http://elitedaily.com/women/why-we-need-to-stop-shaming-confident-women/
"We teach girls to shrink themselves. To make themselves smaller. We say 'You can have ambition but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful.'"
This is a quote from the Ted Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who is a feminist. This quote was used in an article by Tara Bowling, who is a writer for Elite Daily. In this article she talks about how she posed a selfie on instagram right after waking up with the #flawless. She was refering to Beyonce's song Flawless and also trying to show that she is confident in the way she looks without excessive amounts of make up and time spent getting ready. She wasn't trying to be cocky. In this article she defines the difference between cockiness and confidence. Cockiness is believing you are better than other people because of how you look, how intelligent you are or how talented you may be. Confidence is recognizing your own positive attributes and abilities and believing in yourself. The distinction between these two words is key because Tara received a lot of backlash from friends and instagram followers claiming that she is cocky and conceded for posting that picture; however she was just joking around and trying to show her confidence in her self. Also note that these were other women who were criticizing her for this picture. As women we have so many obstacles in life that males and society crate for us, so we should not make it harder for each other. Women should be encouraging with each other and comment "You go girl!" on instagram posts like Tara's, not talking bad behind each others backs about how cocky they are. We need to band together and make each other feel confident in ourselves because we all should be and no one should ever be able to take that away from us.
I completely agree I think that there is a huge problem with women not supporting each other enough especially in these instances. I like the quote from Chimamanda, I think that the idea that women are only supposed to have a certain amount of drive (before they start being perceived as bossy, or bitchy) is a huge problem.
ReplyDeleteFrankly I think the issue is that people feel the need to label something as either confident or cocky in the first place. All races, genders, or any other affiliations aside, we really should just care less about what other people do with their lives and worry about ourselves. I mean this in a non-selfish way, but that people just need to stop monitoring one another.
ReplyDeleteI think society teaching women to police each other is not only wrong, but it is, at least to a certain degree, bad for mental health. In such environments, women will become distrustful of each other, and if women can't even stick together while breaking the societal mold, who can they rely on to help them spread the message? It is difficult for an individual of either sex or gender to make significant changes by themselves, after all.
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