Hey, Uninformed Dudes! Here's What It's ACTUALLY Like To Be A Woman
You're intrigued by the bold mix of beauty and brains we're bringing to the table. We know.
Getty So you want to know what it's like to be a modern gal, huh? You're intrigued by the bold mix of beauty and brains we're bringing to the table and have questions. I get it.
While you're wondering what life looks like on the other side of the coin, here are some things you should absolutely know about life as a woman.
1. You have to work hard at superficial things to be taken seriously.
Keep up with hair, makeup and fashion trends or you'll be deemed "irrelevant," "out of touch" or "apathetic," and you won't be taken seriously enough to get ahead. Thanks to a bazillion-dollar fashion and beauty industry that thrives by keeping us chasing trends, we can't just find some basic makeup or a clothing style that we like and stick with it forever.
Our cosmetic looks have to stay on trend at least within the last five years. Going to get artificial nails done? Better get them the right shape or you'll look trashy. Speaking of the right shape, have you looked at your eyebrows recently? You can't have that early 2000s look anymore!
But you have to get them done or you'll look like a Neanderthal that nobody will want to associate with, hire, or date. And God help you if you opt out of makeup altogether. Everyone will assume you're hungover or dying. Oh, and the same goes for what you're wearing, too.
As a women, if your life is doing incredibly well but you don't look camera-ready, people still pity you and doubt that you can really feel good about yourself. Conversely, if your life is a mess but you look amazing, you will be idolized.
2. Everyone comments on your looks.
Sure, catcalling is an uncomfortable source of stress for us but ultimately it's just a slice of a larger picture in the life of a woman. No matter what profession you choose or what you're doing with your life, society as a whole will have something to say about what you're doing with your body and what you put on it every day forever.
Strangers and loved ones alike make comments about every body part you have and its current state of development, as a woman's body is always up for discussion, even among family members, as if that's not totally weird. If you have a big butt, you're going to hear about it just as much as if you have a flat one. Same goes for boobs, thighs, upper arms, ankles, noses...
This isn't limited to the size of your body parts, either; people will comment on their general condition as well. If you have split ends or grubby nails or ashy legs or a deep voice or any physical imperfection whatsoever, someone will comment on it at the very least. If you try to tell anyone to stop talking about your body, you'll definitely be accused of being "sensitive" or "ungrateful" because all this nonstop criticism is "just watching out for you" and "for your own good."
3. Everyone comments on your relationships.
If you're not dating anyone, you'll be pressured into set-ups while being reminded to worry about your "biological clock." If you're dating someone, people need to know when an engagement is happening. When you're engaged, people demand answers about wedding plans. When you're married, people want to know when kids are coming. If you don't want a husband or kids, you will be burned at the stake.
4. Society has an obsession with your womb...
About the time you're old enough to hold a baby doll, people will start asking if you ever want kids. Despite 40 percent of pregnancies being unintentional, many people still consider having a baby the greatest achievement a woman can accomplish.
If you give birth, people will want to know when you're doing it again. If you have one kid, strangers and acquaintances alike will ask why you don't have more. If you birth more than three children, people will assume you're insane. If you're married without kids, people will whisper and worry about what's "wrong" with you.
If you decide to adopt, people will assume it's because you're barren instead of just a good person. If you have an amazing career, a fantastic relationship, and get to see the world, people will still assume that you're empty inside without a child in your life. Not only will your worrying family members tell you so, but so will women's magazines and trashy tabloids.
5. ...But you aren't allowed to be in charge of it.
When our bodies start changing around 11 years old, women are given minimal, sometimes false information about it in sex education classes, and unless you start actively trying to conceive years later, you may never know that you have four phases to your monthly hormonal fluctuations cycle that influences your daily life even when you aren't menstruating.
You'll be discouraged from asking questions or talking about completely normal stuff like periods and sex because it isn't considered "ladylike." When you discover you have a body part with the sole purpose of bringing you pleasure (the clitoris), you'll be mocked and called a pervert for talking about it or touching it.
If you want to have your tubes tied before you've ever had a child, many doctors will refuse, convinced you'll "change your mind." And if you need to terminate a pregnancy to save your life at any point in your life, people claiming to be loving Christians will nose into your life to call you a sinner while pleading with the government to pass legislation about what you are allowed to do with your body.
If you conceive a fetus while you're unmarried that you won't be able to care for once it's an independent child, these same people will bully you into motherhood with threats of damnation, then judge you for having a child out of wedlock, despite the circumstances.
6. You're expected to compete with other women.
Despite strides in the last few decades toward women's rights in the workplace, we're still taught that we have to be extraordinary if we want to have a successful career. Because for generations, availability of decent careers for women was limited (and before that, the availability of outstanding husband material), women have been taught that we have to not only be the smartest and most competent, but the most physically attractive in order to have a life worth being proud of.
The paradigm of women having to "have it all" and claim superiority is still very much alive, as evidenced by the existence of beauty pageants as a means to earn college money and even those awful "Who Wore it Better?" polls. You'll hear it from the mouths of those girls who say, "I like hanging out with guys because girls have so much drama!" as if they've never opened a damn history book, and the ever-present trash talk about successful women. It's gross and outdated.
7. But you don't have to anymore.
Luckily for women, this newest wave of feminism is seeing more women than ever learning to celebrate and elevate each other while teaching the younger generation about unity and sisterhood. We still have a long way to go but these days, women banding together to create their own companies, products and content is more and more normalized.
As a simple example, look at the ubiquitous trend of young women yelling "YAAAAS QWEEEN YAAAAAS!" and other terms of endearing support for each other all over social media (See also: "werk," "slay," "#YQY). Now, more than ever, women are happy to see each other succeed and thrive because, finally, success for one woman means success for us all.
8. You probably (hopefully) identify as a feminist.
In case you haven't noticed, feminists aren't just a fringe group of radicals anymore — we're everywhere. We wear all types of clothes, we believe in all different creeds, we have all different skin pigmentation, and a ton of us aren't even women.
No matter what anyone tells you, feminism is simply the idea that women deserve equal rights and autonomy as men — no treatment better or worse — and, once defined simply, a lot of people realize they've been feminists all along. A feminist believes a woman and a man doing the same job should be paid equal wages. A feminist believes a woman should be allowed to make her own decisions about her work, school, career, looks, body, and lifestyle just like men can. And that's pretty much it.
A lot of girls still get weird about the term "feminist" because they believe it makes them look masculine to ask for basic rights. They'll say stuff like, "I'm a humanist because I believe all people are equal." Um, that's also feminism, honey.
9. You have to be cautious of men all the time.
While it's certainly unfair to say that "all men only want one thing," the truth still persists that enough men sexually harass or assault us that most women are affected by either verbal or physical sexual advances by the time we are 15 years old. By the time we are 22, 1 in 3 of us has experienced physical sexual violence firsthand.
We are taught to stick together, not to walk alone at night, not to leave our drinks unattended, and to always be alert. We know that "not all men" are like this, but we also know that 84 percent of women who are raped knew their attackers, and chances are, we know more than one woman who is part of this statistic.
We don't know if a strange catcaller yelling obscenities to us every day on our way home from work is really "paying us a compliment" or planning to attack us when we let our guard down, just like we can never be sure that our first date won't do the same.
10. You get to be strong as hell.
"So, wait," you're probably thinking, "As a woman, I have to be wary of men while also loving and respecting them, find my own path in a society that's constantly nagging me with parental, marital, and aesthetic expectations on a daily basis, put up with OB/GYNs giving me half-truths about my health and not taking me seriously, deal with bosses not paying me as much as my male peers, endure a routine hormonal fluctuation that ends with me cramping, bloating, and bleeding from the crotch for a solid week out of every month (that I'm not allowed to whine about), experience sexual encounters I don't enjoy every time while also worrying about the risk of pregnancy, listen to stories of numerous friends and family being sexually assaulted without any justice, AND keep my sanity?!"
That's right. As a woman, you have to be strong as hell, no matter your role. Single and teen mothers, women who quietly work in male-dominated industries to keep the lights on, women who have innovated new, world-changing ideas without receiving credit, women who have endured sexual assault, women who experience miscarriage, women who escape violent households, women who travel alone, women who wear and say what they want, women who adopt children others cannot care for, women who use their position or knowledge to speak up on behalf of those who can't — ALL walks of women require strength to keep moving forward every day.
11. It's a genuinely wonderful time to be a woman.
I know, everything I just described sounds difficult and daunting, but truly, right now is a great time to be female. We are coming together to create social movements and change all over the globe. We are taking charge of our careers to innovate new content on every possible platform.
We are lifting our voices to buck the bullsh*t social standards we've been subjected to and celebrating our femininity in all its forms. We are taking ownership of our bodies and demanding respect of them. We are finally claiming the world as our home, too, and I wouldn't give up the excitement of this moment for anything.
Being a female is still difficult both here and abroad, but one look at our last 100 years of social change and the momentum that's currently in effect, and I'm filled with optimism.