Women should be able to live their lives without feeling guilty of not meeting other people’s expectations, says Kika de Bourcy, 14, from the British School of Brussels.
Born into this world as a woman you are immediately inferior to men.
From the moment you open your eyes you are going to grow up in a life that is different to that of a man.
Historically you would either become a mother or maybe a housewife and have to give up your life for your partner’s benefit. While such pressures are not visible, they are still there, lurking in the air.
Becoming a woman, you do not always have to put someone else’s needs before yours to make sure they are content.
Men are still often more respected and put on a pedestal whereas women still claim they are not taken seriously in the business world and their ideas are ignored. Women should not have to prove themselves in order to be seen, they should not have to shout or wave their hands to be acknowledged. Women should not feel worried that the light will be shone only on men, and we will be left in the shadows.
Our hard work, our success is too often erased or rewritten with a name of a man claiming our success as his.
Why is it that we have to be quiet when men are loud?
As a teenage girl there is also a certain expectation to look a certain way, to act a certain way.
Why can’t we just be free?
In the recent Barbie movie the mother, played by America Ferrara says: “You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!”
I chose this extract of the speech by Barbie’s mother because I feel that it explains perfectly the expectations placed upon us as women. The word “contradictory” used in this speech means the expectations are unrealistic.
I feel that there should not be such expectations for women in the first place. We should feel the weight lifting off our shoulders instead of people adding weight until we fall. People whispering left and right how we should be. Women should be able to live their lives without feeling guilty of not meeting these expectations.
We are not dolls, we do not want to be treated like toys, and we do not want to be nothing to the world; we want to be valued.
If this is what a doll representing a woman is like in the Barbie movie then we might as well be living the life of a doll in the real world.
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cavendish - 7HBA
i don’t think this is fair that men are taken seriously but woman are usally put down .