.We Are Raising Our Daughters To Be Masochists.

My original thought was 'eyeliner'. My original intent was to write about the kinds of things women willingly put themselves through, usually for the sake of beauty. As I thought though, I realized more unwilling examples from throughout history. A web page that I found at work, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has an article on how religion hurts women's rights. It points out that,

The various Christian churches fought tooth and nail against the advancement of women, opposing everything from women's right to speak in public, to the use of anesthesia in childbirth (since the bible says women must suffer in childbirth) and woman's suffrage.

I hate to think how many women also had to suffer through dehabilitating menstrual cramps their whole lives, before modern medicine. Corsets caused physical damage. (Today it's narrow shoes.) Female genital mutilation still occurs in various parts of the world, despite laws, a tradition often imposed on the next generation by the women themselves.

I have plans to research more extensively into women's history for a personal project, specifically to find out where and why women became considered second class citizens. For now though, I will continue this article as to the original idea… and that was: Eyeliner hurts!