When I was a little girl, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. This is a question that commonly asked among children and usually responses along the lines of doctor, astronaut, race car driver, and cop come from little boys. When little girls answer, you hear vet, teacher, and princess most often.
For as long as I can remember, my answers left confused looks on peoples faces and I never understood why. When I was a child, I had always answered with firefighter, go into the military, or police woman. I never understood why everyone tried to tell me not to pursue those careers, but I could never explain why I wanted to go into them either. Years later I began to feed into what others were saying, what they thought I should do and I considered going into teaching or being a veterinarian. But here I am, in my senior year of college, five weeks and a few tests away from my certification to be an officer and almost a year to date away from my degree in justice administration. I am pursuing my dreams of working in law enforcement, and there is no one in the world who can stop me.
I currently have a job within the realm of law enforcement and I cannot count on one hand how many times I've heard, "You're too pretty to be a cop."
What do you say to that? We're taught at a younger age that when someone compliments us, to say thank you and smile. It is engraved in us. I don't take that as a compliment, though. "Too pretty to be a cop"—what I hear is that because I am an allegedly attractive woman, I cannot perform the duties that a man can do or as well as he could do them in the criminal justice profession. I hear that because I am a woman, I shouldn't pursue a job like this. Aside from these "compliments," I hear inappropriate comments and snide remarks on a daily basis because I am a woman and the likelihood of me being treated the same as men in my chosen profession is highly unlikely.
Women have to work harder, be smarter, and we are still not seen as likely to succeed as men are. There will always be a man who was "more qualified" than a woman for a job, and in reality, maybe it just came easy to him. If something comes easy to someone, does that mean that they are more qualified than the person who performs just as well but puts forth more effort and works harder to perform the same duties? Wouldn't you think that more opportunities would be given to someone who shows that they are willing to work their ass off to perform a task to the best of their ability. This would signify to me that no matter the task at hand, this person would do everything possible to achieve success.
We live in a world with double standards. We want to promote equality, fairness, and an equal chance of success for all, but when someone tries to go outside the status quo, we freak out. I say if you have a dream, chase it. It doesn't matter if you're a man, woman, black, white, purple, LGBT, or not. If you have ambitions, if you have a dream, if you have goals for yourself, do not ever let anyone tell you that you should abandon them. It's a cruel, difficult world out there, and it's easy to be lead astray, but by keeping your eyes on the prize, it does not matter who you are, you can accomplish anything.
