Undefeated Ladies

Nobody tells an actor, ‘you’re playing a strong-minded man.’ We assume that men are strong-minded. A strong-minded woman is a different animal.

Now that I’m an adult, describing Sailor Moon is a little embarrassing… but here’s the deal: Sailor Moon is a magical girl who goes to middle school by day and uses miraculous powers to battle evildoers from outer space by night. Everything about her is feminine, from her pleated mini skirt to the sparkling backdrop of her transformation sequence. She is also a clumsy gluttonous crybaby, an F-student, and as boy-crazy as a cat in heat throughout the first season. Despite all of her personal shortcomings, she dedicates her life to fighting for, as she puts it, “love and justice.”This was a world where girls were fighters. Where they could eat all the food they wanted. Where they could cry.

Most guys do not have to deal with the world of women. They’re born from us, they live around us, but for the most part, we take care of our own shit. We buy our own tampons. We deal with skeevy guys who catcall us. We deal with crappier work situations. We deal with getting told we suck at things because we have a vagina, and that we need to be prettier. […] Then, they had daughters. […] The girl goes to school, and you watch how she’s never called on. You hear someone insult someone else by calling them ‘a girl’, and it stings. Your little girl is awesome! She’s brave and smart and funny! Why would anyone use that as an insult? Then, you remember all the times you did it. And then, you realize that, all along, you’ve been a part of the problem.

The trouble is that, for women, being “nice” often translates into putting up with things we should never put up with. How many times has some creep sat uncomfortably close to me on the bus and stared me down, yet I’m too afraid to just get up and move, lest I offend him? We smile when we’re harassed on the street or hit on by jerks. We laugh at sexist jokes. We learn that when we have strong opinions, we’ll be called bitches and that if we get angry, we’ll be called hysterical. When we say what we want, we’re called pushy or aggressive. Part of learning “ladylike” behavior is about learning to smile politely when someone is being crude. Femininity has long been attached to passivity and to being docile. Men fight, women giggle and fume silently.