Put it down! You’re a girl!

I’m a 16 year old girl from Orange County, California. I recently went to a camp 3 hours north, in a large rural forest. We were busy preparing for a drama performance on the last day, and moving furniture was one of the tasks. The counselors asked some guys to move the tables, saying “Show us your muscles! Work them!”

I decided to be useful and started moving a table. A counselor (female) then said: “Vanessa! Put that table down! You’re gonna hurt your back! You’re a GIRL!”

I was shocked and offended, as I had NEVER encountered such sexism.

2 comments

  • hi vanessa! it’s actually very shocking to me that you have NEVER encountered this. this happens to me all the time. in this case, i would say that people believing that guys should do the heavy lifting can be both an advantage and disadvantage. let me tell you why:
    -advantage: you are never expected to carry anything too heavy and guys (at least the more considerate ones) will volunteer to help you. and it’s good to let the guys grow up a bit and stop being immature and unhelpful sometimes.
    -disadvantage: you don’t get the chance to get more muscles and it takes awhile to convince the guys to let you carry something heavy.

    i’m not surprised that your female counselor said that because though it is not true, some girls really cannot lift heavy things, many are a lot weaker than the average guy and i wouldn’t trust them with heavy things either. but for me, i volunteer to carry heavy or big things all the time, and in the beginning, the guys kept volunteering to help me, after awhile, they started to try to get the things before i can get to carry it so i wouldn’t have to, but eventually i earned the reputation of being quite strong so they’ll let me carry it, but if they really insisted, i would just let them carry it for the sake of their “manliness”. haha whenever people say “put it down! let me carry it, you’re going to get hurt!” i laugh because it’s so funny, i’ve already carried it more than half way and i’ve done this a bunch of times already. you’re actually NOT helping if you carry it the rest of the way, it’s actually a burden. please don’t be silly.

  • A

    Vanessa, that may have been the first time you’ve ever heard something like that, but I’m betting it won’t be the last. Here’s what you should do… if you have your counselors contact info, send her a link to to Girls Can’t WHAT? and maybe even direct her to a specific page, like this one: https://www.girlscantwhat.com/girls-cant-lift-weights/ that contains a video of womens weightlifting at the Olympics.

    Education is the key to ending sexism. ;)

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