The latest on "being a woman"
Thoughts. Definitions. Freedoms.
Wear the dress to get the guy. The dress can’t be too short though. “Why don’t you give me a smile, babe?”. 101 ways to be more confident in a world that’s taught you not to be. Don’t be too loud. Be a good girl. Hold your keys in between your fingers when you’re walking home. Did you hear about the woman who got arrested for murder after taking the abortion pill? This lipstick will make you feel better, we promise. Work harder, get paid less for it. It’s winter now, no more 8pm running for you. “Oi, you think you’re too pretty to talk to me, yeah.” Watch out for all the heavy metals in those tampons. Will you do this talk for free for International Women’s Day? If you don’t have any needs, you’ll convince him he needs you. Only the prettiest and skinniest will survive. Do you want the white jeans on her sponsored post, or are you actually hoping that the jeans will make you become her?
Hold your breath for a second here. A casual digi-stroll through newspapers of late push headlines that exclaim, “man accused of enlisting strangers to rape drugged wife” and “former model and Miss Switzerland finalist Kristina Joksimovic ‘pureed’ in blender by husband”. On any given day, more research floats to the surface of our consciousness to make us swallow down our faith. An NPCC report stated that in 2023, over 1 million crimes against women and girls were recorded in England and Wales. While an MBRRACE-UK study reported that Black women were 3.7 times more likely to die during or in the first year after pregnancy. It’s not looking good, is it pals.
But, has it ever looked good? The stats get worse, news reports more shocking and personal experiences grow. There’s a numbness that lives inside most women, that desensitises us to the responses to our mere existence; for just enough time to get through the day. As the changing seasons emerge and night begins its descent a couple hours earlier, I start to have this familiar feeling. The knowing that these are the last days of freedom. The freedom to walk home at 9:30pm without my nervous system forward-rolling into fight or flight. The freedom to get the train instead of an Uber I can barely afford, because it’s still bright out.
In actuality, it’s a false sense of safety because I’ve been followed home in the daytime (more than once), cornered and pushed against a wall in the daytime, and have been harassed too many times to even process, again in the daytime. Who cares if it’s dark out or not, predators don’t have an internal clock for when they fancy striking. This may be an exhausting read thus far, but I don’t at all think that being a woman is exhausting. I fucking love being a woman. It’s the treatment of women and girls and our place in society that’s exhausting.
I can clutch my keys, pretend my Christian Louboutin spiked nail polish will keep me safe should I need to use it to protect myself, and hope that period pants and menstrual discs are better for vaginal health than everything else we’ve been marketed. But, it’s disconcerting that so much of what I’m describing here feels like it’s floating on the edge of what we can control, and infuriating that we are loaded up with the measures to solve them.
I remember some of the first times I experienced that numbness. When my mum was debriefing me over and over again about how to be safe while I made my solo commute to secondary school. How to walk. Where to walk. Always look behind me. I wondered why my journey felt so burdensome. Was I even listening? Why was I being taught to keep my keys in my hand at night? Were the grown men shouting sexual slurs at me while I was in my school uniform being told that this is unacceptable behaviour?
We can advocate, fight, demand better, keep talking about it to everyone and anyone, but I’m not a fan of sitting tight and idly waiting for the world to change for women and girls. It’s a hard no for me to give up hope and let the behaviour that surrounds us define our humanity. I’ve worked on political policies and campaigns, protested, worked with UN Women UK, supported grassroots organisations and volunteered across gender equity spaces. Most of which were intersectional, sadly many were not, but that’s a conversation for another time. NIA who deliver services for women and girls subjected to sexual and domestic violence and abuse, changed my life when I most needed support. We need this work. It’s vital.
While all of that work keeps beating on and I’ll continue to contribute to it, I made a decision a long time ago, about other ways that I choose to be free. Free in my womanhood, even when it feels like that freedom hasn’t been gained for all of us. On a physical level, I have untold amounts of gratitude for all the ways I’m free. I know that I am free because I am no longer in an abusive relationship. I know that I am free because I was able to be educated. I am free because for the most part, I am safe. I am free because there are services and support that can catch me if something happens. I am free because I have not been subjected to female genital mutilation. I am free because as a cis woman I do not have to fear being abused for entering a bathroom.
Sure, I have to Google, “is this country safe for Black women to travel?” before I go anywhere but I’m grateful for the freedom to indeed be able to travel. Outside of those obvious ways of being free, I have chosen to take that within and refuse to be anything but free. I stand loudly in my choices. I unapologetically choose my choices. I back myself. If I don’t want to do something, I ain’t doing it. I’m not giving in to socio-cultural norms and expectations of what being a woman should look like, when I don’t have to participate in it. Where we can take a stand, we must take it. Where we can use our “no”, we must use it. I can’t control if I get attacked on the way home or if women’s health is still woefully under-researched. So if I can define my own way of being, I sure damn will.
Florence + The Machine sings, “I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king” and if I could merch that up I would. Closely followed by this banger of a lyric, “But a woman is a changeling, always shifting shape.” An anthem if I ever did hear one. We don’t have to be confined by the expectations of what it means to be a woman. We get to have agency in that, and that agency is our power when across the world it is attempted to be silenced.
At the time of writing, I am thirty-four. I’ll be thirty-five in December. Society has expectations of me. Will I freeze my eggs? What ever will I do with my time if I don’t have a child? Am I really sure I don’t want to get married? Why can’t I drive yet? Do I know what will happen as a self-employed woman when it comes to pensions? Should I have six figures in my bank account from all those achievements? Why am I still choosing to live with my mum? Imagine not using retinol at my big age. At least I look like I could be in my twenties, I hear. Isn’t it a bit late to keep pivoting?
At this stage in my life, the shape my womanhood is taking on, doesn’t include babies or weddings. Those things don’t define what it means to be a woman. It doesn’t have space for pretending I’m okay when I’m not. Gone are the days of keeping my mouth shut. I’m asking for what I want. Investing in myself. Surrounding myself with souls so beautiful that life doesn’t feel real. For me, being a woman doesn’t look like being a burned out girlboss anymore. It looks like frolicking, resting and painting my nails red. Then worrying about the toxicity of nail polish. It looks like absolute silliness because my inner little girl needs that. I don’t care to explain why I choose my choices. I am in a season of mothering myself. Creating financial security. Being loved quietly and loudly. Having bottomless hot drinks and cakes with my girlfriends. Making art. Enjoying the company of great men. Listening to soul-baring men. Refusing to prioritise everyone else instead of myself.
That is my freedom, it's a luxury, it isn’t about my survival, it’s about how I choose to live. It’s also about me and my ever-evolving definition of womanhood in the West, knowing that I can’t speak for any of my sisters, both here or elsewhere. There’s a collective and deeply felt ‘we’ that women often carry, but our lived realities are acres apart. I’m a Black woman, I don’t slip into the title of ‘feminist’ with ease, but for a long time I did. I believed that ‘the struggle’ was all about equal pay and getting into boardrooms. Making already comfortable lives more comfortable and the only solidarity was that we’re all women. With no understanding of the differences between us. The Instagram posts of “women supporting women” when the woman who posted it has an unofficial title of bullying the women she works with. The tote bags of raised fists with some over-simplified pop-feminism quote, carried by women who care about their daughter’s rights, but vote for those who are quick to eradicate the rights of women whose names they’ll never know.
The different tiers of oppression that exist if you’re not able-bodied, white, straight, cis and financially at ease, often go without mention in those spaces.
“When feminist rhetoric is rooted in biases like racism, ableism, transmisogyny, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia, it automatically works against marginalised women and against any concept of solidarity. It’s not enough to know that other women with different experiences exist; you must also understand that they have their own feminism formed by that experience.”
- Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism, Notes From The Women White Feminists Forgot.
Thankfully, the revolutionary work of Black women in this area are often the ones that are quoted and fashioned up into shareable content on Canva. Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw. This wasn’t always the case. The willingness to share the uniqueness of challenges and privileges based on different women’s’ identities.
I know what I want for my life and that’s what I’m committed to embodying and engaging in. The more freedoms I have, the more I want that for all women. When new Taliban laws ban women in Afghanistan from raising their voices, you bet I’m going to raise mine, alongside theirs. I’m going to speak in as many spaces as I can speak in and not be afraid to speak, as I have the freedom of not being ordered to keep quiet.
I refuse to fall into the trap of what a woman should be, yet I know I’m entangled in all of it. It’s impossible not to be. I will never say that I only wear make-up for myself when I’ve been raised on women’s magazines and beauty standards. I still buy razors marketed for women even though I’m sure the one’s slapped with “for men” are more effective. It is what it is. So, where I can call the shots on being the woman I want to be, I’m unapologetically going to do that.
I am a woman who can’t get enough of the culture of girlhood, and gets heart-orgasms whenever I swatch beauty products on my hand. I am also a woman who thinks that the cultural ideals of “finding the one”, getting married and being isolated in nuclear families without a care economy, is rooted in patriarchal thought that encourages women to spend less time in the workplace and more time in unpaid labour, making it harder for many to leave unhappy marriages because of financial insecurity. I am a contradiction, because I am a woman who can do, think and believe in whatever the hell she wants and that’s what I’m devoted to doing.
6 Random Things That Made Me Think and Feel Things
A weekly edit for paid subscribers of the articles, videos, food, beauty and other things from life, with what they made me think and feel about the human experience.
This week you can expect: A line from The Perfect Couple on Netflix, a recipe that’s made me question all of my life choices, The TikTokification of Trauma, an NYC spa that I might just book a flight for, and more.
If you’re subscribed, then head on over here to read it all.
Informative
Love this!