‘Young Lady, You’re Distracting the Boys’: How Women Are Losing Their Bodily Autonomy

By Sophie Fagone 

It’s summer, one of the last days of school. The sun is out and it’s a hot day, half of which you will spend roasting away in a classroom. Obviously, the last thing you’d want to do is wear too much clothing. That’s where the trouble starts. 

New tank top? Shows your shoulders; that’s not allowed in school. Tennis skirt? It’s more than 10cm above the knee, which is also against dressing guidelines. 

For me, the selecting of clothes for school always happened subconsciously. I never batted an eye at the fact that I had to measure how short my skirt was just so that the guy next to me (who was more invested in his Nintendo anyway) would not get ‘distracted’ by me. Rules like this are what we’re used to. No one had ever shone a light on how much these rules take away our autonomy. Why is that?

It starts with the dress codes, but there are so many occasions in which women lose control of their bodies without even noticing it. Everyone that has been pregnant has had at least one person walk up to them and touch their belly without their consent. Since the focus is on the baby inside the belly, the person carrying it (and feeling the touch) subconsciously becomes irrelevant.

The list goes on and on. Women have been fined for being topless on the beach. Other women (aka a certain volleyball team) have been fined for not wearing short enough bottoms. We just can’t win. Even though these examples contradict each other, they all contribute to the same point: women often have no control over their bodies. The scariest part? Almost as often, we do not take this to be something unusual.

There is not a certain person or group of people to blame for this problem. It is more so a question of education: from birth onwards, generations of girls have been educated into submission. Rules in school or other communal institutions are as old as the places themselves; your mother and grandmother probably obeyed them. You have seen pregnant family members getting their bellies touched by strangers, so you are prepared for this to happen to you as well. Most people do not question if what their educators taught them is normal – it just gets accepted and passed on to further generations.

The other side to this is male education.  While women are told to be as small, submissive and dainty as they can, most men are told to ‘toughen up’, hide their feelings and just ‘be a man’. Society not allowing men to be vulnerable, show feelings and openly talk about personal problems has shaped the way many men approach the issue in question. Instead of treating connections with females as ways to prosper and learn, their guard is kept up and they try to demonstrate what they have been forced into being: the strong, numb guy that keeps everything in control and shows his power over ‘weaker’ individuals.

Obviously, this is a generalised view of gendered education, and I am very happy to say that I know lots of men that like being vulnerable and that do not adhere to the toxic masculinity standard. However, it would be wrong not to consider the fact that toxic masculinity still is a thing – and that it has been forced on most guys since childhood.

As stated above, this is not something to be blamed on a certain group of persons. The problem is more society’s unwillingness to migrate out of the comfort zone and welcome changes. Tradition is still deeply ingrained in most people – which isn’t inherently a bad thing – but a tradition or standard that has had a group of people suffer from the very start deserves to be replaced with a healthier approach.

So, how can we tackle this issue?

There are two things that are needed: education and patience. I think that most people do not even realise that society’s expectation for women to dress, act and take care of their appearance in a certain way deeply invades those women’s privacy and free will. If we truly want to change this, it is on everybody to draw attention to how oppressive these standards are. 

Awareness is the first step to bettering. I like to believe in the good in people; I think that after actually learning about the ways in which women’s bodily autonomy is robbed from them that a lot of people, especially men, will be surprised and hopefully willing to make positive changes in the way they approach women and what their own inherited biases are. Changing a societal standard that has been ingrained in people’s minds for generations on end does not happen overnight. Slow, gentle changes and passing our views onto the generations below will hopefully go a long way. 

Not everything will be smooth sailing, but I believe that we have the potential to lead new generations into a deeper understanding of each other and respectful ways of living together – no matter their gender, identity, or past standards.