Therefore

A girl changes her profile picture on Facebook. The new photo is a close up of her head and torso. She is wearing make-up and a lacy bra. She is in her mid-teens.

Within an hour, there are over fifty comments on the picture. Some are in admiration of her body, her looks. Others are derogatory, some are lewd and sexual, some denounce her as a slut, a whore, a graceless attention seeker.

She posted are photo of herself in a bra.

Therefore she is narcissistic.

Therefore she wants attention and compliments.

Therefore she wants to feel wanted.

Therefore she wants people to leave sexually explicit comments.

Therefore she is vain and vapid and unintelligent.

Therefore she is promiscuous – and that’s bad.

Therefore she has too much sex.

Or maybe she enjoys her own body. Maybe she likes the way she looks in the picture. Maybe she is feeling confident. Maybe she doesn’t deserve to be ridiculed for a contextless photo. Maybe there is no reason to come to so many conclusions over a photo. Maybe there is no reason to degrade her and her sexuality in what is essentially a public forum. Maybe this photo conveys nothing more than a girl in bra.

When I see photos like this, the thought that this is wrong immediately and involuntarily comes to my mind. I make that connection because we are taught that being sexual – especially if you’re a girl and especially if you’re a young girl – is bad and immoral and stupid and dirty. I have enough awareness to realise that there’s nothing wrong with what the girl in the photo is doing. There’s something wrong with what I’m thinking. There’s something wrong with the fact that these ideas are pushed into my mind to such an extent that they are first thing I think of.

I say we are taught to make these connections and these judgements because although when we go to school there’s no class called A Run Down of 21st-Century Western Society and Culture, these ideas are extremely pervasive in our everyday lives. We pick them up from young ages and carry them forward into old ages. That’s why prejudices are hard to change. That’s why the ideas you’re brought up with have an impact on you. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s unapologetically obvious. It’s always there.

It is distressing, sickening. But stopping to think for a moment about why exactly you straight away draw a certain conclusion helps to change this and undo some of the effects that social conditioning – because we are conditioned to think things – has had on you personally and on others.

Everything has a denotative meaning and a connotative meaning. Connotations can be good, helpful, fun. They can lead to playfulness, jokes, common ground. Connotations can also be harmful, prejudiced and damaging. They can lead to ingrained social discrimination, prejudice and inequality. It is important to diminish the harmful connotations. They don’t have to be the only thing that comes to mind. They don’t have to come to mind at all.

She posted a photo of herself in a bra.

Therefore she posted a photo of herself in a bra.