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Feminity Saved My Life
“Why do they never pass it to me?” The question passed through my mind at least once during each middle school P.E. class. The boys never gave me the ball, whatever we were playing even if I was half a foot taller than them, not to mention wide open.
This thought is probably my earliest memory of feminism. I had an “anything you can do, I can do better” attitude, especially when it came to boys doing things. I had to be better at sports, at school, at everything.
I don’t know where the mentality came from because I grew up in middle-of-nowhere Iowa in a conservative Christian family. The only conclusion I have come to is that the media I consumed engrained a feminist agenda into my head.
My TV Influence
Friends played on a continuous loop in my house in my childhood. To this day, I can quote entire episodes. Why was a conservative Christian family letting their first-grader watch this widely secular, and at times PG-13 rated, show? That’s a story for a different time.
I “blame” Friends for many of my problems early on in life because it shaped my thoughts on the world. For example, television made it seem like romantic relationships were the end goal in life. As soon as you found the one, you would be happy forever. Or that’s what a first grader interpreted from a story she didn’t fully…
