How many times have you stood in line at Starbucks and heard two or three girls bashing another girl's photo? How many times have you been the one to pull up her Instagram and make it a point to make a negative comment? The obsession with critiquing each other's photos, habits and decisions in order to feel better about our own lives has caused us to become our own worst enemy. We are too preoccupied with badmouthing our peers that we have let the important issues pass us by. Why are we more concerned with how a girl's nose looks in her profile picture than we are about whether or not we are getting equal pay?
Now, more than ever, feminism has been a word brought up in pop culture. There are many different interpretations of this word, but I'm concerned with its definition. Feminism is, by definition, the doctrine advocating social, political and all other rights of women equal to those of men. Once again, without getting into the specifics, I would consider myself a feminist and I know the majority of my female friends would do the same. My question is, how can we try to gain equality if we don't treat each other equally? If we stop judging each other by how well or how much we edit our pictures, we can make progress in this fight.
Woman power has been a common theme in society on many platforms. Whether it is through Patricia Arquette's 2015 Oscars speech on gender equality, Robin Wright's demand for equal pay or through "Game of Thrones" character, Daenarys Targaryen, fiercely showing that women are fit to rule an empire better than any man, it is becoming known that women are just as capable as men in many aspects.
I have seen women work together to do incredible things. From somehow fitting an entire walk-in closet's worth of clothing (plus shoes) into a shared dorm room, to creating a robot in an engineering class, the female brain has performed small miracles. If we combined these skills, we could become unstoppable.
For the time being, however, we still spend our time making comparisons and judgments on a daily basis. When was the last time you judged someone based on what they were wearing or how well their makeup was done? If your answer was recently, it's time to take a step back and reconsider how you live your life.
Imagine a world in which we supported other girls when they got a new boyfriend, aced their test or overcame their fears. In this world, we would see the type of progress that results from individuals supporting each other in order to meet their goals.
There's always a question regarding how women are going to progress in a patriarchal society. How is there going to be a woman president? How can we achieve equal pay? How can we be viewed as equal by all people?
The answer is simple: it starts with us. Before we are seen equally by all people, we need to view each other as equals. That means no more criticizing pictures, clothes or intelligence. That means congratulating each other when one of us succeeds, rather than feeling the sting of jealousy. If we can start to work together, there will be radical changes to the way women are viewed as a whole.
