Let us journey back to the 1800’s. Oh, the dazzling dresses! The decadent soirees! The blatant oppression of women! What a picturesque time, so full of parties, so full of patriarchy. Now look at today. We might be sporting t-shirts and the questionable trend of skinny jeans instead of corsets and puffy dresses, but gender-defined stigmas are still a prominent issue. The 21st century woman is still expected to allow her gender to define her.

“What do I wear tomorrow?” is quite possibly the most haunting question ever. Women have to search through their closets, asking the question: But do you really think anybody will remember that I wore these pants yesterday? And why? Because we have allowed ourselves to feel the pressure of looking attractive. Unlike men, women are held to social standards that revolve around outward appearance. Even in the business world, a woman’s personal appearance is valued at a far higher level than it should be.

In November of 2012 Bloomberg Businessweek posted a poll on its social media outlets asking followers “Which business school has the most attractive female students?”. When even an acclaimed and respected business publication promotes the ojectification of women it seems nearly impossible that the rest of the world could accept females as anything more than a pretty face.

 Quick. What was the last movie you saw? If it was a romantic comedy, chances are it was something simple. A pretty girl’s life was in shambles, and then poof! A boy came along and magically, everything just started to plop into place. She has a promotion at work, she loses a couple of pounds, her sick dog is suddenly healed (okay, maybe not). The point is, her life was a mess without a boy. Cinema largely depicts women as unable to provide themselves with stable and happy lives. In reality, women are equipped with the strength to carry themselves through life. There are countless amounts of women who are skilled multitaskers, acting as involved mothers and bread-winners.

The true issue in society lies in the messages that young girls and even grown women are seeing. It seems that for every motivating and inspirational poster, there are two negative messages, subliminal or direct, that tell them “You’re not enough.” Society is doing itself a disservice by breaking down the female population rather than building them up. So much potential lies in the grasp of these young girls and women, but the world keeps knocking it out of their hands. We must reinvent our culture to understand that gender is nothing more than a pre-determined form of existence, and women have the capability of being powerful and contributing members of society.