I know that there are many aspects to it, but lately I’ve been thinking about how part of it has to do with telling women that they literally ought not to take up too much space. And I think women feel this… I think the feeling of needing to be skinny is often deeply tied to feeling like one shouldn’t take up too much space.
It goes hand in hand with socially entrenched ideas about how women aren’t supposed to be loud or “make a fuss.” Women are to behave. We’re to be quiet and demure. God forbid we have an opinion and be loud about it.
I just… I think it’s all so oppressive. No matter what your gender, you have a right just as much as anyone else to assert your presence and take up space and cause a fuss. You are allowed to be big, both literally and figuratively.
For a long time, women — importantly, as well as non-whites, as well as immigrants, as well as any gender identity that is not male from birth, as well as those with any sexual preference that is not heterosexual — have been socialized and scared into not asserting our presence in the world. And I refuse to do it anymore.
I’ve felt it in my own life, as I have often had strong opinions and beliefs about things, but I’ve shrunk away from speaking them loudly because I hate conflict and it made me uncomfortable. But I’m not scared to speak out for what I believe in anymore. I refuse to stay quiet and small because I’ve been socialized into thinking that’s what women ought to do.
I think that all movements start from personal revolutions, and I just want to encourage all people who have ever felt like they’ve been told they aren’t allowed to be loud and big and assert themselves to emancipate themselves from that kind of oppressive ideology.
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I've been thinking a lot about the societal demand that women be skinny...
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