that girlieness itself is stupid and one-dimensional. Some girls—like me—rejected boys’ toys entirely as children, loved pink and watched movies about high-school girls falling in love, yet they still grow up to be strident feminists. We’re all different.
I’m not ashamed of being a girl.Girls are, by turns, any number of the following: strong, infuriating, courageous, smart, weak, stupid, kind, cruel, ambition, thoughtful, vapid, charismatic, delightful and any variation on any other adjective you could possibly think of. I choose to believe this because I know that girls are every bit as complex and nuanced as boys, and they deserve to be treated as such regardless of which toys they played with as children, or if they think camping is a bit gross.”
