Everyone can agree that social media has evolved throughout the years and manipulated our sense of empathy. Young adults speaking up and creativity has increased, but so has depression and cyber bullying, as well as your amount of privacy decreasing.
Social media has also played a major role in the increase of female on female bashing. When signing into your Facebook or Instagram account, it is highly likely to see a meme of a woman comparing herself side by side to another woman.
However, the other woman may refer to a group of women, not just one. Either way, this bashing must end. It is very common for females to criticize another female on their dream job, opinions, appearance and even speech.
Why must women put down other women, instead of being encouraging and supportive? Why must we be in competition with one another? We clearly must have forgotten that women have been tyrannized for centuries.
We’ve been fighting for equality for so long, and for other women who are supposed to be uplifting to be the main ones to put us down, just takes us back to square one.
Women should be able to look at themselves in the mirror and not wish they looked different or like someone else. Nevertheless, because social media has portrayed women to have a certain look, women feel self-conscious and wish for body shapes and appearances that they were not meant to have.
There are memes that say, “me vs. your girlfriend” and there are two pictures side by side of a very well put together woman and then the picture next to it is a not so well put together woman. Bashing someone’s girlfriend for whatever the reason may be should not be acceptable.
We have grown up believing that certain biases are the norm. Many have condemned Cardi B, a hip-hop recording artist, because she used to be an exotic dancer. Instead of praising her success as an artist, most focus on her previous career, which has nothing to do with her current lifestyle.
If women continue to bash one another, men will think it is fine to say hurtful things to or about another woman; leading us right back where we started years ago and soon becoming the norm as well.
A female being disparaged by another woman may cause low self-esteem in the victim. They may start to feel discouraged or worthless. We need to be compassionate and understanding with one another.
The former First Lady, Michelle Obama, has pretty much always been under criticism. Most people want to focus on what she does wrong instead of focusing on what she has done right. Americans bashing Mrs. Obama has created a gateway for higher powers to attack her as well.
If us women allow this behavior to be continual, everything previous feminists have fought for will have been for nothing. It is time to progress and move forward. We are stronger than we think.
Female on female bashing has to come to an end. We have categorized ourselves as light skinned, dark skinned, skinny, slim, thick, or fat; when in reality, we’re all just women. What you allow is what will continue. Us females have to stand our ground and stick together. We need to enforce change as a whole, not individuals.
Email Tamiyha Carter at cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
