Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Boys and boys' body image and clothes have become just as important an issue for boys as for girls.
I grew up in a cloistered, conservative culture that adhered to strict gender roles. So it's easy to understand why the 'girl dressed as a boy' trope resonated so much. In a world that didn't want to give people like me adventures or significance, books with cross-dressing girls were treasures.
There can be a lot of pressure on girls to dress the way they wouldn't normally dress: on social media, at school, among friends.
There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful; boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful.
There are stereotypes that have been out there for a long time that tell girls that their main asset, the main thing that they are valued for, is their appearance and also that it's to the exclusion of anything else.
Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn't matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
I think that we could be more careful about what we're saying to young women in terms of their expectations. It's unrealistic to expect people to always be in designer clothes. Girls growing up deserve more freedom in how they look and how they feel about how they look.
Having boys is different. Boys, you put sneakers on, and they're out, they're ready. Girls, you gotta pay a little bit more attention to them.
Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power.
Boys can just wear a suit on the red carpet and that's fine, but for girls it's all about the way you look, and there are constant comparisons.