Many women simply don’t see why this double standard should exist. Refusing to knuckle under this expectation, women decided to trend #Womanspreading. Hundreds of women posted pictures of themselves in poses that would be considered unconventional and unladylike – with their legs apart. This has a dual purpose: it is meant to create awareness around the way that many men conduct themselves in public spaces and also a way for women to strike a power pose and make a statement reclaiming their spaces in public.
There have been adverse reactions, as expected. The Facebook page of the MRA (Men's Rights Activism) Universe responded with a series of pictures that showed women taking up space in public transport, claiming that this is not a gender issue at all; merely a matter of poor transit etiquette. Obviously, others also had opinions on women behaving in what they termed as an ‘unbecoming’, ‘uncouth’ or ‘unladylike’ manner.
Many people just don’t like change. When they see things around them being different than what they are used to, it makes them feel uncomfortable; perhaps insecure. For many men, it is an erosion of power structures as they exist and a whittling away of the male privilege that has been their right for centuries.
We have been brought up to believe that ‘good’ and ‘worthy’ women have to be self-effacing and to put the desires of others before their own. Even superficial, seemingly unimportant things such as body hair, belching in public and so on, are very much circumscribed. Women must be seen to have little or no body hair, no visible muscles (strength). They should be delicate and mild-mannered. Women should be shorter, smaller and younger than their male partners. These are all social expectations that emanate from men as well as women.
Being assertive, audible, bucking the trend – when women do this, it is frowned upon. Consider the recent brouhaha over the Adidas ad featuring Arvida Bystrom’s naturally hirsute arms and legs. The response to the ad from some quarters was negative in the extreme – she was called disgusting, ugly, and gross; some reactions included rape threats.
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