Calvert City, KY (October 7, 2021) – Calvert City’s Youth Voice is a monthly writing contest developed for young authors between the age of 5 and 18. October 1 was the recent deadline for the monthly writing contest and the winner for October is Lauren Bogaczyk.
Calvert Area Development Association used a rubric judging system to choose the October winner. Judges received the submissions with just the writings. They did not know how old the author was or where they were located.
Lauren is from Calvert City and is 14 years old. She enjoys playing soccer, acting, and fashion. Her favorite course in school is language arts and science. Her favorite teacher is Mrs. Ford.
The next deadline for the monthly writing contest is November 1. Young writers are encouraged to submit original work in any style of creative writing. One winner will be awarded monthly.
Monthly winners will receive $50 and an ad in the Lake News with their published work. The deadline to submit work will be on the first of each month. This contest is not limited to Calvert City residents. We encourage writers from across the region to submit their original work.
For more information on Calvert City’s Youth Voice, please call City Hall at 270-395-7138 or by email at info@calvertcityky.gov.
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Society’s Perception of Women
By Lauren Bogaczyk
Women in society. This statement can be twisted into many different propositions. However, I think of this statement as to how women are treated differently in today’s society. Girls in school get dress-coded for wearing ripped jeans, tank tops, and many other things that get overlooked if a male were doing the same thing. Not to mention, females often feel scared to go out in public simply because they might get harassed or catcalled. The sad thing is, these are just a few of the many fears, and struggles women face on the daily.
First of all, females of all ages, body types and color have faced struggles simply because of our gender. Even in today’s “progressive” society, gender bias still exists. In fact, females are often the victims of others who think it’s ok to objectify, approach, and harass, females because they think we are just an object. A report by the American Psychological Association (APA) on the sexualization of girls in the media found that girls are depicted in a sexual manner more often than boys; dressed in revealing clothing and with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness. Also, in a study of print media, researchers at Wesleyan University found that on average, across 58 different magazines, 51.8 percent of advertisements that featured women portrayed them as sex objects. However, when women appeared in advertisements in men’s magazines, they were objectified 76 percent of the time. These statistics show that women are sexualized because of what we were, our facial expressions, and even a posture we make could invoke that we want sexual attention, or to be objectified and judged. Why should my posture or even my facial expression give someone the right to sexualize anyone?.
Also, women are pressured to feel like they have to dress to society’s standards. With women feeling this need to be accepted based on their appearance, it lowers our self-confidence significantly and does not allow us to freely express ourselves without the fear of being judged. When we have to dress for society, that means that we have to dress modestly, but not dressed down, but we also can’t be too dressed up either. If we want to be accepted, there is tremendous pressure not to be overweight without being bullied, but we can’t be too skinny without being called skeletons either. Being a woman in today’s world means we have to meet impossible standards. These feelings of insecurity are commonly felt by adolescent females who are not yet adults, but aren’t still kids either. It is natural to want to be considered attractive by boys, yet they are the ones who make us feel this way most of the time. Middle school girls are beginning to want their attention so badly that we will do anything from starving ourselves to trying every diet and workout plan there is just for them or even say that we’re not good enough for them, and that we should “try harder next time.”
Lastly, the dress code in most schools is a double standard that punishes girls for being a “distraction” for males because they are unable to control their hormones. Yes, I am aware that this sounds like a radical feminist point of view, but hear me out. According to The theory that a visible bra strap or ripped jeans will keep males from learning is merely absurd. I feel that a school’s concern should be providing a learning environment for everyone, instead of shaming one gender to praise the other. The dress code should be equal to all instead of focusing on one specific gender. A few of the things girls aren’t allowed to wear to school include tank tops, ripped jeans, mesh shirts (even if a shirt is worn underneath), leggings (even if longer shirts and tunics are worn with them), tight fit clothing, and low cut shirts.. Girls can’t even wear shorts that are made for females, especially if you are a tall female. Try shopping for shorts in the female section of a clothing store. None of them pass the school dress code even though they are appropriate to wear everywhere else. Basically, if a girl wants to wear shorts to school, we must shop in the men’s section. In accordance with, Debate: are school dress codes sexist? by Kaitlin Menza, The worst part about calling girls clothing “distracting”, you imply that she’s responsible for any disruptions.” Girls should not take the fall for male actions as a result of what they were enforcing. These unreasonable dress codes on girls is merely shaming them and blocking them from expressing themselves. For males, all I see is them being told to pull their pants up and then being let back to class, but if it had been another situation where a female had been breaking the dress code, her parents would be called so that she can change her clothes.
As you can see, there are many things wrong with society’s perception of women. whether that be from school dress code, objectifying women in public, and even bullying online and in-person. I feel that women have terribly hard struggles that we have to face every day, and that just simply should not be the case. It is hard to be a woman in our society. We are faced with daily struggles that many men can not understand. We are too often judged on attire instead of what we can offer intellectually. Clothes are not a defining characteristic of us but an extension of what we like to express to the world.
