The New F-Word?

We often see the world with unrelenting lucidity. Perhaps ironically, the concepts that lie outside of our understanding only bathe in the semi-tinted shade of neon-lit familiarity.

'Feminism' elicits – almost mechanically – frames as far as the bra-burning '60s and as close as #ShePersisted. But, despite a thriving cultural metamorphosis, feminine supremacy, dramatised complaints and raging extremists orchestrate the notes to a chronically blistered stereotype.

However, the yellow crime scene tape around this movement is not coincidental. Being detached both from the real and ideal, teenagers find themselves unwilling to carry a label this unfamiliar and join a misinterpreted 'mob mentality.'

In a world as interwoven as ours, it's unsurprising that polarised battle hymns compress a movement this spectral into a blemished umbrella term. But is the war against cookie-cutter images viable? Even if the Feminist Mystique loses its household familiarity? Why is a movement of progress the new F-word?

As we stand an exact two years away from the 110th International Women's Day, many of us draw our identities from feminist dimensions. At the same time, others shy away. Some may say that sexism doesn't exist, that 18th century constructs are obsolete, that Sheryl Sandberg was enough. Even so, is any society in this world truly ever obliterated of prejudice? The movement that seems far from our reality is, in actuality, ingrained into the typical teenager's world – whether that is in sexist school dress codes, catcalling at construction sights, thinly veiled suggestions to behave more "lady-like," segregated PE lessons or female-dominated art classes.

The heroes in this narrative are, therefore, not always those over-glorified by their 140 character tweets. Instead, the halo wafts over the toddler that gave up Barbies to play in the boys' little league (cue montage of a miniature Viola Hastings in She's The Man), the girl that wore a tux to prom, and the women that conquer STEM fields.

A true understanding of modern feminism begins with those that live it; it begins with the voice of a teenager and the patience of the world. As our locker aligned hallways discourage us from standing out, there are few willing to protest, metaphorically or otherwise, prejudice in the ordinary life. With the piercing expectations of society bearing over us, even the "tomboy" (pause, for a moment, at the irony in that term) is pulled from the field and shoved in stilettos while others are ostracised for wearing "anti-feminist" lipstick. A real, concrete understanding of feminism empowers us to speak out– to embrace our individual identities in a world that champions the opposite.

We often hear "overreaction" in synonym with "feminism."It is, therefore, this ability to speak against the accepted that challenges not simply sexist rhetoric but also the outrage for a movement that is, at its root, a plea for equality. It allows us to question "women's" magazines for which size two women are the only women or social campaigns for which 24 inch waistlines are artificial.

We must reach from awareness to empathy and from empathy to action because the threat to a progressive, equal society is becoming dangerously real.

As us teenagers stand, right at the zebra crossing, before the boardwalk of adulthood, it is our understanding of equality and our projection of it that moulds the future of feminism.

And, thus, in spite of what the world asks, I know that unless I truly want to, I will never "go to the kitchen" and make anyone "a sandwich."

The writer is a Class 10 student of Oberoi International School, Mumbai, who has found the importance of rhetoric, prose and information in countering social injustice.