Apparently, bloomers were invented so that women would be able to ride bicycles. And when Katharine Hepburn wore — gasp! — pants in the movie Bringing Up Baby (1938), it was a statement about the objectification of women.

Well, we’ve come a little way since then, but there are still social pressures for women to conform to an ideal (and it seems to me that men are being dragged into the problem as objects instead of women being freed from the problem, but today isn’t about men).

I’m glad I was brought up in a (mostly) tolerant society, but I wonder what sort of prejudices I carry with me as I blindly pass through the world.

It’s International Women’s Day, and it’s an excellent time to take stock of the respect that women deserve and don’t always receive.