By nature, I am loud and animated. My normal volume is somewhere between the average person’s talking and yelling. I don’t yell; I just tend to project my voice without knowing it. As a result, I’m often told to quiet down. It’s understandable – I’m loud and sometimes it’s not appropriate for the setting. But when someone tells me I should be quiet because it's "not lady-like," I immediately want to raise my voice to the point of shattering their eardrums.
The argument that a woman should not do something because it isn’t lady-like is outdated and sexist. Never once have I heard someone tell a male not to raise his voice, or to watch his language, or to not belch at the table for the reason that it’s not the "gentlemanly" thing to do. When men are asked of these things, it is with the request of them being courteous. When they are asked of women, it is the demand to fit a mold. Of course, women are often asked to do so out of courtesy. The problem is not the request, but the reason.
Women and girls do not need to be lady-like. It is an antiquated concept that we do not use today. It confines women to a social demand to be submissive and quiet. Being a lady is associated with a social decorum that restricts women to certain standards of femininity. These standards establish women as passive, weak and obedient. Women are painted as respectful while men are given the opportunity to be strong, powerful and aggressive. At the same time, though, men are faced with harmful expectations as well. Men and boys are expected to be manly and perfect examples of aggressive, powerful masculinity. This dichotomy places men and women in boxes that alienate those who do not perfectly fit into them.
There is nothing wrong with femininity, but there is something wrong with demanding it in every aspect of a woman’s behavior. The same goes for masculinity and men’s behavior. These two concepts are not boxes for women and men to be stuck in, left to be criticized when they do not fit exclusively into one or the other. Rather, it may be more of a spectrum. A woman can be relatively masculine, but this does not make her any less of a woman. She may not perfectly meet the expectation of a “lady,” but she shouldn’t have to. The same goes for an effeminate man not being “manly” enough.
I am a woman, but I am not a lady. I am aggressive, snarky and loud. I will use all of those qualities to fight for what I believe in. I am not perfectly feminine. You may be a woman who perfectly fits the definition of a lady. Or a man who is perfectly manly, or nowhere near it. People fall anywhere on the feminine-masculine spectrum, and we need to accept that. Stop trying to place people in boxes of gender roles and expectations. Embrace people's strengths and characteristics, regardless of societal expectations. When we stop placing people's behaviors and attitudes into boxes of "lady-like" and "manly," we do not limit them, or ourselves.
