You need to wear makeup but you can’t look like you’re wearing it because then you ‘try too hard’. You need to wear clothes that show skin, but not too much or you’ll get raped because ‘you were asking for it’. You can’t speak for what you believe in because then you’re ‘hard work’. You can’t have a preference in men because then you’re ‘picky’ and you ‘have unrealistic standards’ but you also can’t just date anyone because then you’re ‘easy’..

That’s only some of the expectations of women. 

Women are expected to act like children and it has been like that for centuries.

It’s a well known fact that men are attracted to innocent women. If you have relations with any boy you’re now unattractive to any other boys because you’re no longer innocent.

It’s a societal standard for grown women to have hairless bodies, like a childs. If you do have hair on your body you’re ‘not attractive’ and ‘no man will want you’.

You’re supposed to act dumb and like you have no mind of your own, again like a child. Men want to be able to tell you what to do and what to think.  They want to have control over your opinions and mind. 

You are expected to cook and clean and ‘be a woman’ yet all men want is a little girl.

Grown men date girls twenty years younger than them because they can’t find actual women who fit their criteria and unrealistic expectations.

Growing up, if a boy hurt us or made fun of us, we were told that they liked us. That they wanted to be our boyfriend. Giving us this idea that if a boy likes you, he must hurt you and pick on you.

If your boyfriend hits you, or abuses you, he just loves you because that’s what your mum said. Right?

“...men endeavor to sink us still lower, merely to render us alluring objects for a moment; and women, intoxicated by the adoration which men, under the influence of their senses, pay them, do not seek to obtain a durable interest in their hearts, or to become the friends of the fellow creatures who find amusement in their society.”

― Mary Wollstonecraft

This quote comes from A Vindication of the Right of Women. It was written in 1791 and it’s the first ever book written about feminism by one of the first ever feminists.

Men have always been seen as superior to us. And we’ve been brainwashed to think that their possessiveness and controllingness is attractive, and then because we’ve been so brainwashed we allow ourselves to become these objects that they view us as. 

How is it that three centuries later, A Vindication of the Rights of Women is still relevant.

Mary Wollstonecraft wanted this revolution to happen in the 18th century. It is now the 20th century and we are still fighting for equal rights. We are still fighting for us to be viewed as anything but objects. We are still fighting for us to be allowed to have opinions. We’re still fighting to be people.

The revolution has started, but it’s nowhere near finished.

The only thing that will actually help us in the fight to equal rights is if we change these societal views on women. We need men to speak up when they see their friends mistreating or misspeaking on a woman's name. We need to not let ourselves get brainwashed by these people. We can NOT become the objects they so want us to become.