A baby boy wears blue and a baby girl wear pink. That’s how it's always been, right? But should this continue on forever? No, it should not. These unwritten rules are called genderisms or sexism and these genderisms are hurting our society. These sexist ideas are the ideas that say girl should have long hair and boys have short hair. The rules that say that girls like dolls and boys like cars. Rules we don’t need and that are making younger people more susceptible to things such as bullying, depression, and hurting their self esteem. I believe for these reasons we should eliminate genderisms in our society and thought process altogether.

Genderisms are forced on to us by society not built into us. In fact, in 1996 a family proved this to us all. The family had given birth to 2 identical twin boys. But one boy had a birth defect and was surgically altered into a girl. Both the twins weren't told about the surgery and both twins were raised like the norm for their gender. After the twins 12th birthday they were studied by the John Hopkins University and they were exactly the like the normal girl and boy for their age. This study proves that these genderisms are learned at a young age, we are not born with them.

Bullying is making a startling debut as a major problem in schools nationwide. In a study done by the American justice department 77% of students grades 6-10 had been bullied physically, mentally, and/or verbally. Although the study doesn't state what was accountable for the majority of the bullying I am making an educated guess that it was something along the lines of clothes/appearance. Students in schools are bullied about their clothes because of the sexist ideals such as boys shouldn’t wear certain colors and girls shouldn’t have short hair. We as a culture have made some improvement but we are nowhere close to where we should be. We should be at the point where is no sexism about clothing; boys can wear dresses and girls don’t have to wear skirts to be dressed up.

Bullying due to sexism can lead to even bigger problem in society, mental diseases and eating disorders. If these problems are not treated early on they can lead to death, either by suicide or starvation. If a teenage girl is bullied enough by her peers because she is too fat she will lose her self-esteem. After a long period of time she will also begin to become depressed that she does not fit the view that girls should be thin.

Teen girls have been found to be more depressed than teen boys. A study of high school seniors found that high school girls "happiness index" was gradually decreasing where as their male counterparts was gradually increasing. The study found girls to be more depressed because they were constantly worried about their body image. In other words, they were more depressed because they were constantly worrying about the genderism that they should like Disney princesses. That idea that they should be thin could lead to a very grave problem; eating disorders. These ideas may have been created to help children with their identity growing up but in truth they are making teens bend over backwards and starve themselves to conform to them.

Most of all, genderisms are wrong because they are a society trying to dictating the choices of individuals. The individual are trying to express themselves through the way they dress and through their interests and society is crushing them for it. You hear all the time, "Be Yourself" but does society really allow us to be ourselves? They want us to be ourselves within a box created by our bad ideologies. It’s like they are showing us all what w we could have but then taking half of it away.

Some might argue that we should keep these ideas simply because it would be too hard to change. However, these genderisms haven't been around since the beginning of man. Someone created them and told people that's the way it should be. Look at how well that idea spread to the entire world. If we do the same thing, our argument can take hold as well, especially since ours has positive effects and logic. Family, media, and peers influence young children. If we change the media that they see to have boys with long hair and girls playing football they will begin to accept those ideas.

Another reason society might not want to change would be the fear of not knowing someone's gender. Right now there is very few times where you can't tell a persons gender when you look at them. However, is it morally right to not let individuals express themselves because people are scared? No, it’s not right to have another suffer and possibly fall because society is too scared to change.

Eliminating genderisms in our society today would have a positive outcome on the younger generations. Doing such simple thing as accepting people as who they are not by what they should be can make everyone’s lives easier. I believe if society really tries to change this they can change what think and how they act. I’m not saying everyone has to change and that girls should all cut their hair short and all boys should wear dresses. I’m saying all people should be able to do that without being scorned. Making a change to abolish genderisms in your thoughts and views of the world can save someone’s life. You don’t want to kill someone because you believed a myth, do you? Then change.