There’s a quote many Hispanic women are familiar with that goes like this: “calladita te ves más bonita,” which translates to “you look prettier when you’re quiet”. While this quote comes from the machismo culture found in many Latin American families, every woman has faced the weight that comes with this saying at least once in her life, regardless of her heritage. Even with society becoming more and more feminist, it remains extremely normalized for everybody to minimize our emotions. We have become better as a society by recognizing when somebody’s feelings are invalidated, especially those of sorrow and anger. But we often overlook how our happier emotions are invalidated on a daily basis, making us find a space that we don’t have the room for to push more emotions away.
I noticed the unspoken expectation that we face to minimize our joy during one of my classes. My professor asked us individually how we were feeling before the beginning of the class and a majority of the students, who are all women, answered with “tired”. Why do we feel so inclined to focus on the more draining parts of our days instead of the happier moments? I know that we’re all stressed and face many daily hardships, but we also can’t negate the small moments that make us feel complete for even a few seconds. It’s not the lack of small moments that prevents us from admitting that we’re feeling good, but the expectation to be constantly neutral, even if we are having the best day ever.
My lovely parents have thankfully raised me to express my emotions to their full extent, despite them both calling me sensitive at times. I was always the embodiment of the word “bubbly”. While I always thought these attributes were my biggest flaw, it wasn’t until this past year that I realized I wouldn’t be here today without them. Fully embracing my emotions made me realize the bias against showing emotion. I saw it in my last talking stage, where I was too “chalant” for showing too much excitement about getting to know somebody I thought I was interested in (I still don’t understand the appeal of being nonchalant when trying to initiate a new relationship, but okay). I also saw it when I was sobbing in my mother’s arms last semester about my personality being too lively to find somebody who would take me seriously. And I saw it when my father swore for the fifty-millionth time this year alone that guys were nothing but turds (I’m sorry to any guy reading this, as you are probably one of the few good guys that still exists).
Aside from a relationship lens, bubbly women often face the disadvantage of not being taken seriously. Our joy becomes our biggest weakness. If we show too much excitement in a job setting, we are seen as unprofessional. If we show too much interest in our studies, we are seen as performative. If we spontaneously sing and dance in public spaces without prior authorization, we are seen as weird. If we get too giggly about a topic and let our laughter seep through, we are seen as too loud. There is no correct way to show visible happiness without getting some type of judgement from others, which drives the need to minimize how we are truly feeling to fit in. It’s so exhausting to pretend that my raw joy doesn’t exist, and it wasn’t until I stopped caring about fitting into this world of fake emotions that I felt the freest. And now, I have finally claimed my college life as my own, three years in.
I have now, thankfully, found a place among my people where I can squeal and jump up and down whenever I get good news, which happens surprisingly often considering I’m in my most difficult semester yet. This happiness has translated so much that I even enjoy studying for the MCAT, a feat that is more often than not daunting. I find myself singing Zara Larsson in Plaza of the Americas with my best friend during our well-deserved study breaks (eight hours straight at Marston’s basement is not an easy task), or running around in circles when my partner mentions grabbing dinner together on a random week day. But most importantly, I find myself celebrating every day as if it were a Friday night. Embracing my joy without hesitation has quite literally changed my life and improved so many outlets, including (most importantly) my career outlook and academic ambitions.
So I urge you beautiful, young women full of so much joy to embrace it even 1% more than you already do. You’ll learn that there’s so much liveliness in loving life and the smallest parts of your days will soon be a collective collage of the best moments of the semester. Not only is it important to allow yourself to feel, as we do only have one life, but we also need to eradicate this normalization of minimizing our emotions as an act of micro-feminism. After all, how can we let our best moments be our disadvantages when we were never prettier being quiet?