A 14year olds guide to change the world
i grew up in a family
that never told me that i was any less
just because i was a girl my mom has a
tiny sliver of hope for change
that my generation and i must create
but yet the people that i have met my
friends
my distant family almost everybody think
girls are somehow less
as though our worth is determined by
that dress
and for so long i have listened
but no more no more will i listen while
you undermine our worth
reducing us to just dirt
don’t get me wrong i’m not saying that
all men are bad
or that they don’t have their fair share
of struggles never a moment of weakness
held word to the sizes of their bank
accounts or their job
always thought to have intentions that
are wrong and considered worthless
for a tear that is always a second too
long
but all i’m saying is being a girl in
this world is still a curse
and we are still considered weaker
lesser reduced to just our fertility
and unfortunately that is a rarely
spoken about reality
she screamed oh help but nobody listened
cried but her future seemed helpless
and her dreams of being the next future
tycoon
ruined
she was just nine when only men spoke
business on the table
darling learned to be a good wife and
satisfy her husband
that is what society conditions so many
young girls to believe
that without a man they are
inadequate see i’m not blaming people
here
but i think there would be three root
causes for this
one educational systems consent
why is consent not a part of sex ed why
is consent to taboo
when it is a right isn’t that why a girl
a woman feels unsafe to walk home
alone at the roads at night
and then menstruation why is
menstruation still taught to only girls
and women
menstruation should be taught with
inclusivity and kindness
menstruation is something that brings
life
literally two misogyny and hatred in the
cover of love and development
i know that sounded long but what i mean
to say is women teach women and girls
teach girls and women teach
girls that they should compromise their
lives
so that their brother husband son
nephew can thrive
why do women undermine their own worth
and teach one another
to treat themselves lesser just so that
the male their male counterparts can
thrive
three
the lack of education and awareness and
privileged people
like you and me
you see we are educated we are
privileged
but yet when a family
who have two children has to choose
which
son or which daughter should they
educate who will it be
well the answer is simple for them it’s
their son
so their daughter sits at home with the
want with the want to learn or want to
know how to
read and write a desire a desire so
bright
but yet she isn’t even given the
opportunity to go to school
because somewhere along the way we lost
sight we lost sight of the fact
that our daughters were just as
important as our sons
and now our main reason for saving our
daughters
is just so that we can save them because
somewhere along the way
saving our daughters became more
important than educating them
and how long will you save your
daughters before you educate them
how can something so vital so crucial so
imperative
be not not given voluntarily not
provided voluntarily
but the thing is it’s none of my reasons
from one to three
it’s more than that
unfortunately
unfortunately even today we are given
the privilege
to bleed with dignity to be educated so
beautifully
yet yet we choose to fly so high with
wings so widespread that we clip
off another’s wings because we have been
flying way too high
for way too long now
yes
and i want to be a parrot i want to be a
parrot that
talks too loud or talks too much but
listens listens to those with restraints
that
i could never have fathom then i urge
every single one of you to be that
parrot
because maybe we can we have hope
to allow another bird to fly once again
or maybe let another bird have their
first light
first flight or maybe just maybe
we can restore hope once again
dear world hi how are you doing
how is your mental health we are caught
amidst multiple pandemics right now
from covet 19 to domestic abuse to
menstrual inequity
and many of you have been going through
one or more of them
i am sending so much strength and love
your way for you to be able to let go of
any shackles that hold you down
being woman is not a social construct
it is an attitude being
woman is a mode of self-expression that
predominantly exists
within every single one of us being
woman is so much more than the
pre-conformed notions of female
reproductive
parts being woman is
all about being yourself embracing the
woman within you
that is my idea of being woman
ever since we’ve been kids we’ve learned
to treat everybody with kindness with
love with care everyone with the same
opportunities everyone with the same
same niceness the same tenderness
and that eventually evolved into the
concept of equality in our minds
the thing is i am beginning to realize
that equality
is not just providing everybody with the
same opportunities
the same privileges the same things the
same ideas the same concepts
and having everybody on the same
pedestal i
am beginning to realize that equality is
so much more
equality begins within you within me
within every single one of us equality
is initiated with the continuous journey
of education
equality begins by understanding that
there is a certain amount of
conditioning
within every single one of us and i mean
it
identifying the conditioning that exists
within you
and the conditioning that exists within
me and the conditioning that exists
within every single person here
conditioning develops between our
infancy to our teenage years
and it isn’t something that we really
have the power
to change necessarily without
consciously making that decision
let me have a little bit of a backstory
to this
so conditioning is as simple as hearing
that
only males should be bread winners and
women are expected to give up their
careers and take care of their family or
women are better suited for their family
or women should not have careers because
they’re meant to take care of their
family
or the fact that the patriarchy also
affects men by saying simple things like
men have to be the breadwinners men have
to have good jobs men cannot be
stay-at-home dads
these are things that we are conditioned
to believe from
our infancy till our teenagers the thing
is conditioning is such a
oddly complex but an oddly simple thing
it is so easy to change so for example
if i set up a positive association
with changing that belief changing that
stigma changing the menstrual stigma
that existed within me
i could change the way that i perceive
things
it’s a continuous journey of
understanding that my previous thoughts
were not just negative to my own
well-being but also to that of others so
the only way i can change my
conditioning
is by imagining that my new thought will
make not only myself
but this world a better place
conditioning is something that can so
easily be developed and changed but very
often we do not make the conscious
decision to do so
because making the conscious decision of
transforming our mindsets
in the way that we perceive things is a
choice a choice that we rarely choose
and literally like i said reconditioning
just requires you
to be able to set up a understanding
that this new thought
is beneficial to everybody as a whole
my name is anisha bhatia and i am a 14
year old student at podar international
school
mumbai working with the period society
an organization
with an aim to end the menstrual stigma
within india
here is some of our work with
marginalized communities
across mumbai and across india
i am telling you the story of a little
girl a little girl
who was wide-eyed a little chirpy girl
she did not know that menstruation was
something that should not be stigmatized
she lived under the perception of the
menstrual stigma
for so long and she was a part of it
that little girl was me
i vividly remember dealing with period
stains in school without confiding in
anybody
because apparently that would include a
whole lot of humiliation and
mortification along with it
i also remember carrying cloth pouches
with our sanitary napkins with my
friends to the washrooms
because sanitary pads were not only
something to be ashamed of
but possibly even disgusted by and i
felt that way
for a really really really long time
until i began working
with the period society the period
society
was not necessarily a difficult choice
for me to make
or something that really pushed me out
of my comfort zone that i had
obliviously set up for myself
it was just something that reminded me
that hey
you’re not as progressive as you think
you are
and that may have been a little bit of a
push in the right direction
so when i began working with the period
society
i began talking about periods to anybody
and everybody
i can still remember my first phone call
with the guy
who was supposed to sponsor us for baths
so do you see what i’m saying
from a little girl who could not talk
about menstruation to even her own
father
to going ahead and talking about
menstruation to anybody and everybody
was a rather large step for me to make
i remember not having those
conversations about menstruation
with my father within my own four walls
i could not have those conversations
but working with the period society
showed me that i had so much
internalized stigma within myself
that there was so much i could call
myself out for
and you know i was privileged enough to
be able to make that choice
to be able to talk about periods to my
father because
even today girls dropping out of school
after their first period
is still so prevalent even today girls
living in
outhouses because their parents do not
want them
to somehow possibly dirty the house
still exists and even today
fathers ask their daughters to not sit
on the same tables as them or not eat at
the same time as them in the same place
as them
because menstruation is still perceived
as empire
but i was able and i was privileged
enough to make that decision
to change the way menstruation was seen
within my
own four walls and my two parents
and that decision can be made by every
single
one of you
and as i grew and as i learned about
menstruation about
empathy about understanding struggles
that i have never gone through and i
would never have even fathomed
i grew as a human being because growing
up
with a lack of empathy is when we grow
up
with the lack of understanding about the
gender pay gap about menstrual inequity
about sexism misogyny and these are
things so many of us grow up without
learning we grow up without a lack of
empathy
but empathy is to love trust and respect
a stranger can you do that
can you ask yourself that question every
single day
can i love trust and respect a stranger
enough to provide them with the basic
necessities that they may require
and as this little girl grew she
understood
that equality was not just offering
everybody the same privileges and the
same things
it was more than that equality is
providing everybody with the same
basic resources for them to create their
own lives with
equality is not handing anybody anything
on a silver platter it is just providing
them
with the basic resources for them to
create their own lives with
it is handing the canvas to the painter
and as the little girl threw and learned
empathy she also understood
that empathy has to be given to far
beyond
girls women animals
it goes to your own self
empathy has to be given to yourself
during heart situations
empathy has to be given to sisterhood
to brotherhood to humankind
and this little girl had always stood up
for lgbtq plus rights
but understanding that menstruation was
something so
gender inclusive was
so spectacular and it was quite frankly
a whole
revelation she understood that
menstruation was so
intersectional and so so
amazing she understood to respect
menstrual blood
if we learn empathy if we learn kindness
and if we learn to provide everybody
with the same basic opportunities
we learn to interchangeably build better
environments
and as this little girl grew just a
little more as she does
every single day she understood that
animals require
just as much if not more empathy than
can be provided
so she started raising funds to provide
her furry friends
the opportunity to safer lovable and
better lives
and she did that by selling her
paintings and raising funds
to provide them with all the love in the
world
the thing is that change starts from
within you
none of this would have been possible
for that little girl had she not
recognized
the internalized misogyny the
internalized stigma
the internalized patriarchy that existed
within her
and had she not decided to do something
about it and recondition her mind
every single day she would not be racist
today
you do not owe anything to anybody
but do not make someone sit in silence
while they cry silently because humanity
was here
long before you and if you or nobody
you or humanity
make that difference today signing off
that wide-eyed little girl who will
never ever
stop dreaming and never ever stop
learning thank you