Being a Woman

This may seem like an odd topic to be worried about - I would appear to have managed it so far for 29 years without any major difficulties.  But it struck me over the past few days just how much pressure us women are constantly under.  I read a very interesting article in the New Statesman about young women and their fear of attack - the author had experienced a traumatising episode herself and mentioned others.  First of all, I realised that I have been very lucky in my life to have rarely found myself in a situation where I truly felt at risk of being attacked; then I began to consider that perhaps I should be more worried about it than I am.  I reflected over past experiences where I had definitely been out of control of the situation, and that perhaps it was more a case of luck than judgement that I had escaped more or less unscathed all these years.  Other than the sheer physical difference between the average male and the average female, what is it that makes a woman walking alone more frightened or wary than a man walking alone would do?  It boils down, in my mind, to the basic objectification of women and the attitudes of both men and women to this.  My example being: When I go to the gym I brush my hair, I wear clean clothes, I check that my top isnt tucked into my tracksuit bottoms or my bra poking out.  I don't wear makeup (what a waste!) and I don't set out to "look hot" but I consider my appearance and ensure that I am not looking like an idiot.  I walk through the gym safe in the knowledge that anyone who looked at me would have the best possible impression of me at first glance.  Although not a conscious thought, I reckon the majority of women in the gym do the same - its rare to see a lady with her shorts tucked in her big pants or wearing a stained t-shirt.  But I cannot imagine a man having the same thought processes or the same concerns before starting their workout - they're not there to pick up ladies, they're there to lift weights and sweat. And this isn't an argument for or against vanity or suggesting that women are parading peacocks for the male of the species - simply that we are programmed in some way to know that we are going to be looked at and considered by the opposite sex - positively, negatively or neutrally.  And this is surely a pre-cursor to the fear of attack - we walk alone knowing somehow that we will be appraised visually, and objectified.  And an object that is wanted can be taken and possessed, can be used for whatever purpose you see fit.  Now that gets me onto worrying about domestic violence but thats a whole other subject.
We women, on the whole, spend  a significant part of our time waxing, brushing, washing, filing, polishing, buffing and generally preening to meet with, or try to look the way we think we want to look.  And I fail to be convinced by anyone who tells me this is truly the way they want to live - I would much rather be enjoying a glass of wine with my friends than having my pubes ripped out, trust me.  I want to look nice, and be proud of my appearance, but so much of my expectation or hopes in relation to the way I look are based on the totally unrealistic vision presented to us by the media.  And kids are subjected to these pictures of "women" from such a young age, that it becomes normal for teenagers to expect to see a porn-star perfect foo at their first sexual encounter, or that all women should be as thin as Victoria Beckham, or have mahoosive boobs like Katie Price.  So the pressure is there from the get-go for girls to live up to an impossible norm, and we make such a good go of it that we perpetuate the fallacy.   I know this is nothing new, Im not making ground breaking realisations - I read Caitlin Moran, The Vagenda - this has all been said before.  But it worries me, more and more, that I will never be perfect enough, never be thin enough, never be smooth enough to meet this expectation of me that I place on myself.  And that the expectation is grounded in the fact that everywhere I go I know I'm being sized up by viewing eyes (not in a Samantha Brick-esque self-congratulatory way, and no doubt more often than not in an entirely neutral and inoffensive manner). 
I worry that as now my generation of young women are beginning to notice the total unfairness and lunacy of the body beautiful rituals that are expected of us, whole new generations after us are starting it themselves, and at even younger ages.  How can we possibly keep up?  If I consider defoliating my bikini area as a chore, will our kids consider getting their vajazzle re-jazzled as "just one of those things you gotta do?".  And so we perpetuate the objectification by succumbing to it. 

Oh god, and I havent even mentioned career, money, meeting a life partner, childbirth and rearing, periods, menopause, old age, wrinkles and the other million things that worry me about Being a Woman.  K x