May Monthly Essay
“Obviously, Doctor, you’ve never been a thirteen year-old girl.”
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicide (1993)
Everything has its own perks. So, living a life in this world as a girl has its perks. “Girlie” stuff that people are seeing on the internet are some of them: girlhood, makeup, clothes, and travels; name it. Through the camera, those things look adorable and magnificent to live in and with. It is, in fact, adorable and magnificent living in and with them. Womanhood and girlhood are filled with women supporting other women and girls supporting girls, makeup tutorials to look prettier for ourselves and girls trip to every corner of the world. I must say, I love being a girl. Then, why does being a girl, or a woman, feel difficult?
Little did people know, the perks mentioned before exist because of the drawbacks of living as a girl. Girlhood, or womanhood, does not only mean a state of a girl and a woman’s age on the internet. It rather means how the girls and women support each other because no one supports them other than themselves. The affirmative responses on a girl’s post about her graduation or a woman’s post about her new job in a male dominated field show how the girls and women support each other; this is what girlhood and womanhood mean in the 2020s.
The same thing applies to getting makeup done. While the intention was to look pretty for themselves, sometimes makeup is being called out as a way to get men’s attention. Not just face makeup, body glitter, which was supposed to be a product to make someone’s torso become sparkly and glittery, is encouraged to be worn for safety reasons: to trace someone’s DNA after inappropriate touchings. How can such a product, created to make a woman more beautiful, be recommended to be worn just so someone with vile intentions cannot get away with their actions?
Travelling alone as a girl can also be dangerous. Girls may feel unsafe when walking around the neighbourhood, let alone travelling around the world. For example, when a girl wants to do an afternoon run around her neighbourhood, she may have to be very careful to prevent dreadful incidents from happening to her. Not just vehicle-involved accidents, pickpocketing and harassment could also be on the list.
“We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were.”
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicide (1993)
Both women and girls, no matter their age, live in constant fear every time they wake up in the morning. Having to put on adorable dresses, gorgeous makeup and neatly-crafted footwear then still have to calm yourself down before going outside your room’s door is unacceptable. Yet society still closes its eyes on this matter. What if we liked to show our skin to the world? What if we liked to wear makeup? What if we liked to travel? What if we liked the same things as other people? There is no excuse to harass and underestimate women. Well, perhaps your perfectly crafted and laced-up boots are just thick enough to not feel what the ground feels like when our thin ballet flats touch the ground.