Do you remember the scene in Pretty Woman, this one, where a pre-makeover Julia Roberts tries to buy an outfit at a high-end boutique on Rodeo Drive to go out with Richard Gere. And then comes back a few days later? It’s one of my favourite movie moments. Last week, I wrote how working through impostor syndrome is necessary because limiting thoughts about our imagined incompetence does not serve us. Once we get past this (and it’s a work in progress), out in the real world, there’s often a fresh set of hurdles to clear.
Unless a person comes from enormous privilege, and sometimes even then, most of us will have to confront a million ways the world will tell us, at different times, we’re not good enough, we don’t belong, that we’d be doing everyone a favour by just stepping aside.
Guess what?
Those are precisely the barriers to overcome.
There are obvious barriers: the colour of your skin, being a woman, belonging to a sexual minority, a person’s religion, how much money they have (or don’t) — which will determine how someone is treated. Or like Julia, how someone is dressed.
Add these to a list of barriers no one will admit to and everyone’s uncomfortable talking about (they’re still obvious): being a person with a disability, discriminating against someone because of age, the size of their body, because they don’t meet contemporary beauty standards, because they are a survivor of some kind of trauma (sexual assault, orphan, divorced, recovering addict or ex-offender, for example).
There are real barriers like those of language and visa status and education levels.
There are barriers of unkindness used to judge people which they often have no control over: where they went to school, what neighbourhood they grew up in, their accent, which family they come from.
There are barriers of history and geography, of tradition and culture and mindset. There are barriers that have no explanation, which exist simply because they do. There are barriers you can’t quite put your finger on but they couldn’t be more real.
Many barriers don’t fit in just one category. Most barriers rarely occur on their own.
Barriers are meant to keep people out of places. They are meant to make people feel inferior. They perpetuate stereotypes, breed ignorance, foster resentment, encourage prejudice and allow mutual distrust to fester. Barriers keep systems undemocratic, concentrating power in the hands of a few people.
Barriers can also be overcome.
Not every barrier needs to be overcome and there is value, wisdom, in picking which battles are worth fighting. There is also great value and wisdom in not backing down from overcoming a barrier just because it takes effort.
Why?
Because sometimes, you’re not overcoming a barrier just for you. You’re doing it for so many people who might be unable to, for whatever reason, who may not have a chance to. Like an adult who helps a child when they can’t reach a door handle, by opening doors for yourself, you open doors for people who will follow. And sometimes, you will need to be the first.
This doesn’t always have to be in big, grand ways. It can be in something as simple as insisting someone pronounce your name correctly, which means how you pronounce it, not how it’s widely pronounced, however mainstream or unusual your name is. In more awkward ways, like asking for designated parking spots for pregnant employees to be located closer to office buildings, for more paternity leave or rooms where lactating mothers can pump and nurse. To ask for a prayer room. It could be refusing to laugh at a “joke” because it’s racist/bigoted/misogynistic/plain toxic.
But the big ways, like pushing for equal pay in an industry or equal rights, is so important too.
We can scoff at and deny as many barriers as we want. Most of what we take for granted today is because someone bothered to bring down a barrier. Do you remember the scene in Hidden Figures when Harrison asks Katherine where the hell she goes every day? It’s a good one. And this was as recently as 1961. Imagine a mathematician at NASA not being allowed to use a particular bathroom because of who she is.
I have been in rooms where no one looks or sounds like me. I have been excluded — not being invited to join a group, being ignored in a conversation, people refusing to make eye contact to pretend I don’t exist. I have been discriminated against because I’m brown, because I’m Muslim. Some of these barriers are for people like me. Some of these barriers are set up by people like me. Every time I’ve been faced with a barrier, it has only made me want to overcome it with urgency.
My grandfather might have something to do with that. Baba, as I used to call him, was a pro at refusing to let barriers stop him. Growing up as a little brown boy in Southern India, he did school in Urdu, went overseas in the 1960s for the first time as a 35-year old, worked and succeeded in predominantly white, English-speaking parts of the world and taught himself to use the Internet in his 60s. I’ve never met anyone so comfortable with being an outsider or who wouldn’t let anyone tell him where his place was. I don’t know if he wasn’t aware of the barriers that stood in his way, didn’t care or a combination of both.
Read this lovely thread
It’s easy to pick up on the barriers we’re up against. It takes a little more self-awareness to know our blind spots. When do we make a decision that’s easy instead of doing what’s right? When do we not give someone a chance? When do we judge someone based on nothing? I’m guilty of it too. We’re all in positions to do better — as hiring managers and bosses, as neighbours and landlords, as a human, a family member and friend.
Speaking of barriers and judgement, do you have thoughts about the recent Meghan-Harry interview with Oprah? DRA-MUH 🤯 If yes, I’d love to hear them.
This International Women’s Day, Splainer featured this newsletter via Loveleen Mann who cold emailed them. Great things happen when women support women. Hello to all my new readers! This is so exciting 😃
Many of you know this and I’ve said it before but Splainer by Lakshmi Chaudhry is so so good. It’s the biggest news of the day and loads of other good stuff in one convenient email, explained by women, mainly for women, because so many media outlets don’t pay enough attention to a female readership. Many men think Splainer is fantastic too. You can read five free editions every month. But it’s affordable and so worth signing up for. Sign your friends up too. It makes a great gift.
In Women Wins This Week:
Last week, I mentioned Aisha Dozie of Bossy Cosmetics. This week, meet a Polish teenager who’s set up a fake online cosmetics shop to help people report domestic violence. Genius.
Also in DV news, the UK will amend the Domestic Abuse Bill to make non-fatal strangulation an offence, for controlling and coercive behaviour to be an offence even when the victim and perpetrator don’t live together and to make the threat of posting intimate photos online an offence. Each of these is significant for the precedent they set for domestic abuse laws everywhere, and particularly for digital ones, which are among the easiest to flout.
In related news, there have been massive layoffs at HuffPost in the US, less than a month after Buzzfeed acquired it, where Melissa Jeltsen has been let go. Read some of her work, which I think is some of the best on the topic of violence against women. I will never forget her story about Lisa Montgomery.
I’ve clearly been living under a rock because I only just learnt of Prof. Devi Sridhar, who is on the board that advises how the Scottish government should respond to Covid-19 and has emerged as a thought leader during this public health crisis.
Yasmeen Khan will be adapting Oscar Wilde’s, The Importance of Being Earnest for the “digital” stage. Mina Anwar will direct the production. Two women of colour are retelling a white man’s work for a global audience and I am here for it.
And through a lovely Google Doodle, I recently learnt of Masako Katsura, who used to play in the 1950s. Sometimes called the “First Lady of Billiards,” she made it easier for women to compete in what is still largely a male-dominated sport. A classic example of paying no heed to a barrier.
Chances are greater no one will invite you to sit at their table. But will you pull up a seat anyway? And will you ask the kid standing on her own in the corner to sit with you too?
xx
AA