emmahyphenjane:

unicornicopia:

Today this showed up on my dash.  It’s not the first time (and it will in all likelihood will not be the last time) that this kind of attitude has popped up, and I wish I could kill it with fire.  As my buddy Heather likes to point out, there is no wrong way to be a girl.  I wish people would stop putting down other women and invalidating their choices because they don’t match their own.  It doesn’t matter if a girl prefers facebook to tumblr, makeup to a bareface or shopping to videogames, because she is a complex human being, who doesn’t deserve to be written off because she doesn’t match your idea of what’s special or different. Please stop simplifying women to caricatures.

Reblogging this. I don’t generally post personal stuff here, but the following happened to me last week (and I have been criticised quite a bit about this since I was a teenager), and I saw this on my dash, I figured it was a sign!

For the past two months we had a girl working with us doing admin stuff. We had a few issues with her work – mainly her messing up a certain amount of things she was doing (like sending cheques to the wrong company & filling out forms all wrong), so we figured we weren’t going to renew her contract. Anyway, before we could inform her, she told us she was leaving. Why? because of me. Because, according to her words, I was not a real girl, and therefore it was a chore to work around me. She the went on to say that I never wanted to chat (well, when I’m at work, I actually work) and that I clearly didn’t take care of myself (ie I don’t wear make up or perfume or do up my hair).

I wasn’t really upset by what she said, because I know she was just lashing out, and it’s easier to be mean and blame others rather than question one’s own ability to be good at one’s job, but it did make me angry.

How I am not a real girl? And what gives her the right to judge me? Why should I have to defend myself? On several occasions, this girl made hurtful comments towards me… about my appearance (that I should dress like a grown-up), about my body (that I was unusually big-boned), about my eating habits (I’m a bit of a work-a-holic, I will admit, so lunch sometimes gets forgotten). But what gives her the right to say that I’m not a real girl? What gives her the right to criticise my appearance? And even worse, that this apparently makes me impossible to be around?

I’m prone to self-doubt, but I do know that her points are not valid. I may not be a girly-girl, and I may have some traits more common in men (I’m driven, ambitious and outspoken), but that does not mean I am not a girl.

My coworkers have been incredibly supportive, that everything she said was bull and they keep telling me this girl is an idiot.

But I’m still angry.