As a woman I am used to seeing a hundred different messages thrown at me by the media. You're too fat, you're too thin, have a career, have children, make more money, you must be happy, travel, succeed.... Is it any wonder we feel inferior? How can we live up to the image society has created of us when that image means we have to tick so many boxes and quite often many of those boxes contradict each other?
Making it even harder is the shaming that comes from people, quite often other women, when we don't live up to their expectations of what is right.
Mamamia is a high profile website published by Mia Freedman aimed at women and generates in excess of 1 million page views per month. In recent times some of their posts have taken on an air of 'we'll fight for women and their rights, but only if they are ones we like'.
Last week Mamamia published a post titled 'These very sad men started Fat Shaming Week but what happened next is brilliant'. The post details how a group of guys started a website that shamed women for being fat. Quite rightly the author Rosie Waterland, who is employed by Mamamia, took a horrified stance against this behaviour. One of the points she made was "Nobody owes it to anybody else to look a certain way". Hear, hear!
Yet on the very same day, Mamamia published another piece, this time by Mia herself, titled 'Are you a Mother or a Porn Star?' This post was in response to an Instagram picture from Kim Kardashian. In the piece Mia rips right into Kim with lines like "Are you really that desperate to reclaim your hotness that you're happy to discard your dignity and that of your daughter?" and "This photo is desperate. This photo is sad". Obviously in this case, Mamamia believe that Kim owes it to the world to look a certain way.
Now what I want to know is, what is the difference between it being ok to shame one particular type of woman but it not ok for another?
Body image is not the only way we women shame each other. Motherhood brings a whole bunch of judgement.
I've seen countless online arguements that belittle women who do not breastfeed their children. I've seen facebook posts from acquaintances despairing at their guilt of not being able to breastfeed. Yes, everyone knows Breast is Best, but surely the fact that your child is being fed at all is even better? Why would we place guilt and shame on new mothers who ultimately are just trying to do their best?
And if you thought the breastfeeding debate was enough shaming, wait until you have to make the decision to go back to work or be a stay at home mum! If you go back to work you're selfish, if you stay at home you're not contributing to society. You can't win! I have read a few online comment feeds on this subject and the downright nastiness from women on both sides of the fence is enough to scare anyone out of having children for fear of ending up so judgemental!
This judgement and shaming has got to stop!
Every woman has the right to live her life the way she see fit.
So what if she doesn't fit in with your expectations or morals? Yours might not live up to somebody else's. You are never going to please everybody.
Stop with the shaming of women for having a few one night stands, or for posting too many exercise pics to Instagram, or for deciding not to have children, or for a million and one other reasons! Just stop!
As women we need to tell society and the media that it is not ok to have unrealistic expectation of us. We need to say stop, only tick the boxes we want and let someone else tick the others without judgement.
