Why do I struggle with embracing my femininity?
It's no cakewalk surviving in this world as a woman. Sometimes I find it challenging to embrace the woman I am.
I went out earlier this evening to get some groceries. I picked up one of my oversized, unflattering t-shirts to wear. I didn’t feel pretty or confident in that T-shirt. Subconsciously, I knew it was a safe outfit to wear. On my way to the grocery store, I started thinking about the choice I made in wearing this oversized t-shirt. I realised this wasn’t the first time I deliberately chose a “safe” outfit.
As a girl growing up, I always felt uncomfortable with the eyes that fixed on me anytime I wore something that made me feel girly. I felt like I was a target. I hated how vulnerable I felt. The only way to make the uninvited stares disappear was to wear something that wouldn’t attract attention. This habit grew with me into adulthood. Every time I travelled by train, every time I took an overnight bus, every time I had to go outside alone after it was dark, I picked up the ugliest dress I owned. Sometimes, I even threw a hoodie over me to look like a blob rather than a woman. While it was an attempt at protection and self-preservation, I did not realise that by doing all these I was hiding who I am.
It was a conscious decision I made at a very young age - at an age where I did not understand that by doing this, I was restricting myself. Looking back, I realise a lot of things that I was told, while growing up made me suppress my femininity. At school, girls were judged for putting in a little effort to look pretty. The girls who showed their feminine side were typecast as drama queens or attention-seekers. This meant that the only way you could survive as a girl, judgment-free in school, was to be stoic, look drab and hide anything that gave away your femininity. At an age when girls should have been taught to be proud of who we are and educated on what strength lies in each one of us, we were instead taught to lay low.
I remember the separate sessions they held in schools only for female students. We were told not to wear sleeveless clothes because that would cause distraction. We were told to keep our sanitary pads as discreet as possible because it would be embarrassing if the world knew we were menstruating. I never questioned any of these at that age. I chose to believe that I should conduct myself as a woman based on what I was told. But did all of this keep me safe? Even after all the hurdles I went through to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, I was still a target. My drab catholic school uniform did not save me from getting groped on public transport.
The things I was exposed to as a young girl did not do me any good either. The strong female characters in the movies I watched were always tomboyish. They had their hair cropped, fixed car engines, hated colourful things and wanted to prove that they were better than men at something. To a certain age, I believed this was what made a woman strong – if I behaved more like a man I would be viewed as strong.
I went into adulthood like a sheep, never questioning the things that I was taught or exposed to. Slowly, I realised there was something wrong. I started questioning why I always felt uncomfortable in my own skin. Why did I always end up wearing the ‘safe’ clothes? Why did I feel like if I displayed emotions I wouldn’t be taken seriously?
The answer lay in the fact that I have been afraid to embrace my femininity. I was afraid that the more I acted, expressed, and looked like a woman I would make myself vulnerable, that I would make myself look weak.
It is incredibly difficult to break away from the things I have been indoctrinated with. It took me months to convince myself that my feminine traits did not make me a weak person. I am slowly learning that if I have to really feel confident I have to embrace the woman I am. But I’ll still choose to wear oversized t-shirts and hoodies while I am travelling alone because how much ever I try to embrace my femininity, the world is still a forbidding place for women.