It’s 2021— Why Do We Still Expect Women to Make Themselves Smaller?

This one is going to be a doozie.

Recently, my Instagram account was hacked (again) by some creepy, invasive spam-bot that stole my photos and is attempting to use them to sell— get this— lewd content. Now, I’m not sure how typical pictures of me in a swimsuit at the beach or in a sweater at the pumpkin patch suggest selling lewd content (and I’m not hating on people who do sell it— you do you, sis), but the most alarming thing about it was not the pictures themselves being stolen to advertise something false, but the response I got from other people, mostly women, online about my internet presence.

I was told the gamut of sexist vitriol— from, “well, stop posting pictures of yourself” to “well, make your account (which you use to promote your modeling and acting career and personal brand you built from the ground up) PRIVATE SO NO ONE CAN SEE IT BLAH BLAH BLAH”— okay, I’m getting a bit heated, but my point is this: why, in 2021, is the conversation still around women making themselves smaller to make other people more comfortable?

This is a deeply misogynistic point of view, and I’m simply asking “Why?”

Why do we still do this? In this day and age? Let’s discuss it more in depth—

Why do we expect women to make themselves smaller, so others will feel more “comfortable” in their sexism?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said,

“We teach girls to shrink themselves
To make themselves smaller
We say to girls
’You can have ambition
But not too much
You should aim to be successful
But not too successful
Otherwise you will threaten the man’”

And guess what? She’s right. Even before Beyoncé sampled this fire speech for her equally as fire track, “Flawless”, she was right. And she still is.

We ask women to shrink themselves (whether it’s posting less on social media, speaking up less in meetings, so on and so forth) and we always have. History books and historical texts are littered with this kind of thing— and people misinterpret and twist them to still keep women quiet. And I must ask— WHY? Why are we still doing this?

I don’t have the answers, but I will say this— I don’t ever plan to quiet or tamper myself down just to make someone else more comfortable. Sorry, not sorry— it’s just not happening. Meanwhile, maybe next time you want to say something sexist about a woman making herself smaller, just don’t.

This is a much larger discussion, so let’s discuss. Why do we think this still occurs, and how can we stand up in the face of it?

Xoxo, MM.