TW: Imposter syndrome, depersonalisation.
I spent years of my life, from childhood to adulthood, telling myself that I will never be the ‘right’ kind of woman. You know, the kind of woman that doesn’t have an inch of hair out of place. The kind of woman who has her nails perfectly done and her dress flowing in the wind. The kind of woman who doesn’t want to seem too ‘manly’ for lifting weights because God forbid you get too muscular! Because the idea that there is a certain ‘kind’ of woman, is something that has been deeply engraved within our minds since we were little girls, where you have to snap out of your ‘oh so manly’ phase because PlayStation doesn’t make a 14-year-old seem girly!
But if we take a step back and ask ourselves, where exactly is this perfect kind of woman? How does she get to tick off every box that society requires of her so she can take a huge sigh of relief and say, ‘Maybe I am being the right kind of woman.” But the truth is, whether you have the hair in place and the dress flowing, or the broken nail with your stomach showing, there will always be an exceeding expectation of you as a woman. For years, social media, journalists, news outlets and countless other platforms, have been obsessed with the way a woman breathes, the way she speaks, the way she places her left hand on her purse when she walks with her right earring being ½ an inch lower than the left. Media platforms have created an unusual, unhealthy obsession with women.
This obsession has created unrealistic standards for teenage girls who are beginning to explore their femininity. For adult women who begin to measure their success based on how they look and how a stranger perceives them. This obsession also pins women against women, where they begin to ensure every action of theirs makes them feel superior to another. A recent Ted Talk by Emma Jones titled ‘The Female Gaze’, spoke about how she as a journalist, sat in interviews where Jennifer Aniston was asked about whether she thinks her ageing makes her looks frail, whilst Owen Wilson was questioned all about his talent and hard work. Is this because the media assumes that its audience would like to know the answers to this, or is it just that individuals lack the ability to view women as anything more than showpieces?
A recent article by The Times, stated that the most viewed news website in the world right now is called Mail Online, with over 20 million readers daily! The websites’ main audience are women aged between 20-60 and is well known for keeping its audience aware of which celebrity looks too thin, too fat, too old, too sick, too pregnant and everything ‘too’ that humans are. But its audience largely being women, goes to show that they are the ones wanting to know how to change, how to re-invent themselves, how to be more likeable, what to eat, but most of all, how to be a woman.
But once again, I’ll ask the question of, how do you ‘be a woman’? The cycle of misogyny has to be broken. We have to re-program our minds into believing that we are more than how we look. The girl next to me in high heels is just as powerful as the girl in sneakers. The idea that women can’t be powerful needs to change. Power needs to be feminized. We as women are women of words, women of thoughts, women of strength and power. We don’t need a benchmark to reach to, a comparison to relate to, we don’t need approval to beg for. We need our voices, we need our minds, and we need our bodies. We need to amplify our power within because a strong woman is a feared woman. We need to reflect deep inside, and constantly remind ourselves that regardless of what the unrealistic expectations of you are, ‘you are your kind of woman’.
---- Sabah Khawaja, Guest Blogger
