This text is for you. For you who are a mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, aunt, niece. For you who are a wife, a partner and a friend. For you who was born as or feels like a woman. For you who are a woman. Yes, for you who are a woman and along this “label” you carry something more.
Woman. A “label” that at first was nothing more than the tailoring of your gender; “a female human being”. Along the way, things took a different turn and a mentality, a situation, a common consensus was created around women. And this mentality is nothing more than an added burden. A set of obligations that was given to you silently and that you are going to be carrying throughout your whole journey as an individual. A burden that was shared by generations of women before you and which they continue to share. It is not visible to the naked eye, but it is hidden in every aspect of your everyday life. In behaviors, discussions, thoughts, expectations. For you, with you, towards you.
And this burden comes down to one phrase: “act like a girl”. Or like a woman. Phrase it however you want, depending on the age you refer to, but the essence of the obligation remains the same. An obligation that was silently created the moment you were created. That follows you at every age. As a girl or a woman. How many times have you not heard those around you build up their expectations for you stemming from the unstable base of your gender? From the very first years of your life, phrases like “this game is for boys” or “wear a skirt, you are a girl” were there to stigmatize your every experience with the waterproof ink of an ideal woman. Growing up you were used to hearing “take care of yourself, you are a grown girl” or “be careful with what you eat, this body is no fit for a girl”, so intensely that they no longer impressed you. Later, the “learn how to cook, you will have a family one day” and the “how will you look after your home in the future?” started and you had now identified your existence with the obligation that society had imposed on you without your consent.
And this demand felt like a constant cloud over your head. Or even better, an invisible guard that was alert and threatened to reveal to those around you every time that – unintentionally- you had forgotten to live according to your gender’s ways. So, you bowed your head and complied with everything others expected from you. To love pink and not blue. Not to play with “boy” toys. To take care of yourself. To smile even when you didn’t want to, so that you wouldn’t be called “sour”. To try to be liked, to put on as much makeup as needed to attract attention but not so much as to be called various decorative -and not at all well-intentioned- adjectives. To dress feminine, but not provocatively, because if something happened to you everyone would blame you; the victim, and not the abuser. To count the calories in your food in order to acquire the appropriate figure. To learn to tidy up and cook. To have a family and balance it with your career, because obviously you couldn’t choose between the two. And if you chose your career, you would then be a “spinster” that didn’t accomplish in her life the biggest achievement of her gender. Honestly, do you even remember how many times you have complied with all the above?
And that’s how you grew up. Immersed in from head to toe inside unofficial obligations, innate to your very existence. Inside a ball of “wants” and “musts”. Inside stereotypes that didn’t let you determine your behavior as you wished, that even today, that you are reading this text, don’t let you make your own choices freely. Tied to a burden that, even though you pick it up every day for your whole life, it still classifies you as the “weaker gender”.
But you are not the “weaker gender”. On the contrary, you are the strongest being you will ever come across. And the same way you have the ability to create life and the ability to realize everything you set your mind on while simultaneously bleeding through your vagina, you have the ability to go against all stereotypes that keep you confined. To love whichever color you want. To wear whatever expresses you, to walk around as polished or disheveled as you want. To have fun, to drink, to eat without thinking what people will say. To burn food or not cook it at all. To leave your place messy or expect your partner to do the same things as you. To choose your career and not the creation of a family. To laugh when you want to, to say no when you don’t want to. To build your future without taking into account what others decided before you for you.
You believe that everything mentioned above should be taken for granted, however the facts refute you. So, you keep wondering that maybe this is not another flaw of an imperfect society, and you can’t actually do everything you want because you are a woman.
The truth is, though, that you can do them precisely because you are a woman. Because you are a mother, grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, aunt, niece. Because you are a wife, a partner and a friend. Because you are a woman and even though it describes you -or even better, it constitutes solely one of the elements that describe you- it doesn’t define you. You are a woman and you burst out of all the molds that they try to place you in.