As Madeline Landa wrote in an article for Her Campus: “growing up as young girls, we are constantly bombarded by media that suggests that femininity means weakness.” Damsels in distress, women who seem to be unable to do anything to help themselves, are often portrayed as the pinnacle of femininity. Take Snow White, whose primary personality traits are being able to cook and wanting a prince to save her. Along with damsels in distress similar to her, Snow White becomes one of our first female role models as young girls. Young boys get robots, warriors, and knights. What do we get? Virtually from birth, young girls are taught that to be a woman is to be weak; and that we all have an inherent need to be saved by a big strong man. Unfortunately, many similarly sexist ideals pushed onto us throughout our childhood remain with us throughout our lives, and eventually, they seep into every aspect of our society.

To start, let’s define what misogyny is in the first place. While sexism is a very general term for discrimination based on someone’s sex or gender, misogyny specifically describes discrimination against women or people perceived to be women. Misogyny can happen interpersonally, which means that it occurs between people, but it can also happen on a far larger scale. However, no one is born a misogynist. It’s something that’s taught to us, and only we can control how we unlearn it.

When I was seven, I heard the phrase “boys will be boys” so many times that the words almost seemed to lose their meaning. At the time, I was in grade one, and I was absolutely terrified of a young boy in the grade below me. Every day, he’d track me down no matter where I hid and laugh as he pulled my hair. Of course, this wasn’t serious, and it’s nothing compared to other forms of bullying many experience in elementary school. But seven-year-old me wouldn’t let the harassment slide, and I told the adults in my life about what the boy was doing. Every time, I’d get the same response: “boys will be boys.” “He’s only doing it because he likes you.” “Calm down.” 

But why is “boys will be boys” such a harmful idea? Well, it excuses the actions of young boys, pinning their aggressive behaviour on “‘natural’ or ‘biological’ impulses, without examining other reasons for the aggression,” according to an article written by Psychology Today. It brushes off their actions, and not only does it normalize their violent tendencies (especially towards women), but it also removes responsibility from boys who should be owning up to things they’ve done. “Boys will be boys” also teaches children that male violence is something that’s normal and should be expected. Many young girls are never taught that this sort of violence isn’t okay, which leads to them seeing it as normal when they experience it in adulthood. 

“Boys will be boys,” and the general attitude of nonchalance towards violence perpetrated by men isn’t an issue that only impacts the lives of children. As an example of “boys will be boys” affecting adults, we can look to the case of Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh was a man nominated by former president of the United States Donald Trump to become a justice on the Supreme Court (where many decisions pivotal to the function of the United States are made). He was accused of sexual assault by a woman named Christine Blasey Ford, who said that Kavanaugh and a friend of his assaulted her when she was 15 and they were 17. Due in part to the use of the “boys will be boys” ideology to relieve Kavanaugh of responsibility for his actions, he was still appointed to the Supreme Court. I don’t think young boys should be expected to atone for every mistake they’ve ever made, but where do we draw the line where we force them to grow up? When do we teach young girls and people affected by misogyny that assault isn’t normal, regardless of the gender of the perpetrator? When do we let go of “boys will be boys” and start holding men accountable for their actions? 

Body image is something that we all struggle with, but unfortunately, for young girls in particular, it’s an incredibly pressing issue. As children, we’re constantly learning and forming opinions based on the things we are taught, and also the things we see. Now, the average child with access to a television watches about 20,000 commercials a year. Since so many commercials and media in our society focus on just one body type (one that is conventionally attractive and skinny), many young girls whose bodies don’t look like the ones they are told are “beautiful” become insecure about the way they look.

Most of us can probably agree that adult women’s bodies are hyper-criticized in our world, but that scrutiny begins impacting people in their childhoods. In fact, research has proven that children as young as 3 can have issues with how they see their bodies. In the book Unbearable Weight, Susan Bordo says that dieting/diet culture is so normalized that otherwise healthy teenagers force themselves into restrictive diets to “try to emulate the impossible images they see”. In addition, a nonprofit group called Common Sense Media conducted a study in the United States which showed that “1 in 4 children had dieted [in some way] by the age of 7”. The insecurities instilled into young girls in their childhoods don’t disappear with age, and for many, they actually get worse, as studies have proven that women are far more likely than men to develop eating disorders. Since so much of the media young girls consume is focused on only one standard of beauty, insecurities have become a staple of girlhood. When talking about women’s portrayal in media, we need to consider the way that young girls’ self-image is impacted.

So far, the forms of misogyny we’ve examined are external, which means that they represent things that are happening to women because of other people’s thoughts and actions. But what happens when young girls internalize the misogyny that they’re taught? Femininity, or simply the act of being like society’s ideal of what a woman should be, is not only portrayed as weak, but in many ways it’s also demonized. As an example, we can look to the cult classic film Mean Girls (2004), where new girl Cady Heron tries to get used to the intricacies of high school hierarchies. As Cady starts at her school, she’s innocent and kind and wears more traditionally masculine clothes. They’re on the looser side, and her outfits mainly consist of blue and green flannels and collared shirts. However, the titular mean girls of the school are villainous and hyper-feminine in the way that they dress. As Cady integrates into the mean girl clique, she becomes crueller and crueller, and as her morals deteriorate, she becomes more feminine. 

Media that portrays feminine women as annoying, self-obsessed, and rude rubs off on the young girls who are consuming it. Because of this, some girls develop an aversion to femininity and women who are feminine. In recent years, this phenomenon has been given a name: “not like other girls,” or “nlog” for short. I’ve gone through a “not like other girls” phase, where I hated dresses, makeup, and the colour pink, which led to me having a level of disdain for women that loved those same things. At one point, it got so bad that I would make my mom rip off the parts of my name tags that had pink on them; I was that scared of being seen as feminine. Luckily, as I got older, I was able to grow past those ideas, but many young girls hold on to the misogyny they’ve internalized even as they mature.

In conclusion, there are clear parallels between what forms of misogyny are taught to children and what forms of misogyny are large issues in our society. Due to young boys’ actions being excused by “boys will be boys” and similar phrases, adult men aren’t held accountable and many women begin to believe that male violence is normal. Since young girls are exclusively shown impossible standards of beauty, girls and women develop severe body image issues and eating disorders throughout their lives. Lastly, because young girls are taught that femininity is weakness and something to be ashamed of, they develop internalized misogyny that pursues them throughout their adulthood. However, these ideologies can be unlearned! If we want to make our society more equitable, we all need to recognize the ways we’ve been taught misogyny and commit to fighting against it.