By: Olivia Naorem.
There are various should and shouldn’t social norms which is assigned to a girl by the society that she has to follow right after the birth, otherwise the society will treat her as deviant and will be judged , getting blamed and slut-shamed by our so called society. “SHE IS A GIRL “ , so she should only be friends with the same gender, she shouldn’t hang out with boys. When she became friends with her opposite sex and hang out in public or when a guy came to fetch her from school/college, our society assumed that they were in a relationship and called the girl SHAMELESS. Excuse me!, who says if a guy and a girl were shown together in public, they were in a relationship? Why don’t you think that he might be her friend, brother or cousin? Friends are friends, gender doesn’t matter and that guy you assumed to be in a relationship with her is her brother. Just because her brother came to fetch her from college, you called her shameless seriously! Actually it is your mentality that is shameless to think and judge her like that without having knowledge of anything about her.
SHE IS A GIRL, so she should play with dolls, she should wear color like pink which signifies to be calming color associated with love, kindness and feminist. When she doesn’t want to play with dolls, means she doesn’t like those cute girly stuffs. If this is the case, our society predicted that she’s going to be a Tomboy and act like a man in the future, so they pitied her family as if they know everything about the child’s future. When asked, they will say things like “A child is known by its birth napkin”. Woo! I’m so fed up with this society. Excuse me! Who say playing with dolls, wearing pink color dress and does facial make up and wearing jewelry makes her a girl? Everyone has their own taste and preferences. Wearing pink color dress does make up and jewelry is external look. She is still a girl even without all these things. SHE IS A GIRL, so she shouldn’t go out at night. When she returns home alone at 8 PM, instead of trying to understand why she was late, our societies labeled her as a characterless and blame her parents for not raising her daughter decently. Please tell me, who says returning home alone at night is characterless? What makes her characterless? She is returning home after her father’s dinner who is lying on the hospital bed. She’s no brother or man in her family unlike you except her hospitalized dad. He was the only man in her family, so she has to do her duty as a daughter when one and only man father is being hospitalized. It’s normal for that family who has no sons to act daughter like a man and got out at night when she needs to do that.She is a girl, so she shouldn’t wear short cloths. When she wears shorts, crop tops, tank tops or dressed in a very tight clothing revealing every curves of her body then our society gave her a disapproving looks, a top to bottom scan then, they proceed with loud whispers about the way that girl looked , judging her purity by her choice of clothing and gave comments like “ Look at what she’s wearing, she is definitely asking for it”. Her character was already measured by the length of fabric on her body and she was slut-shamed by the society. Tell me, who says the character of a girl is decided by the length of the cloth she wears?
Dear society, when will you understand that clothes don’t define who she is as a person. It’s just not wearing about short dress but the shallow mind that judges others by the way they dress. People choose their clothing for reasoned according to which occasion or places only known to them, just because you don’t always understand those reasons, at least you shouldn’t judge her character by the clothing of her choice. And you shouldn’t always teach girls to stop dressing like how the boys would say “sluts”. You should start teaching the boys to stop looking at us like we’re sluts. She is a girl, so she shouldn’t speak-up her opinion, raise her voice. She should be quite, courteous and nurturing. When she laughs so aloud, our society reminds her to be a little soft because she is a girl. When she was harassed by a man in the bus, the lady in front of her looks at her blinks her eyelashes as if commanding her silence to not speak up her voice. Even if she had been physically and emotionally abused, our society told her to not raise her voice because man doesn’t like women with raised voices. She is a girl, so kitchen belongs to her and she should learn and good with all the household chores. When she doesn’t know how to cook or laundry, our society scolded her for not being good with all these household stuffs and gave insult to her and her parents like “who will marry her daughter? Girls like her won’t be tolerated by her-in-laws and will sent back home without even finishing a packet of salt. She is a girl, so she should leave her job after marriage, she should keep in her mind that marrying and her husband is the first priority. She shouldn’t cross the lines comparing these two. She is a girl, so she was brought up with the mindset that finding a good husband is more important to her than education. Dear society, instead of finding faults in our every steps, judging us , framing us for the things that we don’t really do ,why don’t you directly tell that you don’t want the girl to exist in this world? Is that why you weren’t happy when a girl child is born?
This is my humble appeal to all the girls who were trapped in the should and shouldn’t norms of the society that it’s time now for us to step-up and break all these stereotype and live us the way that we always wanted to for a better and peaceful society. Let’s not forget the phrase “Education is the best weapon to change the world”, so through education let’s try to break the obstructing wall of the society’s stereotype culture to change the world. We should have the guts that we are also human so we also have equal rights in the society to do any good things. Please open your dark screen to see a new world of different kind because we are also equally responsible not only the rights but duty also. If we continue to survive in such subjugated life feminine gender has no meaning to survive. So .let’s thrown out all those old stock do and don’ts for a new and better life.
***The writer is a student of BCA-3rd sem at JCRE Global College, Babupara, Imphal.
