Meet Zara Morgan
As this month's featured article, Zara talks about her experiences of the effects of gender stereotyping, and how challenging these can benefit us.
In today’s world, the way people think of you are, unfortunately, a massive part of our lives. Social media has meant that people can comment about a person, without them ever knowing who has said it. Toxic ideas about fashion are spread the same way; typical things include ‘boys can’t wear dresses’, or ‘girls should be ladylike’ and ‘tomboys shouldn’t exist’. These ideas become engrained in us, and whether we like it or not, they affect how we see ourselves and others. For people with insecurities (which is most people, let’s be honest) or people who may be questioning their identity for example, these stereotypes that are forced into us can be extremely damaging.
"Dresses are for
women only"
I’m very aware of the impacts these ideas have on people, and have seen first-hand what they can result in, so I decided that I would live my life purposely challenging as many fashion stereotypes as possible, in the hopes that I would change how people perceived others. The easiest place to start was to ditch dresses and skirts and swap them for a blazer and trousers. I have encountered quite a few people who firmly believe that dresses are for women only (sorry boys) and a suit and tie should be worn only by men. By switching to the latter, it was made completely obvious to me what people thought. I even had a few people telling me to ‘dress like a woman’.
"Try not to look like a teenage boy"
There is also the assumption that women have to wear clothes that are so tight they almost cut off all blood circulation. This simply isn’t true. Even though there has been a rise in baggy clothing, I started making the conscious decision to wear as little tight clothing as I could. Now you’d have thought that the rise in this type of fashion would mean that comments and funny looks would have stopped, or at least be very rare, but I got quite a few telling me that I should ‘highlight my figure’ and that I should ‘try not to look like a teenage boy’. Now for any person who is questioning their identity, or identifies as transgender, queer, or non-binary, these comments can be incredibly hard to deal with, and too many could cause massive mental health issues.
That’s why I’ve been doing this. To prove that it doesn’t matter what someone says to you about the way you look or dress, the only thing that is important is that you feel good in your own body. I’ve been living my life challenging fashion stereotypes, and you should too, because I feel a whole lot better in my own skin having taken a stand against these stereotypes that still exist today.