individual

Sophia

My experiences with sexism haven’t been very outright. I can’t point to a specific day and say that it changed me. However, I constantly experience feelings from somewhere deep that the way I’ve been taught to live, and the way that the people around me act is anything but equal in regards to gender. As a young girl, I spent the majority of my time trying to be as unfeminine as I could. I thought that my female classmates who played house and aspired to be princesses were inherently less smart. It amazes me that even from as young an age as six, I believed that the traditional expression of femininity denoted weakness and inferiority. In second grade, when I first met the girl that would later become my best friend, I despised her because she was wearing a pink coat. It seems that we are allowed to be viewed as complex individuals when we act like men, but feminine women are seen as unassuming pretty faces. Women are people, no matter what choices they make, and I wish someone had taught me that sooner.