Predicaments of a Fashion Lover: Am I A Bad Feminist?

No. It’s just between other women for being women; more precisely competing for a man and his affections. The strangest part of this ludicrous mentality you might not know, is that often women aren’t truly attracted to these men they’re attempting to ‘catch’. No I'm not telling you that you're being played by a girl, PU-LEASE don't get ahead of yo'self sir/ma'am. Let’s think of the concept of the ‘ideal man’. In this time of the human race, we have our own ‘types’ we’re attracted too. Beards or no beards, man buns or short back and sides, tall or small, Italian or French or maybe American, workaholic or gymaholic and so on. Some we can Netflix and Chill with, travel to artsy places or crush workouts together. It really is hugely different. And women as a whole don’t have a set way of behaviour. I think this is mainly being down to the variety of different ways we have been raised, while boys were raised knowing they were important and capable. Girls not so much – some women have been brought up having been told they can do exactly what the boys at school are doing, which is so fantastic, those parents who taught them so are pioneers of their generation. However some girls were not acknowledged to be powerful, strong humans just those who lined up outside the ‘BOYS’ sign at primary school.

Now back to the ‘ideal man’. This was (I hope) once long ago the notion of marrying a man who could provide for his wife; he was successful, highly paid and usually admired in the society he was placed in. He probs came from a good family and was considered a good ‘match’ like he was a snap card. These men could have had tens of girls running after him in one town. Think Queen’s Elizabeth the 1^st’s court; she had girls who waited on her and provided company, ultimately sent to court by their families to find a good husband. Or think of the opening line in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice - “IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”. Perhaps your grandparents have pressed you to find a ‘suitable’ gentleman to settle down with. Nauseatingly, maybe even your parents. Eek. This mentality of ‘finding’ a man, marrying said man and then living, what’s it again? Oh yeah, happily ever after. I want to blame Disney for this bullshit, but sadly as Queen Lizzie the 1^st shows, it’s been around a while. Boo.

So this idea of competition between women, young girls especially according to news outlets, is so downright mind boggling I found myself actually admitting to suffering from some girl-on-girl competition. And that shocked me, because I pride myself on being a feminist and firm believer in girl power. Does this make me a bad feminist? To view women at times as competition? This past year we’ve had Taylor Swift’s #SQUADGOALS running rampant, articles on amazing women around the world who have overcome incredible obstacles, the rise of #strongnotskinny and the rise of blogger girl bosses. But, we still have girl on girl hate and the Competition Mentality, the bitchiness of high school still remaining but it's mutating into URL instead of good of fashioned IRL. Not following me? Okay we’ll play a mini game of sorts.

When you walk down the street and pass another girl, what is your automatic response? Do you mentally slag off what she looks like, what she’s wearing, how she’s behaving? Yeah? That’s a little bit of girl hate there. You might not be 100% aware this is your automatic response of course, because it’s obvs automatic. And your brain is going it’s own little things its been trained to do. Which is kinda scary because like, you’ve trained your brain to automatically put down random girls you pass everyday? Doesn't have to be IRL, you could be thinking of put downs as you scroll your Twitter or Insta feed - "UGH why is Gretchen moaning again? Her tweets are soOoOooo embarrassing."

When we do this, we’re trying to make ourselves feel better because we either a) see this girl as a threat and must make her seem less, b) we’re really insecure because she’s so flawless so there’s GOT to be a catch, right? Or c) we have to be better than any other girls we don’t know because we have to be the most important/smart/best dressed/skinniest/prettiest at every social event. And if we aren’t, we feel like a frump and a failure. A Failure Frump. How sad does that sound? Like a disappointed baby elephant. And we don’t want to be baby elephants that feel put out – we want to be the super sexy cheetahs that everyone is watching as they slink into the room. Like Rihanna or Megan Fox; Lord help my ego if I am ever in the same room as Rihanna. But let's think about all of this.

So this put down might be automatic, but that doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Question just WHY you’re thinking negatively about a girl you may or may not know. Are you feeling insecure? Do you value your appearance over everything else? Does she seem to have her life together in a fantastic outfit, while you’re coming back from the gym? Have you ate recently? Just say after me WHO CARES! THAT GIRL PROBABLY ROCKS AND IS REALLY A NICE PERSON, SO STOP GIVING HER DIRTY LOOKS ACROSS THE STREET/BUS/TRAIN/ROOM {circle the most correct location}. PLUS YOU’RE GREAT. NO OTHER HUMAN HAS YOUR FINGERPRINTS OR DNA. NO ONE LOOKS LIKE YOU. NO ONE ELSE HAS THE SAME BRAIN OR AMBITION OR MEMORIES. HOW COOL IS THAT? THAT’S SO COOL. IN A WORLD OF 7.125 BILLION HUMANS.

I left high school and realised I had both been putting effort into negative energy as well being around a lot of Negative Nancys, Nellies and Nickis. So I cut my shitty attitude and have been working on it since, because even sometimes when I’ve had a crappy day my brain will want to play this silly game to distract me from the stuff I’ve gotta work on. I won't get further with the stuff I want to do spending a few minutes mocking someone in my head, so it makes it dumb and badass women don't do dumb things that waste their precious time. And I cut off the Negative N's, because honestly if I heard one more complaint about someone’s hair, boy decisions or seating choice I was going to have to do a double Van Gogh on myself.

So yeah. Girl on girl hate isn’t very nice or forward thinking. It’s just ugly. And what did dear old Roald Dahl said? “If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

The proudest thing I’ve done these past few months/years is supporting girls and women. No matter what it is, no matter what she chose or decided not to do, I’ve supported her. Those are MY girls. And they are YOUR girls. YOUR GIRLS. Support women, help them become stronger on the weight rack or ask them for help, give a girl a hand in class or pipe up with a question for her. Help them, and yourself, become stronger both mentally and physically. They’re the girls of tomorrow, because no matter what, it might feel all too much like a man’s world right now but the future is female. And I’m proud of how much I bring my fellow women up, how I speak up when someone’s slagging someone else off for no reason, because this day and every day after I will be backing my fellow girls.