“Don’t cry like a girl”, “be a real man”, “these are things for boys”.
How many times have you heard sentences like those? They may come from different sources, different people, different contexts, at times it is even unpredictable to tell where the next one will come from. And there you are, struggling to understand what you have done wrong, if you ever did something wrong. You get full of questions, worries and fears of not being accepted, of not being acting as the society requires you to, of not being enough. Fear makes us vulnerable and vulnerability is an uncomfortable sensation with which no one would like to live. Then, we start building up walls and shields to protect ourselves and attack when we feel the need to.
But, is this how we really want to live? Is the constant neglection of our true self the real solution? Moreover, is it true that there are things for boys and things for girls, or have we just made it up as a convention?
Let’s be frank, dividing the world into two big categories, such as black and white, good and bad, boys and girls, makes our life easier on the one hand, and quite empty on the other. Beauty lies in the tones of shades that develop from the two extremes and each one of us is the incredible representation of one of those billion shades. Just think how wonderful it would be if you could express yourself and help others do the same. How relieving and stress-releasing would it be? We shouldn’t build walls nor shields anymore, we shouldn’t be constantly defending ourselves from what we perceive as external attack, we wouldn’t have nothing to hide, but just beauty to show.
We have the power, today, to let this happen. We can overcome the dichotomy “things for boys” and “things for girls” and build an environment in which expressing ourselves for who we are won’t make us feel like we are lacking something. Gender equality is also about making people able to show who they really are.
