Throughout time, women have been seen as inferior and subservient. As we endure a fight for equal rights in society, it has also been presumed that we take on the persona of “bad b*tches.” To be a “bad b*tch” is to have confidence. Confidence is sexy. Confidence is attractive. Making your presence known is the way to make a statement, and quite frankly, confidence is killing me.
If women are not a radiating ball of self-conviction, then there must be something wrong with us. Being confident is not the issue, but the expectation that women should be self-assured 100% of the time is overwhelming. Now, who fosters this ideal? Men. The media. Ourselves… because of the media. Whoever started the trend that attractive women must carry formidable confidence needs to seriously reevaluate what they just started.
Every time I open TikTok, I see videos of women exuding an intimidating amount of confidence, but part of me also wonders how real that energy is. Women are already conditioned to appeal to the traditional male gaze, but as we break away from expectations, social media also starts to collide with any progress. Your favorite Instagram model is real. They experience the same emotional rollercoasters and mental turbulences that we do. Yet, we tend to forget and try to relate. This ultimately causes us to try to fit into an unrealistic mold that does not truly exist in anyone.
Euphoria, starring Barbie Ferreira, who plays the character Kat Hernandez, was able to encompass the struggle of societal expectations and confidence. In season two, as Kat lies on her bed and drowns her sorrows over a bag of potato chips, “ideal” women begin to appear around her. As they begin to appear on the screen and persuade Kat to get out of bed, one claims, “Every day you get out of bed is an act of courage.” They chaotically began to chant, “Love yourself! Love yourself!”
This is what the social media standard has instilled in women today. As viewers could have imagined, Kat felt a shattering sense of pressure to put on an act of confidence. Presumably, she could not. Admittingly, she should not have to.
The phrases “happy girls do it best” and “confidence is key” honestly haunt me. At one point, these were my life mottos, as they may still be for a lot of other people. Women feel pressure to not only put up a front of social media but to romantic partners and themselves as well. The expectations that come with being a woman, even in modern-day society, are blatantly complex and exhausting.
The key to confidence is not “speaking it into existence” or convincing yourself that you are “that b*tch.” Lying to yourself may only cause you to invalidate your own feelings. We have all been there. Start by recognizing that it is okay to feel your feelings. Take the time to understand why you are not feeling confident.
Consider asking yourself these questions whenever your self-confidence seems to decline:
- Have any drastic changes occurred in my life lately?
- Do I need time to heal?
- What can I do to improve my mood right now? Can I watch a movie? Write a journal entry? Call my best friend?
- Who really cares anyway?
- What will genuinely fulfill me and make me happy?
Lower the standard you have set up for yourself. Change your idea of what norms are. Celebrate and elevate, rather than compare and compete. Seeing women as competition may be our greatest downfall within the confidence gap. Closing the gap requires us to accept that, yes, beauty standards are real. They are exhausting, and it is okay to be human.