#StupidGirlsAreNotAllowed

I frequently find myself getting irritated by Twitter or, more accurately, by people on Twitter – but no more so than I found myself this evening, when I happened upon the worldwide trending topic, #UglyGirlsAreNotAllowed. I don’t know why I bothered clicking on it; I don’t know why I ever bother clicking on the frequent sexist and racist crap that decorates Twitter like a tacky set of Christmas lights, but I think a part of me must be in disbelief that such ignorance and cruelty is allowed to permeate so freely through a social networking site used by the masses. And sure enough, there it was: a list of things “ugly girls” are not allowed to do, including “play hard to get”, “have a boyfriend” and “not give head”. I believe in freedom of speech, but there is a point when freedom of speech becomes bullying, and even when names are not used and the guilty culprit argues it is just a general attack, it is still an attack. You do not have to name names to be guilty of racism, homophobia or xenophobia, and you do not have to name names to be guilty of sexism; if you are guilty of any of the above things, you are a bully.

Singling out one person as a target of bullying is obviously damaging; I’ve been a victim of it myself, and while those responsible may have refused to identify themselves as “bullies” or seen their actions and their words as “a joke” or “a laugh – stop being so sensitive, gawwwd!”, the isolation, the self-hate and the fear that I felt as a result tells another story. And the effects are the same when you bully a group of people. I am not saying that there is such a thing as “ugly girls” (because who are we do judge what beauty and what ugly really is?), but there is certainly a belief in most girls and young women out there that they are ugly. Maybe not every day and maybe they don’t hate everything about themselves, but there will always be moments when they look into the mirror and see flesh that they don’t think should be there, spots which other people don’t seem to have and bits of them which are either too big or too small. In their minds, in that moment, they are ugly. The airbrushed, carefully made-up models that drape themselves over the front covers of the magazines which litter their desks stare back at them, and the voices of these thoughtless, ignorant tweets creep into the pages and talk to them: Ugly girls are not allowed to have boyfriends. Ugly girls are not allowed to play hard to get. Ugly girls are not allowed to not give head. And what does this ultimately result in? Not ugly girls, but insecure girls, underselling themselves, caving in to every little pressure heaped on them and believing that the crap they get is as much as they deserve. Funnily enough, this works a treat for certain pig-headed men without much going for them, whose only real chance of getting laid is in preying on someone a bit vulnerable. Strange how that works out, huh?

This is exactly why it makes no sense for women to be attacking other women; in doing so, they are inadvertently making it a whole lot easier for men. Instead of standing together and waving the two-fingered sign of Girl Power (trademark of the Spice Girls, probably), they turn that two-fingered salute around and say “Up yours!” to their fellow sisters. It is done out of insecurity, of not wanting to be the one who stands out and of wanting to be accepted by those who hold all the power (men), but it only serves to place them further back. I am tired of belonging to a group which men happily identify as “bitches”; of course, they want us to talk badly about one another and vie for their attention as if winning their attention is somehow the equivalent to winning a nice, big, sexy slice of chocolate cake – but in calling us “bitches”, they are able to disregard us; they are able, with the help of you “bitches”, to silence us. And ultimately, in silencing women you are silencing yourself.