From a very young age, we get messages about how we should dress, look, and behave based on our gender. Stores often divide clothes for babies into pink girl clothes and blue boy clothes. When humanlike figurines are marketed to girls, they’re called dolls. When they’re marketed to boys, they’re called action figures. In these ways, gender is socially constructed. Society builds and reinforces the rules.
Joe Ehrmann was a linebacker for the Baltimore Colts in the National Football League. For many people, that’s the epitome of the macho guy. But Ehrmann says the three scariest words a boy can hear are “Be a man.” Ehrmann remembers his dad taught him that “men don’t need. Men don’t want. Men don’t touch. Men don’t feel.”
Educator and antiviolence advocate Tony Porter says of men, “From a young age, we’re taught not to express our emotions.” Studies show the mental health benefits of talking about feelings, but boys are taught to repress their feelings so they don’t appear weak. Feelings have to go somewhere. Unable to talk about feelings, adult men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women, more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, and much less likely to seek help for mental health issues. And with few ways to express feelings through words, a man’s emotions are more likely to burst out in violent and inappropriate ways such as bullying and physical violence.
Attitudes, behavior, and discrimination based on traditional stereotypes of gender roles limit how we express ourselves. And this limit has a name. It’s called sexism.
Pop culture and media are among the most influential forces that shape values, behavior, and a person’s sense of identity. The movies you watch, the photos you scroll through on Instagram, the TV you stream, and the magazines you read—all of these send messages about what’s “normal” and what’s not. Many of the messages are not very obvious, but they sink in deeply.
You might not notice sexism because it’s all around you every day. For example,
Do you feel comfortable signing up for whatever activities you want in school? Or do you and your friends think of some activities as for “boys only” and some for “girls only”? If you’re a boy, would you sign up for ballet classes? According to a study by a dance sociologist at Wayne State University in Detroit, 93 percent of boys who took ballet were bullied and harassed.
Do you feel as if you can pursue any career? Or are some jobs considered not an option for you because they’re too “girly” or “manly”? Men make up 91 percent of construction workers. Women make up 97 percent of preschool teachers. What factors contribute to this gender split?
Do you speak up in class? Studies of elementary and middle school classrooms show that boys are eight times more likely than girls to call out answers. Teachers are also more likely to listen to boys than to girls. By contrast, teachers scold girls who call out answers in class, telling them to raise their hands before speaking.
The most important way to fight back against sexism is to recognize that it exists. Keep an eye out for gender-based patterns in your own life. Listen to, read about, and believe people who are hurt by discrimination. Try to change your own behavior so you don’t contribute to gender stereotypes. Taking these steps is part of being a feminist. Feminism is believing in and advocating for equal rights for all people.
Discrimination is based on core aspects of identity such as gender (sexism), race (racism), sexual orientation (homophobia), gender identity (transphobia), economic class (classism), and ability (ableism). Discrimination happens institutionally in laws, official government decisions, and public policies. It also happens culturally through individual and group behaviors. Here are some questions to ask yourself and your friends to identify institutional and cultural discrimination in your school:
What race and gender are the people in positions of power at your school? Nationally, about 80 percent of teachers are white, 7 percent are black and 2 percent are Asian. The vast majority of teachers are women (77 percent). Only 52 percent of principals are women.
Who gets in trouble during class? Schools are much more likely to suspend black students than students of any other race. Boys are more likely to be suspended than girls.
Can someone in a wheelchair get everywhere in your school? In New York City, 83 percent of public schools are not fully accessible to people with disabilities, often because schools don’t have elevators and students have to use stairs to get to their classrooms.
Discrimination also occurs in dating and sexuality. And it’s not pretty. Data from OkCupid, an online dating, friendship, and social networking site, showed that most men on the site rated black women as less attractive than women of other races and ethnicities. Women rated Asian men as less desirable than other races. On Grindr, a dating app for men seeking men, researchers found 15 percent of men included racist preferences, such as “I don’t date Asians—sorry not sorry,” on their profiles.
So what can you do to fight discrimination? The first step is to listen to the people who are being discriminated against. Often, when people speak up to say they have experienced some kind of discrimination, harassment, or abuse, members of the dominant group don’t believe them or they try to justify the hurtful behavior. This makes it even harder to speak up.
Another step is to examine your own behavior and change your actions and your words. Do you have biases about whom you would date? Have you ever made fun of someone for their gender or sexual orientation? Changing attitudes, behaviors, and word choices isn’t something you can master in a day. It builds over time, and making an effort counts for a lot.
Another important step is to speak up when you witness discrimination. Are your friends, coworkers, or family members talking about girls in a demeaning way? Did someone make a racist joke in class? Did a friend use the word gay as a slur? It’s often scary to call out this behavior, but it makes a big difference. When you hear someone talking in a discriminatory way, you can say, “I don’t like that word” or “That sounds racist to me” or “Isn’t that pretty sexist?” Even if the person brushes off the criticism or laughs at your comment, they will know where you stand and they may think twice about making the same statement again. If you find that someone you know continues to say offensive things in front of you, try to avoid them or pull yourself out of the conversation altogether. Sometimes staying away from prejudiced people is the best move.
Talking about feelings is complicated by gender dynamics in society that instill the idea that “real men” don’t talk about their emotions. Men are too often taught that a core part of masculinity is to never cry or express sadness but to instead bottle up feelings and act “tough.” One impact of this situation is that men are more likely to repress their emotions only to have them explode in violent, destructive ways. And then women end up carrying the burden of talking about feelings. Having to manage the emotions and expectations of others and do the heavy lifting of taking care of someone else’s feelings is emotional labor.
Examples of emotional labor include organizing social events, being a good host by making sure everyone feels welcome and included, feeding friends and family, pitching in to clean without being asked, recognizing when someone is upset and helping them out, and talking people through tough times. Emotional labor isn’t bad—you’re lucky if you have someone in your life who is skilled in these social tasks. But emotional labor needs to be recognized and appreciated.
In an article in Harper’s Bazaar, author Gemma Hartley gives a clear example of the emotional labor division in her household: “My son will boast of his clean room and any other jobs he has done; my daughter will quietly put her clothes in the hamper and get dressed each day without being asked. They are six and four respectively. Unless I engage in this conversation on emotional labor and actively change the roles we inhabit, our children will do the same. . . . Our sons can still learn to carry their own weight. Our daughter can learn to not carry others’.”
In your relationships, keep an eye on who buys presents, makes dinner, cleans up, organizes events, and brings up the difficult-to-discuss issues. Regardless of gender, everyone should appreciate the emotional labor that goes into life and work hard to speak honestly about their feelings.
In the 1989 Disney classic The Little Mermaid, mermaid princess Ariel is designed to be a very specific ideal of feminine beauty. She has big blue eyes, large breasts, a tiny waist, and completely smooth wrinkle-and-freckle-free white skin. Ariel’s body is so out of proportion with reality that her eyes are actually bigger than her waist! Pop culture researcher Sarah Coyne looked at the effect Disney princesses have on body image. She found that girls who consumed most princess-themed pop culture over time had the lowest body esteem: “Disney Princesses represent some of the first examples of exposure to the thin ideal. As women, we get it our whole lives, and it really does start at the Disney Princess level, at age three and four,” she said.
And it’s not just Disney. A University of South Florida analysis of American children’s movies reported that 72 percent of these films “associated thinness with positive character traits such as kindness, and three out of four equated obesity with undesirable qualities.”These images affect real kids. For example, by age ten, 80 percent of American girls say they’ve been on a diet. In a survey by the British youth organization Girlguiding, 66 percent of girls ages seventeen to twenty-one said they felt they were “not pretty enough” most of the time, and 61 percent felt they “need to be perfect” most of the time.
Think back to the movies you grew up watching and are watching now. Can you think of positive female characters who are fat or small-chested? How many positive male characters can you think of who are physically small or not strong? How many positive characters can you think of who have dark skin? How many are gay, bi, lesbian, or trans?
In 2016 the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism released a study of 4,554 speaking characters in nine hundred American films released since 2007. The study found that 71 percent of the actors were white. Of those thousands of characters, only 67 were gay male characters, 20 were lesbian characters, 16 were bisexual characters, and 1 was a transgender character.
In the real world, people of all races fall in love, have relationships, and build lives together. But on-screen, almost all the main characters are white. In 2015 only 25 percent of speaking roles in movies went to people of color. When nonwhite characters do show up, they often play the roles of villains or criminals.
Stories impact how we see ourselves, how we see other people, and what we think of as normal. One 2012 study, by the University of Michigan and Indiana University, found that white boys felt good about themselves after watching TV. Girls and boys of color, meanwhile, reported lower self-esteem as they watched TV. If you don’t see people like you represented in a positive way in the media, it can make you feel that there’s something wrong with the way you are.
Be a critical consumer. Think about the messages movies and TV are sending. Know that regardless of what you see on-screen, you are always the hero of your own story.
Do you ever feel as if there’s something wrong with the way your body looks? Studies show that American men and women are significantly more unhappy with their bodies than people outside the United States. In other nations around the world, 88 percent of women and 90 percent of men say they have a positive body image. But in the United States, only 71 percent of men and 51 percent of women say they feel good about their bodies. Why do Americans feel this way? Well, because body shame is baked into our culture through movies, TV, magazines, websites, and advertising.
When you open a magazine or scroll through ads on Instagram, the models you see are almost certainly photoshopped to have wrinkles removed, skin smoothed and lightened, and limbs slimmed down. Most of the glowing faces you see in ads are genuinely humanly impossible. But that doesn’t stop us from comparing ourselves to the impossible. In 2018 one poll of one thousand Americans discovered that 83 percent of women and 74 percent of men said they felt dissatisfied with how their bodies looked—often while comparing themselves to both friends and celebrities they see on social media.
For example, the average American woman is 5 feet 4 (1.6 m) and weighs 140 pounds (63 kg). But the average American model is 5 feet 11 (1.8 m) and weighs 117 pounds (53 kg). Among girls between the ages of six and twelve, 40 to 60 percent are concerned about their weight or about becoming too fat. In high school, the skinny-is-best ideal persists.
No one wakes up one morning and decides they’re inadequate. According to behaviorist and sex educator Emily Nagoski, the idea “sneaks in under the fence and invades like poison ivy.” She says that the message many people—especially women—get from pop culture about their bodies and sexuality is, “You are inadequate.” She points out that when we look at the bodies and stories featured in media, they send a clear message: “You’re too fat and too thin; your breasts are too big and too small. Your body is wrong. If you’re not trying to change it, you’re lazy. If you’re satisfied with yourself as you are, you’re settling. And if you dare to actively like yourself, you’re a conceited bitch! In short, you are doing it wrong. Do it differently. No, that’s wrong, too, try something else. Forever.” Nagoski also says that “women have cultural permission to criticize ourselves, but we are punished if we praise ourselves, if we dare to like ourselves the way we are.”
Why does this toxic dynamic persist? Partly because corporations make a lot of money by convincing people that every inch of their bodies needs to be fixed. In the United States alone, the diet industry makes $68.2 billion a year. In 2017 the global skin-care market was worth $128 billion. That includes everything from anti-acne pads to lotions that promise to end aging and creams that aim to make dark skin lighter. So be a critically thinking consumer. Ask yourself, Why do I think I need this product? Can I spend my money in a way that builds on what I love about myself?
Media and pop culture usually equate being skinny with being healthy. The reality is that you can’t tell if someone is healthy just by looking at them. Human bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Studies show that what makes someone healthy or unhealthy isn’t their weight. It’s their lifestyle choices. “Fat but fit” people who exercise regularly, eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, and who don’t smoke have no higher risk of death or illness than people with the same habits who weigh less. Skinny people aren’t necessarily healthier. Thin people can still get diabetes, heart disease, or heart attacks.
One medically reliable sign of health is your metabolism. Metabolism is the internal process by which your body converts the food you’ve eaten into energy and burns calories. How fast your metabolism works is determined mostly by genetics, so people can have a fast, slow, or average metabolism regardless of their size. Getting enough exercise is key to having a healthy metabolism. Doctors recommend thirty minutes of movement (walking, dancing, skateboarding, biking, anything!) a day. What makes someone healthy is linked to what they eat and whether they exercise—not what their body looks like.
Many teenagers, regardless of gender, feel intense pressure to look a certain way, usually thin and buff. Many develop eating disorders. Disordered eating can range from relatively mild conditions such as skipping a meal sometimes, even if you’re hungry, because you’re trying to lose weight. It can also be a really serious condition such as starving yourself (anorexia), forcing yourself to throw up (bulimia), or a pattern of stuffing yourself with a ton of food all in one go (binge eating). Some people have more than one eating disorder. Disordered eating affects about 2.7 percent of American teens, or just over 1.1 million people. Eating disorders aren’t just about food and body size—they’re a treatable mental illness. Low self-esteem, depression, and anxiety all contribute to eating disorders. So do external stressors such as pressure to get perfect grades or snag a specific job.
What does it feel like to have an eating disorder? Riverdale star Camila Mendes talked openly about having an eating disorder as a teenager. “I was so scared of carbs that I wouldn’t let myself eat bread or rice ever. I’d go a week without eating them, then I would binge on them, and that would make me want to purge,” Mendes said. “I was consumed with the details of what I was eating, and I always felt as if I was doing something wrong.” At the age of twenty-three, Mendes started seeing a therapist who has helped her manage her stress and stop her self-destructive eating behaviors. “The voices in my head never completely go away. They’re just way quieter now,” she said.
If you or someone you know has an eating disorder, help is out there. Talk to a counselor, a parent, a doctor, or someone else you trust. If left untreated, eating disorders can be deadly. Every sixty-two minutes, someone in the United States dies as a direct result of having an eating disorder, often from heart attacks, starvation, and suicide. Seeking help is not a weakness or a failure. It’s just the opposite—it’s an act of bravery and self-love.
Taking steps to appreciate and celebrate your body is actually a pretty radical act. Self-care isn’t just doing nice things for yourself, like eating chocolate or taking a warm bath. It’s checking in to make sure you’re taking care of yourself—mentally, physically, and spiritually. Here are ways to practice self-care in a positive way:
Exercise for fun. Being physically active in any way releases chemicals in the brain called endorphins that make us feel good. You don’t need to be running marathons or hitting a million home runs to get the benefits of endorphins and to be strong and healthy. Find an activity or two that just makes you feel good. Dancing? Biking? Walking? Playing soccer with friends? All of those are great ways to take care of your body—and your emotional health. The benefits from the brain chemicals that exercising releases to make us feel happy and strong last over time.
Take a break from your phone. The average American adult spends more than ten hours a day consuming media on devices.
A 2016 survey of young adults by the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States found that the more time a person spends looking at social media, the more likely they are to be depressed.
How much time do you spend a day consuming media? Try keeping a log for a week to track the time you spend watching TV, looking at a phone or tablet, watching films or TV shows on a computer, playing video games, and listening to the radio. You’ll be surprised at the results.
Do yourself a favor. Put your phone down for a while. Try to do so for a few minutes every day and gradually build up the time. And get some face time instead. Talk to a friend in person, take a walk with your favorite neighbor, or read a book aloud with someone you like. You’ll feel better about yourself, and the people in your life will love it too.
Write Down Ten Things You Like about Yourself. It’s nice to have a list to look at when self-hatred and self-doubt start to creep up on you. What are ten positive things about you as a whole person besides your looks? Maybe you’re generous, a good brother, a voracious reader, or a good listener. Maybe you make a mean chocolate chip cookie or you’re a terrific mimic. Make a list, and add to it as you think of more things so your list keeps growing.
There’s a guy in my class who dresses like kind of weirdly, he wears skinny jeans and pink shirts and so people call him “faggot” all the time. What should I do? They’re just joking and I don’t want to make it worse by making a big deal out of it, but also I feel bad for not doing anything.
You’re right that although these guys say they’re joking, using homophobic slurs is really hurtful. Make sure you’re not encouraging any of this bad behavior. Are you laughing along? You can be a role model in your behavior. Try to treat the guy who’s being bullied as if you would anyone else—with respect, generosity, and kindness.
Then speak up. You’re in a relatively safe place to call out bad behavior, unlike the bullied guy in your class who might be beaten up if he talks back. When a friend uses gay or faggot as a slur, it’s your responsibility to say something. Try, “I hate when people say gay is a bad thing. It’s fine to be gay.” Speaking up may feel awkward at first. But even if people brush you off or say you’re overreacting, you’ve made them think twice. You’re also letting people who are listening know that you’re not okay with that kind of hatred and that you will stand up against it.
I don’t know how to flirt with girls without being sexist. Can I tell a girl she’s beautiful, or is that like offensive?
Compliments feel awesome, but only when they’re welcome, and that depends on your relationship. It’s generally a bit creepy and off-putting to have a stranger or random classmate talk about your body in any way, even if it’s positive. The best way to flirt with someone is to show interest in them and get to know them. If you like a girl, ask her questions. Ask her what she’s into, how her weekend was, or what her opinion is about a popular movie or book. Get to know her as a full person. Save the body-specific compliments (you’re gorgeous) for someone with whom you have an established romantic relationship.