by Katt

w/edits by Lira

In the past few years I've been a part of this community, I’ve noticed a distinct trend among female forum-goers.

A percentage of us actually glowstick and make helpful contributions-- either as stickers or as constructive members of the community in the background, and actually have footage floating around on the Internet (including yours truly, who is notoriously camera shy). Another fraction of the females join, make a newbie post and say that they'd like to learn, then drop off of the face of the planet/boards. The last part are those who joined because they wanted to and post a lot, but really do nothing aside from being members of the XX chromosome group.
Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s great that girls are actually active on the forums. But as a female glowsticker, I think we need to start changing the image of women in the glowsticking community.

There are actually very few good females who glowstick and actually stay around. I can name a few off of the top of my head but how many of them are still contributing members of this community in terms of the forums? Also, how many times have you seen footage of a girl, notice that she’s only really doing the basic moves for her respective style, and a lot of people go, “props to you! Girl and glowsticking! Hot!”

Part of this comes from the female mentality of “I'm not good enough, I don’t think I can improve even if I practice” or “I’m a girl! No matter what I do, I’m going to get props!” Another part of this is the empty encouragement that comes from the guys saying “OMG A GURL” whenever a female shows up in a video and they’re actually sticking.

...No joke, one of the comments directed towards my clip in a compilation was “OMG it’s a girl” and the commenter left it at that.

Being a girl and a part of glowsticking.com shouldn’t mean that we are targeted and singled out in a crowd because of our gender. It shouldn’t mean that because we are girls and we glowstick that we should be satisfied at our level and stay at it.

Being a girl on glowsticking.com means that we should take advantage of the fact that we are some of the pioneers for future girls and push the boundaries even further while we can. It means we should take advantage of the fact that we ARE women and can incorporate certain styles of dancing such as ballet and other forms of hip hop that guys would be criticized for doing. We have the advantage in body and movement because we are built differently from men.

This is my call to you, women of glowsticking.com, to get up the courage, get up the confidence, and dance your heart out.

Discussion thread