Picture this: the year is 2009, and a twelve-year-old finds herself enrolled at the local high school, where the credo is ‘individuality’. There is no school uniform — a sign of how much they stand by this value. At first, our protagonist dips her toes into the waters of high school with trepidation that quickly turns to confidence when surrounded by familiar peers.
Sure-footed and out to impress, our little Year Seven begins to experiment with clothing. Ever the people-pleaser, she is keen to impress her friends, and heed their advice, and accept their dares. But there was one dare that would truly test the value of individuality in the school community: to wear twelve skirts, at once. As with any successfully completed dare, her peer’s reactions were that of acceptance and respect.
Now our protagonist, it could be said, always had a drive to defy the status quo. Whilst wanting to please her friends, she also sought the attention of the boys in her year level — in a way only hindsight can illuminate as so very, very wrong. She didn’t want to wear the latest trends, or have the same hair as her female peers, because, you see, she thought she ‘wasn’t like other girls’.
***
If you hadn’t already deduced from the painful narrative above, I was our young protagonist (with the grainy proof residing in the photo library on my Nokia 6058). For years I internalised the idea that ‘other girls’ were bad. They were the epitome of everything that society, and boys, didn’t like. Other girls were vain, ditzy and slaves to popular culture. So, as a servile, insecure adolescent growing up amidst the meteoric rise of social media, I decided to use these ‘other girls’ as a model for what not to be. No matter how much I enjoyed mainstream media or fashion trends, I would try to deny myself their pleasures — at least in public.
Years have since passed, as has this mindset of competing with the ‘other girls’. Until recently. Alongside the many social and cultural movements that have gained long overdue attention this year, the feminist movement made its way into my life through university. My final assessments had a heavy focus on gender and feminist studies, and I suddenly found myself immersed in texts and articles, by world-renowned authors and scholars, on topics I had never actively sought out. Of course, I have always identified as a feminist — I believe that there should be equality for everyone, regardless of gender identity. It wasn’t until undertaking my research, however, that I realised how much stigma still surrounds the feminist rhetoric.
I was suddenly met with feelings of shame, and felt torn between the extremes of the feminist debate. I feared that I would be seen as ‘jumping on the bandwagon’, a ‘man hater’, or a ‘dirty feminist’. The other feminist issue, however, was the one that I was most ashamed to face. I knew deep down that I had disappointed my fellow women. The more I read, the more I listened to speeches and talks, I realised that I had internalised much of the patriarchal foundation that underpins society, from what I think, to how I see the world.
‘I think I’m a bad feminist,’ I said to my boyfriend over a Sunday morning cup of tea, ruining our chances of a slow morning devoid of critical thinking.
‘Why do you think that?’ he replied, completely puzzled as to how his opinionated, equality-focussed girlfriend could possibly be a bad feminist, and to why this conversation has arisen out of the blue at such an early hour.
‘I’ve just come to the realisation that I look at things, and think about things, through a problematic lens.’
As the words came out of my mouth, I thought back to all the times I had felt as though fellow women were ‘others’. That they were competition, were vain, were ‘basic’. That for me to succeed in life, perhaps another woman had to fail. I wondered if this was what I’d always thought, or if my outlook had been skewed over the years and I just hadn’t noticed.
***
‘Good girl,’ the older gentleman exclaims as I give him his photocopies at work. I ring up his total and see him off, all with a tight-lipped ‘smile’ on my face.
‘I hate it when they say that. Perhaps I should retort with “good boy” when their payment goes through,’ I complain to my colleague, who encourages me using such a response. Maybe it is the accumulation of these small, seemingly insignificant interactions over my short life that have, at times, sought to undermine me and ultimately steer me off my feminist path.
In the weeks that followed, I saw a string of posts, stories and articles across my social media, as well as in the books I read: all of them highlighting the importance of women supporting other women. Not for the tokenistic opportunity to post photos of friends and cry ‘#feminist’, but rather for our need to work together in order to understand that when one of us succeeds, we all do. I realised how wrong I had been throughout my junior years, and how much learning — and unlearning — needs to be done.
Daily, I see areas, both internally and externally, that need addressing in order to rid myself of this guilt. I will no longer be embarrassed to sport the latest fashion trend if I like it, or to wear make-up for no reason other than wanting to, or to unashamedly enjoy the vocal genius that is Meghan Trainor.
Perhaps I am late to the party of discovering and questioning how my old thought patterns came to be. I’m just thankful that I’ve been able to look back and see the error of my ways. And no, it wasn’t the twelve skirts, but rather the feminist faux pas within the layers of them.
Hannah Kammerhofer is currently studying a Masters of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing. With a BA in psychology and history, believed to be the world's most useless degree, Hannah has found ways to integrate it into her everyday life; she is always in her head and living in the past.