Who Would Want to be Themselves Anyway
My grandmother bought me my first pencil dress. It was from H&M, prime 2017, black and white corporate look. I was 12 years old and thought I ran the place. My grandmother was amazed. I walked out from behind the H&M dressing rooms curtain and her smile was radiant.
It’s important to know that my grandmother rose in the corporate world as a woman in a time where women were only known to grab coffee for the men. She beat the odds. I remember only 2 Christmases ago, my mom, cousins, and I were talking freely about the movie “9-5” and about the horrid man who ran the office. With no warning my grandmother decided to drop the lore that she herself was pursued by the office manager.
In all my years of hearing her tell the same corporate stories over and over (literally did an interview of her for a high school paper) she never once told us about this.
We were all immediately intrigued. Apparently she had gotten a promotion that morning and went in to find out how she would work her new job. But he was expecting some sort of thank you for getting her that promotion(iykyk). She told us that she used her voice, she said no, and quit right on the spot.
She passed away last november, but even up til her last year with us she was building side businesses and taking every chance she could to be able to support herself.
She taught me about being an independent woman. So I grew up with that mindset.
I wanted to be powerful, rich, and have 30 cars that never get driven. I wanted to wear suits and heels, and lipstick. And I didn't want any kind of man to tell me what to do. And I was in the world's words “empowered.”
THE SWITCH
Simultaneously, while I was preaching feminism, I had a crush. And not just a little eye contact crush. A big fat major crush that had been going on for 4 years. And… he liked me back.
The desire to live a “big” life was in a constant fist fight with the desire to settle down, get married, have kids, and enjoy a “smaller” life. And it confused the crap out of me.
On one side I was being told to “reach my full potential” by all these micro-influencers on tiktok. And on the other side my heart and mind were pulling me towards choosing someone other than myself. And for some reason that felt wrong.
I ended up denying my feelings thinking “I could do better” and “I don’t need a man” and now it’s been 4 years and I’m still single.
Did I give up the only chance I had at ever getting into a relationship with someone I actually liked? I’ll never know, I'm hoping not though.
THE REASON WHY ITS SO CONFUSING
For the last 20 years or so “women in power” has become over-saturated. Honestly I believe this idea has lost the plot.
Nowadays it seems as if you don’t have the dream to become super successful and rich, then your dreams don’t matter. And on the opposite end of the spectrum if you don’t want to be successful or rich, well you're already 5 steps behind because you should have been married by 18 and had your 3rd kid when you're 24.
The world has given women (and men) this imaginary timeline of when things are supposed to happen.
18- Graduate highschool
20- Meet the love of your life in college if you haven’t already married your high school sweetheart
24- You have either gotten married, settled in a “pink-collar” job, and are nursing your second child. Or you have a multi-million dollar company and every man who comes your way thinks you're intimidating.
The reality of the fact is that this is 0.05% of our world right now. And it makes the 99.5% of us feel behind.
In an article written by Carson Brown he states, “Social media dangles everything desired by Gen Z — intimacy, companionship, and stability — through a crystallized perception of matrimony filtered through a social media kaleidoscope.”
This quote is specifically addressing how Gen Z is getting married so early. However, I think this concept can apply to the other side too.
We see Shelby Sapp and other sales girls living the dream life and saying “this life is right here waiting for you if you want it enough.”
And thats the part that makes it so difficult to stop desiring. Its the classic “carrot-on-a-stick” trick that says, your dreams are possible.
Now I’m not saying your dreams aren't possible. However, in this context the influencers who are trying to sell it to you don't mention the amount of work it takes. They say “all you have to do is jump on this 4 hour call and you'll be rich by the end of the week.”
They don’t mention the fact that it took them over 10 years to get there themselves. And then we sign up for the course (which just makes them richer) and get disappointed that our lives didn’t change in one week.
The biggest issue with this is that the disappointment doesn’t latch itself onto the course we bought. It latches onto ourselves, our identity. The course is “fool proof”. They have testimonials, easy to follow step-by-step. It pins any kind of failure as a “user error”. So when we can’t do what thousands of other women have done (or at least that’s what the course claims) we start to define ourselves as incapable. We start to hate the person that we are because we lose trust in ourselves and struggle to find the “real me” underneath a pile of other people's opinions and beliefs.
THE SECOND ACT
We’ve now gone though our young adult lives tied to the fact that we were behind. We were incapable of being the woman we wanted to be. But guess what! We have the rest of our lives to be the exact opposite!
This is the lie that the older women tell themselves. They say “I worked so hard trying to be someone to everyone else, so now I am just going to live for myself.”
But can you ever truly live for yourself?
It's a never ending cycle of living for you, realizing you're pushing everyone away, then coming back and realizing you aren't yourself anymore.
In an article by Kristen Houghton She states “we become wiser as we get older because we are more willing, and more vocal, in stating our preferences and letting our wants be known. The second act of life is a second chance to meet that criteria.”
That is the exact wording that makes you hate yourself in the second part of your life too. What is going to change? You may have gotten a few more years of experience but what if you were already “willing… vocal… and letting our wants be known.” Then you would just be failing all over again.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different outcome. You cannot live your life trying to define yourself through the lens of the world's gaze whether that's through being rich and successful, a suburban mom, or just “being yourself”.
THE FEAR OF CONNECTION
Even the idea of being true to yourself has a defined aesthetic. It’s the corduroy jackets, the vintage tees, the record stores, and “not caring what people think”. It's being performative without performing. (If that even makes any sense).
I love people's opinions. And not in a “I crave the input of others” (even though I do that as well) but in an actual curious way. I want to know what you think. I don't want to try and convince you to believe what I believe and I don't want you to try and convince me. But tell me what you believe because I am genuinely curious.
In todays times curiosity as a whole has been blocked out. We put prejudice on everyone who walks by us because we are all defined by aesthetics. We are caught up in a Pinterest rabbit hole that literally tells us exactly what to strive for. And don't get me wrong, I love pinterest as much as the next girl. But its the reliance on Pinterest to have a beautiful life where things get messy.
I can’t pick an outfit anymore without associating it with the type of person I would want to portray that day.
Baggy jeans, okay I am now a tortured artist who only listens to alt rock and reads paper books.
Leggings, okie get me a PSL and turn on Olivia Rodrigo before I drop dead at my pilates class.
Casual Heels, ok im listening to gracie abrams but only her underground songs because im not a “poser”.
You get the point.
Another issue I have with this conformity to aesthetics in such an extreme manner is the exclusivity that they bring.
My dad always talks about how he was friends with everybody in high school and that's why he was popular. Not because he was cool, because he wasn't. He was a nerd, on the cheerleading squad, who didn't weigh over 110 pounds until his junior year of high school. But simply because he was friendly and talked to everyone.
I was watching the movie “Ron Goes Wrong” which is basically about these robots that are supposed to help you make friends. There is a scene where these two girls are talking after class without their robots, they seem very friendly and then the robots come up, run a quick analysis test and decide “nope y’all aren’t compatible” the girls then look slightly disappointed and move on. (they eventually become friends but that's not what im getting at).
Aesthetics are taking over friendships in the same way. There is a heavy weight on the idea of “finding your people”.
The romanticized life of finding a group of friends who are exactly like you. If I was in a friend group of 10 of me I think I would commit… We aren't meant to find people who are exactly like us. We are meant to find people we can disagree with and still be friends. We are meant to find people who bring new perspectives to our lives.
I think a lot of this idealism comes from the fear of not having connections. In 2020 (blah blah blah) we all obviously lost a lot of people skills. And the ones who didn't already have friends struggled even more because now we were all walking back out into the world like toddlers to see if we could make friends by showing off our favorite toys and seeing how high we could jump. And we became the “weird” group of kids. The ones who nobody really wanted to talk to. So we then went on a hunt to “find out people” just to find out that “our people” were weird (Surprise).
TO WRAP UP
I feel like I’ve gone on 5 different tangents in this post but the whole point is to say this.
No one has life figured out. As much as I want reincarnation to be real, this is our first and only time on earth. Don’t spend it trying to be someone you're not. And if you want to be someone else, don't force it. Go with what feels natural.
I still think back to that pencil dress and how much I wanted to please my grandmother by being that girl. And I think about how long it hung in my closet until I gave it to goodwill.
I may never know who I truly am. In the famous words of Taylor Swift “I’m a mirrorball” I am thousands of reflections of who other people are and who they say I am. And I don’t think I will ever be able to truly be myself, but how could you? There is always going to be a desire to improve yourself or be the person that everyone wants. The point is to not put so much pressure on yourself to actually become that person. At the end of the day everybody has their own life, we are all going to have different experiences and those experiences are the only things that make us exactly who we are.
With Love,
Pixie Rain
