Gender Bender

The infamous gender bender day.

Firstly, for anyone who doesn’t know what a “gender bender” day is, it’s a day where the boys and girls, on their last day of school, swap uniforms. The boys wear skirts and the girls wear pants.

Upon observation, the guys were immediately uncomfortable, constantly weary of their exposure and felt immediate vulnerability – It then got me thinking. As girls, from a young age, we are forced to wear skirts as part of the uniform – irrespective of whether we are comfortable or not. The feeling of vulnerability is somewhat always etched beneath our skin from the moment we are forced to wear a skirt as part of uniform. We are conditioned to the fact that as girls “we are meant to dress a certain way and present ourselves a certain way”. Yet, when our legs are sexualized and our self-value lies on the length of a skirt, they wonder why we hold such low self-esteem. It is a fascinating thing to watch the girls cat call the boys, mutter offensive remarks and sexualize them as a joke.

It leads me to question whether we are conditioned in such a way that we see vulnerability as a weakness or an excuse to degrade another person, or, is it the fact that as women we are so subjected to receiving this kind of behavior, that it is almost second nature to dish out the same treatment we are given? It also bears the question of whether or not this is how sexism arises. Does our constant vulnerability give off the message that we are inferior? Does this apparent inferiority ingrain into the subconscious mind and give the indication that men are superior? Although these are presumptuous questions, they may hold some unknown truths. A skirt is something so simple that is a part of a woman’s life, but when the roles are reversed it is a remarkable table turn.

The most shocking thing to me was the comments. The most common ones being; “I now understand why you girls are always uncomfortable.”, and “I know why you feel so vulnerable now”. A simple thing happened. The males had to physically put themselves in our shoes to understand what exactly it felt like to be a girl. It took the literal experience to get them to understand the reality of our every day life, even if it was just a glimpse. Maybe this sheds some light to the fact that we should become more aware of the simplistic things that we are “expected” or “forced” to do as women from the words “it’s a girl”.