I don’t think that I fully knew what it meant to be a woman until I got to college. I didn’t understand who I was, so I couldn’t begin to understand what it meant to exist as a woman and exist in this body where there were expectations and preconceived notions of me based only on my expression of gender. My relationship with womanhood has changed a lot throughout my life. I think it will continue to change and evolve as I navigate the rest of my life.
From an early age I always felt like an outsider. Something that seemed to come so easy to others was always a mystery to me. It always felt like there was a collective understanding of how to be a girl that I missed. There was some secret meeting, some council that I didn’t get invited to. All the other girls seemed to have an innate knowledge of how to behave; what things to like; what things to say.
When I started middle school and the stink of puberty started ravaging the halls, things were different from how they were before. There was a way to behave that I had again missed out on. I still realized how outside of everyone I felt and how desperate I was to be a part of the club. I wanted anything to be a part of something, to be a part of the collective understanding. I thought there were things I needed to be a part of this, clothing or makeup. To talk about boys, or gossip about other girls. If I could just follow the outline, I would finally understand.
For a while I think that I resented being a woman. I was a sporty kid, and my gym teachers favored boys for heavy lifting and set higher expectations for them. I was so upset that the threshold for our running test was higher than the boys, so I went around with a clipboard to record all the girls’ scores so I could show the gym teacher that we could do more than he said we could. I had big feelings and big opinions and felt I was being looked down upon. I resented the fact that I wasn’t owed respect in the same way, and that men would ogle me on the street and honk to get my attention. I couldn’t know how understand my existence as a woman when it felt like all I was handed was shortcomings.
So much of being a woman is socially constructed. There are so many unspoken rules and habits that made me feel disconnected from the idea of being a woman. If I couldn’t fit into this mold that I saw, that meant that I wasn’t doing something right.
It took me a while to realize that everything that I thought it meant to be a woman, was just what I was performing to try and act like what I thought being a woman was. I was trying to mimic and replicate what I saw. Regrettably, I haven’t been able to see what womanhood truly is to me until recently. I have finally been able to weed through all the other factors that have clouded my sense of who I’m supposed to be. I feel more myself, more like a woman, as I reject the social norms and expectations that I felt so tied to.
Womanhood is personhood. To be a woman is to be dynamic and changing, to be all the weird and gross things that you are. Womanhood is authenticity, and the idea that you get to decide what that means for you. There is no box to check, script to follow, or secret meetings to be missed.
The most important pillar of womanhood to me is the collective nature of the experience. Womanhood exists in a room full of love, full of laughter. I feel most connected to being a woman when I’m around my friends and knowing about the communal experiences that bind us together. Some of the people that make me feel most connected to womanhood are my friends. The people that make me feel seen and heard, the people that uplift me and want me to succeed. Mutual care within friendships is so special and so specific to being a woman.
The friends that I made in college were some of the people that enlightened me with a new way of thinking. I saw them being so completely themselves, so genuinely authentic. Being in their company made me see that there wasn’t one way to be, but so many different veins to express womanhood in.
I met my friend Morrison-Neale during my freshman year. She quickly became one of my favorite people I had ever met, because she said whatever was on her mind. She was quick-witted, irreverent, and hilarious. She knew who she was and knew that what she had to say was of value. She is quick to laugh and quick to give a compliment.
Morrison-Neale defines womanhood as the ability to express herself at multiple capacities. She says, “Being a woman and being respected by fellow women and feeling loved, and cared for and protected by other women, it’s like entering a room and seeing a woman there and knowing that I’m gonna be safe or just feeling more encouraged.”
There’s a warmth in the knowing that being in a space with another woman means that you have someone else there who understands. I love her definition, being able to express yourself at multiple capacities. Womanhood and identity are never fully stagnant; they change and grow as you do. The acknowledgement of this reality only helps to accept yourself on a deeper level.
Another one of my friends that has helped me learn what womanhood means is my roommate Katana. Katana is truly authentic to herself in a way that most people strive to be. She is kind and open and giving and consistently the biggest supporter of the people she loves. She helps me feel connected to womanhood by finding joy in the little things. When we stay up late talking
Katana equates womanhood to strength. She says, “The times I feel most connected to being a woman is when I’m with my friends, and we’re talking about the things that we go through. It’s not seen as things that happen to us where everyone feels bad and like we’re all suffering, but it’s a collective thing that we go through, and we endure it and it’s hard, but that’s not what we’re acknowledging. We’re just acknowledging that as a community, as friends, and as peers, this is what we’re going through. I just feel most connected to womanhood when I’m with my girls.”
Katana highlights again how special the collective nature of womanhood is. While every woman’s experience is different, there’s something that binds us all together. We have each other despite it all. Our strength isn’t mitigated by all that we experience, but all that we sustain.
I feel womanhood while I’m getting ready at the bathroom sink, singing along to the music my friend is playing from the other room. I feel it while dancing. I feel it when I laugh so hard my ribs hurt and all I can do is reach for my friend’s hand to rock back and forth while we hold our stomachs. I feel it when giving advice. I feel it when I receive advice. I feel it in the quiet understandings and the spoken affirmations. I feel womanhood as empowerment, as self-actualization.
I still resent a lot of the things that tend to come with being a woman. I know I deserve more, and I know all my fellow women deserve more. But I now more than ever can appreciate how special our experience is, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.