This past month I had to read The Scarlet Letter for my English class, against my will of course. At first I dreaded every day I had to read the 8-11 pages in order to read the book by the deadline. But me, being the good student I am, did it anyways. At first I really didn’t like the book, it had all these old words that aren’t fun to read and it was boring. Turns out that the book ended up being decent, and I related to it. A LOT.
You see, The Scarlet Letter is about a women named Hester Prynne who had a child from an affair, Pearl, and took all the blame for it. She was shunned, put in jail, looked down on and forced to wear an A on all her clothes without ever throwing the father of the child under the bus. Don’t know why because I would have made that mad suffer just as much as me, but she obviously has better morals than I do. This made me think though, why is it that she suffered for her mistake not only with herself but also publicly, while the father (who is just as guilty) got to go on with his everyday life? Makes no sense to me, then I realized that this is a double standard AND society puts so many outrageous/ridiculous standards on people. So I am addressing this problem, I know my letter won’t change everything but hopefully it will bring some awareness to this issue.
I have never been one to really care about double standards or any standards us women have, they are what they are and I just do whatever it takes to be accepted. This book, however did make me angry and now I am writing about what made me so angry. Hester Prynne took all the heat for this child and was “slut-shamed” for one mistake. She was banished to live by herself and society made it very hard for her to thrive. It takes two to tango people!! Hester did the best she could to be accepted, but she knew she couldn’t change anything. Society already had their opinions about her, but what about the dad, Dimmesdale?! Why did he not have to suffer? Sure he suffered mentally and felt guilty, but he never had to be publicly humiliated and shamed. In the public’s eye, he was a perfect guy and he didn’t’ want to jeopardize his reputation, selfish.
I have also witnessed these double standards at school, and with my friends. I’m sure you have too. I had a friend hook up with a guy she had been talking to for a couple weeks, after a month of them hooking up, it got out. She was humiliated, didn’t even want to go to school. She was getting judged for what she had done all while this boy was getting praised. No one cared that he had screwed over my friend, all while no one would except that she had hooked up with him and get over it. It was so sad to watch and hear what people would say, because it works both ways. Everyone expected him to sleep with girls and get around, so what he did was okay with society. While nobody expected her to sleep with anyone, cause it’s not what women do. This happens a lot, and it needs to stop. It happens all over the world, not just where I live or you live. There are girls in Los Angeles that get sent home because they are showing too much skin, while the boys are walking around in cut-offs. They get points deducted in debates because they are girls and have a higher pitched voice. You and I can’t help that we are women and we can’t just magically get rid of all these standards, but we can raise awareness.
I want you to be who you want to be. I don’t want women, like you and me, to feel like we have to be anything we don’t want to be. You are you and nothing society says should make you want to change that. There shouldn’t be one standard for me and a different standard for the boy sitting next to me in science. You be what you want to be and nothing else, and society can just sit back and watch us.
