You're sexist. And so am I.

Your life is the decisions you make, large and small. But do they reveal who you are, or who you are taught to be?

You decide whether marriage is something to covet, or something to eschew. You decide how to spend your time and money. How to parent. Whether to interrupt or wait politely to speak. Whether to put on lipstick or step on a scale each day. Which selfies to share, and the parts of yourself you never will.

In American society, the most insidious form of sexism isn’t the one we see when we look out at the world, but the one we fail to see when we look inside ourselves. It's internalized sexism, and it's no one's fault but everyone's problem.

In the last century, women have made gains toward gender equality. But despite a slow revolution that has given many women increasing power over their lives, sexism is pervasive. Every woman has felt it, even if she refuses to label it, but many women — conservatives and progressives, elite women and marginalized women, avowed feminists and those who would never refer to themselves as such — may not realize that since the moment they were born they have been groomed to be sexist, too.

“You could not subordinate half the human race unless some of that was internalized,” Gloria Steinem said.

Culture sells the idea of a “perfect woman.” Girls are taught to aspire to it, boys learn to expect it. A woman should be sexy, not slutty. She must be strong, but also sweet. She should speak up, but not too loudly. She should be competent, but not aggressive. Remember to smile. Not so big.

The media ritually objectifies women’s bodies, yet women obsessively use those images to measure themselves and the women around them against an impossible standard. In the U.S., 20 million women will suffer from an eating disorder at some point in her life.

Rape is an epidemic that affects one in six women, yet instead of blaming male perpetrators, many women blame victims, and hold fast to the false idea that if they dress modestly and behave prudently they will avoid becoming victims, too.

"Cool girls" who find other women "petty" say they feel safe enough and empowered enough to act like one of the guys — but if they’re really empowered, shouldn't they just act like themselves?

“In the past sexism operated differently. It was structural, it was legal, it was overt. It was taught in churches. It was taught in schools," said Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at UCLA. "Today ... we see in our everyday lives women doing things that men do and doing it as well, so the internalized sexism in women is really part of the explanation of the resilience of sexism in the face of everything that’s been accomplished.”

Women who internalize sexism may not call themselves sexist or condone overtly sexist behavior. Instead, they undervalue their talents, undermine other women and unwittingly bolster a boys’ club that has a long history of policing women’s bodies, curtailing women’s choices and protecting its own power.

“It’s almost impossible with all the double binds, but there's this myth that if you can somehow embody all of the ideals of femininity that you'll be protected from bad things happening to you,” said Kjerstin Gruys, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and author of Mirror, Mirror Off the Wall, which chronicled the year she completely avoided mirrors (while planning her wedding).

Society, Gruys said, holds up women like Ivanka Trump, who through her privilege is better able to navigate these impossible tensions, but who reinforces “the idea that everyone can manage sexism as long as they just do the right thing.”

Ivanka Trump listens at the beginning of a policy and strategy forum with executives in the State Dining Room of the White House on Feb. 3, 2017. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)

'The Beauty Myth'

A rigid standard of female beauty is one of the most powerful forms of cultural currency, despite us having no control over our genetic makeup. The fashion and beauty industries are becoming more diverse, but a young, white, thin ideal persists. During the Spring 2017 season, plus-size models accounted for 16 of the 2,973 model spots, only 13 models were over age 50, and seven out of the 10 models with the most bookings for the season were white.

So women strive for the ideal. They buy makeup and anti-aging serums. They suffer Spanx, slip into shoes that pinch and skirts that constrict. They see natural body hair as an enemy of the state.

But what is it that really keeps us from viewing wrinkles as badges of honor and stretch marks as the map of a body’s extraordinary transformation? Why do we work so hard to fight the body we’re born with, bear children with, grow old in?

For some women, the answer is that attending to their bodies is akin to personal care. It makes them feel good. Nigerian-born author and celebrated feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has said she was afraid of not being taken seriously because of her love of fashion and make-up, but now she embraces it. She also embraces Alicia Keys' #nomakeup campaign.

“That’s my hope and my prayer for women — that women are allowed to be whatever version makes them feel truly like themselves,” she told Racked magazine in November.

The problem is when women perform these rituals as a matter of course, even when it doesn’t make them feel true to themselves.

Naomi Wolf’s seminal book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women, first published nearly thirty years ago, argues that as legal and structural barriers for women crumbled, the more beauty became a tool of social control. "The beauty-myth,” she writes, “like many ideologies of femininity, mutates to meet new circumstances and checkmates women's attempts to increase their power."

Many women who participate in beauty rituals do it because they believe they’ll be rewarded, Gruys said, whether it’s through attracting male attention or gaining social acclaim. But they pay a price, too, and so do the women around them.

“Women who internalize sexism are more likely to diet, to be critical of their appearance if they don't meet the impossible appearance standards that we see in the media, but likewise it can make women judge other women along those same lines,” she said.

If you’re a thin and hungry woman not eating fries, but the larger woman next to you is, you resent her.

The beauty myth is why so often women view one another as competition, rather than allies. If we truly loved our bodies, it stands to reason that we might not care so much what other women did with theirs.

Lena Dunham, who has spoken openly about body positivity and challenged the thin stereotype on her HBO show Girls, said she received a barrage of criticism online after recently losing weight. Women accused her of conforming to the standard she condemns. Dunham, who said she began exercising to deal with chronic pain and manage anxiety, lamented to Ellen Degeneres, “you just can’t win.”

'Female Chauvinist Pigs'

Some women, though, believe they have won. In her book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, Ariel Levy writes about a new generation of young women who don’t worry much about sexism and misogyny. They're the ones that say, “I get along with guys so much better than girls,” though many of these women conflate empowerment with objectification.