What objects tell the story of your life?

“Who’s taking you to the dance?” I found the note from middle school on my desk and it brought me back to the first time where I realized how pervasive gender bias was.

It seemed as though the craze over the upcoming dance was a virus and all of the middle schoolers had been infected. I never quite bought into the whole phenomenon, despite friends surrounding me who all lauded it as the most important event in all of middle school. After all, what’s so important about fancy dresses and dancing? In reflecting how this pervasive tradition was treated by my class – through endless lunchtime conversations, text messages, and Facebook posts – I now realize that the institution of dances reinforces many of our culture’s damaging attitudes towards women.  The version of my peers and me that took form through the dance was not one that I valued or even recognized.

Trying to resist being drawn into the obsession, I took a step back and observed the drama unfolding before me. I saw how my class was on a quest to pair every girl with a boy, yet girls were expected to wait for a boy to ask them; the decision of who goes with whom is solely up to the men and girls are expected to say yes no matter what. To channel those who support this system: The poor boy would be so embarrassed if he worked up the confidence and you said no! Better suck it up and make it through. After all, it’s just one night.

Dances, as innocuous as they seem, impart silent and damaging lessons. While going to a dance with someone you don’t like may not seem problematic at first, it actively teaches girls not to say “no.” Juxtapose this with the new, very important “Yes Means Yes” campaign of affirmative consent for sexual activity, and you can see the inconsistency in message. I want to feel safe and my voice to be heard and respected. The implicit norms underlying dances puts that at risk. If women are taught to always say yes and men are taught to expect it, how can we assume that if someone says no, it will be taken seriously?

By abiding to the rules of dances, we also teach women that they must bend to the whims of the men around them. By telling me that I have to wait around to get asked by a boy, I am taught not to take action for myself, not to pursue my interests; I am taught that my greatest asset is my ability to be quiet, patient, and pretty. Is that what we want to be teaching our sisters and daughters?

To reject these norms, I asked one of my best female friends to be my date in a satirical take on the “dance proposals” of our classmates. Then the joking-but-not-quite-joking statements commenced: “Mallika, I didn’t know you were interested in girls… like that.” “So, Mallika, are you going gay for Corinne?” I was shocked: no one questions when a man chooses to go to a dance with a female friend, but when two women go together as friends, it becomes an ordeal. The backlash was eye-opening. I felt a taste of the overt bias towards heterosexuality that my gay friends struggle with every day. Even in a fairly progressive and open-minded community, an inkling of something different makes people uncomfortable and defensive.

On the one hand, I became even more uncomfortable on the subject of dances, trying to avoid the awkward conversations and the whispers; once, I fled to the bathroom rather than confront yet another inquisitive face. Yet another part of me reveled in doing what I wanted rather than what was expected; in making people uncomfortable. I hoped that I would make the implicit stupidity of dance’s expectations explicit.

My thoughts:

The introduction is weird, let me know if you have any suggestions!

Also sorry about the weird formatting