Women Are Not a Problem to Be Fixed
Our culture’s base assumption about women is that we are a problem.
At school, our bodies are a distraction and keep boys and men from their studies. In houses of legislature, our bodies, fertility and persistent human desires for autonomy are a problem to be solved and regulated. In the media, we’re scorned and lying harridans falsely accusing athletes of rape and ruining prestigious sports events with our calls for justice. At home, too. At parties, too. At work, too. We either say too much, lie, or don’t say it correctly with the right amount of bass in our voice. We insist on being heard or we’re not loud enough and no one hears us. Why didn’t we say something? And then when we say something, we say it wrong. We fail to signal male competence and authority in our speech patterns. We wear the wrong clothes, clothes that remind people we are women. We don’t wear the right clothes, clothes that remind people we are women. We bear children. We don’t bear children. We stay home to take care of our children. We don’t stay home to take care of our children. We go to work and take care of our children and our loved ones and therefore wreak havoc in the workplace designed around the idea that someone else is supposed to be at home doing that for us. That’s how the men who occupy 95% of top jobs do it. But we are not men. We are a problem to be corrected.
So we try to compensate. We try be perfect. We try to improve.
Self-improvement, as an industry, is often about correcting the fundamental problem that women have in our culture and our culture has with us: that we are women. We need to be fixed. We need to fix ourselves.
You don’t need fixing. The world needs fixing. – Poppy Lochridge
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I’m writing a book about The Female Lifestyle Empower Brand, a phenomenon that markets to women using this same assumption: that we are a problem. According to The Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand, women need to change themselves to better fit into the world, the workplace or those size 2 jeans. Screw that. Let’s change the world, instead.
If you’d like to read more in this vein, I send a Sunday Love Letter by email and I’d appreciate it if you’d join: https://kellydiels.com/subscribe/
