Real Women

Real Women

Monday 13 May 2013

I don’t hate pink as a colour, but I hate what it symbolises in the context of raising the next generation of women. 

On the other hand I do hate the phrase "real women" because anyone with a set of female genitalia is a real woman, you don’t become imaginary because you look, or act, in a particular way. 

Unfortunately, there is a major corporation doing their best to convince the next generation of women to feel less than real, if they don’t conform to a certain look.

Disney, I’m looking at you.

If you care to look online at the female characters of the last 20 years, waists have gotten smaller, eyes and busts have grown, and the power of self-determination has all but vanished. Where once girls had Pocahontas and Mulan, they now have a collection of princesses, who seem to have no greater ambition in life than waiting to be saved by the man of their dreams.

Because let’s face it, we all need saving, right girls?

Even when they look set to change, Disney can’t seem to help sexualising their characters. Merida, the tomboy heroin of the film Brave, is now set to get the sparkly, Victorian corset makeover.

And while it cheers me that 108,000 people have already voiced their concern over the move, it saddens me that the number isn't 100x higher.

It saddens me because of what it is teaching my children, and it saddens me more because that lesson seems to be acceptable to the wider population.

Women are sexual objects. Women need to be saved. The beauty of a woman is in her figure. She might be feisty, but don’t worry, once you've won her over with your strong masculinity, she’ll be putty in your hands.

Holy shit people, when did all this become OK?!?

Right now, women are set to vanish from UK banknotes, because clearly those women who had previously "made a lasting contribution, which is universally recognised and has had enduring benefits" have now ceased to be of importance. Perhaps if we had given Florence Nightingale, or Elizabeth Fry the Disney treatment they would have been allowed to stick around for a little longer?

These are the monetary faces of my formative years, and I remember looking at these women as a child, and being curious as to what they had done. Without saying a word, just the fact that I was seeing them on a regular basis, gave me the message that they were important: That what they had done was valued by our society.

Now we have created one more void into which alternative role models will leech. And those role models will have impossible breasts, pink clothes, and probably wear vajazzels.

It means I now have to work even harder to demonstrate to my children where true worth lies.

That is just one reason I love this post by talented photographer Jaime Moore who has taken the time to bring some incredible female role models alive for her daughter.

We shouldn't live in a world where positive discrimination is necessary in order to demonstrate to our children that women have more to offer than sexuality, but clearly we do. So I urge you, search out the real women of history – whatever their looks – and show them to the children in your life.

Nobody else is going to.