Toxic Femininity

You probably must’ve heard this term only a couple of times, because media doesn’t talk much about this subject. The traits of this toxicity are so normalized that we fail to realize its presence around us & how it affects our thought process about ourselves. For generations, women have been a victim of patriarchy & one of the horrendous by-product of it is Toxic Femininity. It is when someone ignores one’s own comfortability with the situation just to work on fulfilling the demands of others. Doing so, a person can experience exhaustion, mental tiredness, anxiety, numbness, & various self-sabotaging feelings that are sometimes considered as “normal” symptoms of stress. But we never question the deep, underlying reason behind these emotions & feelings. There can be plenty & this is one of them. I am sure most of the women out there have experienced toxic femininity & the examples shock me to the core. Because it is done by women, against other women!!!! Women are told to be soft spoken, gentle, sensitive & remain silent to the patriarchal dominance. So, when a woman, who has an unconventional mindset towards life, tries to break the outdated stereotypes set for them & decides to speak up against any injustice towards them, some other woman with pent up insecurity & internalized misogyny try to tear them down by going against their life choices. For instance, if a woman doesn’t support the idea of marriage or having kids to support her own dreams & aspirations in life, she assumed as “selfish sl*t”, sometimes by her own women group. Why? Because since ages, women were told to take care of the entire household & were even told to give up on their dreams to support their spouse’s. These women try to push these sick ideologies on the upcoming generation of women, instead of fighting back the social system & breaking the chain of torture. Toxic Femininity is when a woman accepts injustice/any harmful action to maintain or raise their value in the eyes of the men. For instance, women are often made to rethink their outfit choices if they don’t fit the “preferences” of men & this is done by their own female friends or family. They either “slut-shame” a woman for wearing a tank top or call them “boring/backward” if they wear something traditional. The women who shame other women for their preferences are major carriers of toxic femininity.  We tend to slide it off as it is coming from a woman & we end up thinking it is okay. WHEN IT IS NOT!!!! Toxic Femininity is also about self-destructive behavior that is being practiced by a lot of women to appear/seem more “feminine”. One of the classic examples for this is excessive body modification surgeries that can be life threatening & some of the women do it under extreme societal pressure to fit in the dreadful beauty standards. We’ve been fighting to demolish patriarchy for decades now & we’ve made certain progress with it. Although, its existence has given rise to some other diseases such as this subject & in future, there might be more! But if we try to understand these diseases & their causes, we can at least try to reduce them from our ends. Toxic Femininity has been deeply rooted into the minds of our women. The examples that I have listed are just 1/1000000^th part of it, there are so many instances that we still aren’t aware whether they can be considered as toxic or not. But if it feels wrong to you, even if a bit, try to analyze & understand its roots. “I’m not like other girls”, “Don’t act tough, you might scare the men off”, making fun of other women in front of men to come off as attractive, “You’re a h*e” if you have large breasts, “You’re a man” if you have flat chest, “Real women have curves”, horrific normalization of abuse towards your spouse/partner since “men are stronger”, demeaning homemakers & corporate women for their work preferences, taking disadvantage of women’s rights to falsely accuse men with some serious charges or to falsely use them to gain “power” over another gender, justifying negative behavior during period are few other examples/statements that are used by some women to hid their toxic femininity towards other women. Now that we know what Toxic Femininity really looks like, I hope we stand up against it & educate people, especially women & help them to change their mindset on this. The more we educate, the more we tear down the deadly social system of patriarchy.