“Cross your legs.” “Don’t sit like that.” “Be more ladylike.” Like most women, I’ve been subjected to these kinds of messages since I was a child. Everyone from my mum to primary school teachers and distant relatives has chastised me to “sit like a lady”. Translation: rest your legs together, Duchess of Cambridge-style, and take up as little space as possible.
I have always struggled to do as they said. Not only is it quite uncomfortable to sit with legs crossed oh-so-daintily, but no man or boy I know has ever been told to do the same. Their typical seated stance – legs as wide as they go with no thought to the poor people being slowly crushed on either side – is so ubiquitous that we now know it as manspreading.
The trend has been an issue for years, even going back to a 1918 pamphlet that asks men to “sit a little closer, please”. It’s got so bad that on the New York subway, alongside anti-littering signs, there are notices urging moderation: “Dude … Stop the spread, please. It’s a space issue”. It’s truly a recognised phenomenon. In 2015 the Oxford Dictionary of English added the word “manspreading” to its online edition.
By contrast, the female equivalent has barely been allowed to exist in the confines of family living rooms, let alone given its own moniker and a place in the dictionary.
But now #womanspreading is officially having its moment. Women all over the world are uncrossing their legs in the name of feminism. Fashion models including Bella Hadid and Chrissy Teigen and the actor Emily Ratajkowski are all starting to ignore the female-only rules about sitting “nicely”. Instead they’re spreading out as wide as they want, and sharing the results on Instagram. Hundreds of women have joined them with similar posts.
It is something that I’ve been doing for years. After spending my childhood and teenage years being told to “sit properly, for God’s sake”, I decided to rebel by reclining in as unladylike a manner as possible. Ever since I left home, I’ve been sitting how I want to: legs wide apart, feet pointing out, and hands resting on my knees. It’s comfortable, it’s stabilising, and it makes me feel powerful in a way that crossing my legs never does.
For the past decade, I’ve been womanspreading everywhere – on television, on the tube and on my mum’s dining table. Naturally, I now wear trousers most of the time, and my only rule is to make sure I’m always aware of the people around me. As much as I want to make a point, I refuse to become like the entitled manspreaders who force women to contort themselves into tiny spaces. Unlike them, I only spread out if I have the space to do so.
Even so, the reactions are rarely positive. Well-meaning relatives advise me in loud whispers to be more demure, while strangers – often older women who have doubtless grown up being told to sit like ladies – tut at my stance.
But the worst reactions come from men. Though I’m yet to see a man call out a fellow bro for manspreading, I’ve found my chosen posture leaves some men either looking at me in open disgust, or in a creepily sexual way.
Only a small number of men are guilty of this, but I can spot them a mile off. Over-entitled and aggressive, they view my womanspreading on a spectrum that ranges from unattractive to an open invitation. It’s tempting to quietly bring my legs together under their judging eyes, but in recent years I’ve been responding with a stare so defiant it would make queen womanspreader Shan Boodram proud. If I’ve been doing enough squats, I’ll even try to claim more space than before.
This might all sound like a pointless exercise, but at a time where sexual assault and harassment allegations are springing up all around us, it’s more important than ever. After decades of being hushed up and ignored, women’s voices are only just starting to be heard. The #MeToo movement shows how many of us have been forced into a corner over the years, be it emotionally or physically, and how we are now fighting back.
Much of the action is verbal, with thousands of women speaking out about shared experiences of sexual assault, harassment and discrimination. But it’s also starting to get physical. Women like myself are breaking free of society’s strict restraints on our bodies. After years of being told to “give us a smile”, be “seen not heard” and “not speak unless you have something nice to say”, we’re using #womanspreading. We’re finally taking up the space that we deserve.