Last week I had the humbling opportunity to participate in a show called "We are Women." The show, which was dedicated to empowering females, revealed what it means to be a woman in terms of race, sexuality, and womanhood. Rewind to last Wednesday: Various authors read poems with ferocity and grace, self-written monologs were executed with determination and compassion, and stories were told with truth and raw emotion. I remember the powerful performances from each of the women in the show, I remember the eloquence of their delivery and the magnified looks of the audience...well what seemed like it through thin black curtains.
I couldn’t be more thankful to be a part of the show. In eight months here at this hippy dippy liberal arts school, I’ve learned more about what it means to be a woman than in my seven years at an all girls school.
Lately, my conversations with one of my closest friends have revolved around wanting to know who we’re going to marry and when. These questions seem to escalate at ten-fold at night with a jar of cookie butter after some melodramatic boy drama that we’ll forget in a couple months, but nevertheless, we question. We ball up our fists wanting to know what the next ten years looks like; does it wrap our late twenties with a wedding gown and half chocolate half vanilla wedding cake? Will we be halfway across the world eating pasta with someone across the dinner table? Will we, will we, will we? As I think about these scenarios that have schemed in my head, I’m reminded that I wasn’t born in hopes of finding this idea of “my other half” and I wasn’t placed on this ambivalent Earth to find my meaning in the hands of a boy.
I am not non-existent if I don’t have a romantic interest. I am not non-existent if I don’t have a significant other. I am not non-existent if the next 10, 20, or even 30 years doesn’t end with a ring on my finger. There’s an idea perceived in society that our Instagrams' should be filled with handheld promises and stolen kisses, our Facebooks' should be linked with “in a relationship” and that we should lean on another person to complete us. But if I’m 19 and if I spend my time and energy on the efforts and strains that come with searching for “the one,” I won’t find “the one.
Womanhood is magical and complex.
Womanhood revolves around fighting for the right to be heard, it revolves around the right to not be harassed or assaulted for the clothes (or lack of) on our body, and it revolves around a community of women building each other up. But it doesn’t always centralize around the idea of love and the opposite gender, it focuses on women of race and women of sexuality outside the lines of a binary statistic. Womanhood looks at each female as a whole and it doesn’t look at her sex parts nor does it zoom in on her romantic interests. But I can’t define womanhood for you much more than that, I haven’t lived what you’ve lived through. I only have my own experiences in my 19 years of living and a small portion of that is true living. I am not you and you are not me, thus, womanhood looks different in our shoes...
So tell me, what does womanhood look like to you?
