Apparent Freedom: women and the struggle of playing a man’s game
We have recently touched on the connection between fashion and patriarchy to demonstrate that women aren’t really free to make decisions for themselves.
If, in the Arabic world, freedom is a male prerogative, what happens in the western world is not much different. Women believe they are free, but their image reflects a male perspective. There’s a filter in women’s brains, a male setting made of centuries of cultural domination.
Look at what happened in the U.S., where some older men just passed an abortion ban, sending the country backwards and triggering big debates worldwide. The joke is that perhaps Americans went to Afghanistan to train with the Taliban. But when the sad laugh ends, the concern grows. Indeed, you can see that patriarchy is still very much alive.
Being a female-led company, we suffer every time we hear women saying: “I cannot buy this dress because my husband doesn’t like it.” Of course, it’s not about the dress itself but because we are the only ones who can decide if we like something or not. We cannot allow someone else to rule us, knowing that someone else is often a man.
Likewise, women must be the only ones with a voice in matters concerning our bodies.
Are women truly free?
In analysing whether women are truly free to make decisions, we understand that being a woman isn’t a free choice. The vision of a woman is a male representation because those who hold the power and who make the rules are men. And so, they impose beauty standards, the clothing we should wear, and dictate our rights too. Even whether women can study or have an abortion is up to their whim. In other words, women, by engaging in or conforming to societal structures dictated by men, inadvertently perpetuate those systems of control.
If we allow men to decide what we can wear and how we should look, we hand them the power to make decisions about our lives.
This story is about men who want to control women and women who, by playing their game, enable it.
Wake up, women! It’s time to shed patriarchal layers and choose what we want for ourselves.