What? Isn't the world equal already? There's Angela Merkel! There's birth control! There are rights for women!

Uhuh, yeah. There's also rape/violence against women everywhere from college campuses to prisons to homes, single mothers (too many), gender pay inequality, women being hired just because they look a certain way, FGM in several parts of the world, and when a family is poor in some parts of the world, the son is prioritized to be educated---forcing daughters to marry off early.

Therefore, there is a lot of opportunity to be a part of the feminist movement these days. But you know what? I have an even simpler strategy that you can implement right where you are, without having to go to Africa or India, without having to be somebody in the United Nations. After all, it matters that we start with 'the (wo)man in the mirror'.

1) Stop the promiscuity

If you're a woman and you think sleeping around makes you free, think again. You are letting them use your body. There are more risks for women when it comes to sex. For example, accident teenage pregnancies not only result in single motherhood but those teenage mothers also end up not completing their education.

2) Stop your over-attachment to beauty

The world sure doesn't expect men to wear make up and rewards women who do. That in itself is a signal that something isn't right: why do women have to please other people with their sexiness--and why is that the first thing that people tend to judge in a woman? We can hypothesize and guess until the cows come home, but the point is, all this pressure on women to look beautiful is driving a lot of women into having some sort of Body Dysmorphic Disorder. (plus that new snapchat filter that sharpens your features). Not only do women become more depressed because they will never be beautiful enough, but women are losing focus on things that matter--things like being intelligent, being kind, being independent, being strong, etc.

3) Stop the obsession with make up

This has something to with my previous point but what I'm trying to say for point number 3 is that by wearing make up, women are setting up for themselves a whole new standard of beauty. That is, by wearing make-up every day,women are killing themselves slowly because beauty standards are being lifted. Hence, if you one day go out without make-up because you forgot to or don't feel like it, you will feel super out of place, not like a 'woman'. (and why must women look pretty all the time anyway?)

4) Stop romanticizing motherhood and children

Admit it---a lot of us tend to judge women who have no children and women who don't want children, especially when they have reached a certain age. A lot of us also wish to have beautiful children one day. And there's nothing inherently immoral in that wish. What is problematic though, is that we believe we are incomplete without children and subsequently let ourselves be blinded from the reality of what mothers today have to struggle with, which many fathers don't have to.

5) Stop thinking you need men (if you are a woman)

Of course we do need good relationships. In fact, we are happier when relationships thrive; when we feel supported and loved. Nevertheless, believing that you are incomplete without a man's love can push you into choosing the wrong person during the courting stage. Because YOU WERE UNCONSCIOUSLY DESPERATE. What do I mean by a "wrong person"? In worse case scenarios, your partner turns out to be an abusive player (but you never saw that because YOU WERE UNCONSCIOUSLY DESPERATE).

6) Stop being friends only with women who look like you

If you are stereotypically pretty, then you mostly likely befriend girls who are like you in that way. If you look slightly tom-boyish and nerdy, you hang out with those girls. There's no denying that. And you're right, you have a right to choose who to be friends with. The thing that can be problematic though, is that you are setting up another type of inequality--some call it lookism. Lookism can prevent all women from being friends with each other, and in the end, women are not truly united, because of their judgmental attitudes towards each other's looks.

7) Stop being racist

STOP BUYING INTO THE IDEA THAT WE ARE DIFFERENT BECAUSE WE LOOK DIFFERENT. If our aim is to get equality for women, let it be for all women. For ALL women, regardless of their 'color'.