My Body, My Rules

Yesterday I was talking with a classmate about his daughter. He slid his chair up to a group of three of us girls that are always chatty before class and said he needed some advice about girls. We, naturally, said we'd be happy to give it.

He asked us why girls wear shorts that are so short they have to constantly pick at them, and skirts so short that they're constantly pulling them down. In other words, why do girls wear uncomfortable things like that? His concern was that his daughter (who is college-aged) would start emulating this trend.


(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Red_short_shorts.jpg)

The two others I was with immediately started saying it was stupid for girls to dress like this and he should just tell his daughter it was dumb and not let her wear these things -- for her own good.

I disagreed.

Why do girls wear stuff that so obviously uncomfortable? Because we're supposed to. The above picture is a comically extreme case, but we like to look and feel sexy, because we're constantly told that our body is for the viewing pleasures of others. Women are constantly judged by their looks, even if not maliciously, because we are raised from the time we are children to think in this way.

I told this to my classmate and suggested that he just leave his daughter alone and let her look how she wants. She's old enough to make her own decisions, and she has to figure out for herself what she wants her image to be. By telling her what she can and cannot look like, even if it's with the best of intentions for her sense of self-worth, he would be perpetuating the idea that her body is not her own and exists only to be what others want it to be.

He was taken aback, and said he'd never thought of that before. He mentioned how, when he stopped to think about it, women really did have a difficult time with their appearance because it was such a double-edged sword. We just can't win.

It blew my mind that he had never thought of that before. He'd never had to, because he's a man. And though men do have to deal with biases based off appearance, it's not as rampant for them. But the intricacies of how men view each other is lost on me, since I'm not part of that group. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this subject in the comments though.

And ladies, do you often worry about your appearance and how others perceive you based on that fact alone?