A post for International Women’s Day 2022

Photo credit: “Wonder Woman 1984” (DC/Warner Bros.)

On IWD 2022, I can’t help but wonder: have we collectively learned anything?

Beauty, finance, employment, parenthood, health, and aging: The wars women wage

It seems obvious once you’re awakened to it.

The diet industry exists to pacify women. If an entire gender is too busy obsessing over its weight it won’t have time to fight for equality.

The more one thinks about their looks, the less brain capacity they have for cognitive tasks. Why focus on learning something new when you can spend your time learning how to filter your Instagram pics?

And thank god for Botox. We have to stave off aging if we’re going to survive. Rescue the face! Free women from having to control their emotions. Liberate them from dreaded resting bitch face. Women are liked more when they appear agreeable. It makes perfect sense that we spend more on our looks than we do on our education.

Financial Handicap

Speaking of money, if girls are taught early and often, and in subtle ways, that math is hard, they won’t have the confidence to learn it. If young women grow up thinking the financial industry is too complicated, disinteresting, or not designed for them, they won’t venture further into it as a career. If women believe financial literacy is scary and out of their league, they will stay reliant on others. Ultimately, women end up at a financial disadvantage compared to their male counterparts. The end result is more than a gender pay gap, it’s a gender wage gap.

In the workforce, perhaps our adversary isn’t the male colleague. The women supporting women rhetoric? At times very true, at others stained with the competitiveness that’s ingrained in us since we were girls. Competing for a mate bleeds into competing for everything else. No, I don’t want your job or your husband, I want a mentor and a fulfilling career.

On Motherhood

Then there’s parenthood. As a woman, you’re dammed if do and you’re dammed if you don’t. Become a mother and you’re relegated to the role of housewife. Who cares if you have more education or a job you love, you get to stop everything to take your kid to their doctor’s appointment. Opt not to have children and you’re seen as a leper. Either way, once your reproductive years are behind you and your fuckability factor dwindles, our youth-obsessed culture has no more use for you. Better crawl back under the rock from which you came.

The abortion debate isn’t about the rights of the unborn child, it’s about control. If the state can control a woman’s right to choose they can control her job prospects and her ability to get a better education. Read: her ability to affect policy.

Why fund research into miscarriage, PMS, female orgasms, or menopause? These are female issues. Better to call women barren, crazy, frigid, or moody than invest in their wellbeing. Everyone would benefit from happier, healthier women, but no one stops to think we can do anything about any of it.

An awakening

Question your programming. Question what you’ve been taught.

We all benefit from equality. We all benefit from educating girls. We all benefit from believing women can be more than looks-obsessed, optimized consumers with butt lifts. We all benefit from believing in our women.

Happy International Women’s Day,

x KM

Dear Women: Have We Learned Nothing?