Oppression in the Neo-Consumer Age

The older I get, the more I look around and see the injustices of modern society. I live in America, so I can only speak from an American perspective, but there is definitely something wrong going on here. 

Recently, for my English class, we had to create an essay question in which we contemplated a controversial subject. One of my good friends' question was "How does dress coding in schools enforce rape culture?" And ever since then, it got me thinking about all the different ways sexism is perpetuated in our modern society. It's the underlying message in songs, advertisements, movies, television shows, and of course, clothing. The more I paid attention, the angrier I got. I bought a Glamour magazine, and one of the cover stories was about what bathing suits guys prefer girls to wear. It made me sick. Why does it matter what a guy thinks about my bathing suit if I feel good about it? Women should dress for themselves, not men, but that seems to be a fact we continually forget or ignore.  

The reason I am writing this post today is because I was just made to change my clothes. By my parents. I came down wearing really cute red shorts with a 5 inch inseam that my mother bought me last spring, and white short-sleeved shirt from H&M. My dad saw me and told me I couldn't be dressed skimpier if I tried. I don't know what century he's living in, but it's like he hasn't looked around since the 80's. He honestly believes people don't dress any skimpier. And the worst part is my mom backed him up even though she bought me the shorts. So, because it's Mother's Day I changed to avoid conflict but not without an underlying resentment towards my parents. The skirt I put on instead does not go all the way to my knees but if I wear it low enough on my waist it seems to. The shorts offered better coverage overall, but they're shorter than the skirt so my parents had a problem with them. 

It just makes me so angry that I still have to bend to the archaic ideals of my parents. The problem is that by enforcing such BS rules, we are no closer to achieving equality between men and women. If women have to continually watch out for what they're wearing in fear of men's reactions, we are no better than we were 50, 100, 150 years ago. And it makes me so angry.