Oh How I Love Being A Woman
What a beautiful burden to be a woman. To be soft. To be emotional. To be compassionate. What a lovely thing to feel so much. I love smelling like vanilla all the time. I love carrying around 7 different lip products in my purse. I love the camaraderie of the women’s bathroom at a party or social space; everyone sharing makeup, perfume, gum, and cigarettes. Getting each other’s social media and going crazy at how gorgeous you all find each other in your small outfits. I love how my feet hurt after wearing heels or platform shoes for too long. I love pretending to be too weak to open a jar or bottle around a man I love so he can feel strong, and I love actually to be weak under a man I trust! (Kinky!) I love crying a little more than necessary when I get really upset. I love being craved, desired, and protected. I love yearning and being in love with someone. I love devoting my whole life to loving someone and ensuring they feel loved. I love the deep pain of being a woman. It’s all so beautiful.
I only say being a woman is a burden because we outwardly, openly, and easily boil our pain to the surface. Men’s pain is pushed down and simmers. Women’s pain is always afloat and craving to be noticed. Craves to be cured immediately. Craves for someone to come and fix it for them. Then there’s all the obvious pain, like having a period for 7 days, every month for what feels like your entire life, the pain of experiencing people who have/want to hurt you, to take advantage of your purity and vulnerability. The pain and disappointment towards the fact that you can’t go for a nice walk on a cool summer night after sundown. The pain of being with someone who makes you hate another woman just like you because your partner seems too fond of her, or can’t keep their eyes off of her, or goes as far as actually touching her and being intimate with her when he was supposed to be just yours. That’s when the beauty and the camaraderie and the gorgeousness you find in each other cease to exist. You turned from a source of constant love into a jealous and hateful monster. You hate a woman just like you, because she, too, was manipulated and betrayed. She has the same feelings as you. She has the same interests as you. She loves to collect and dye her hair just like you.
I feel like mostly all women are essentially the same; we all have the same desires because it’s in our DNA to nurture and take care. To be emotional. The same way we love to gather and collect within our interests and gather trinkets is the same way our ancestors would gather berries. Isn’t that so sweet? We all have this innate desire to gather— or that’s just a theory I choose to believe because I truly love to imagine a world where we are all one.
“I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do.” - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath.
I think any sort of depth or creativity I have inside has come from the experience of being a woman with other women. My photography style comes directly from how soft and light I see the world. While experiencing girlhood. The world is tinted pink and purple. There’s a soft haze and grain to it all. I see girlhood as me frolicking in a meadow in a loose-fitted skirt with another woman I love. I believe there is no greater love or soul tie than when a woman finds a bestfriend who adores and loves her more than a man ever could. When a woman finds her soulmate in her best friend, they see eachother through and through. Clear like still water, or a reflection like a mirror. I’d never felt more beautiful and interesting in my life than when I was with my bestfriend. I saw her for who she truly was, and she felt the same way. She was beautiful, perfect, deep, interesting, safe. I saw the entire world in her eyes. Every experience I had with her was like a coming-of-age film. She truly was a mirror— a reflection of who I was, and who I so passionately wanted to be. She loved me as I was. She loved me behind all the makeup, and after my face was swollen from crying in her arms. She loved me when no man could. She showed me what true love was— it doesn’t always have to be romantic. True love and true girlhood are recognizing everything about you and accepting you. Wanting more of you. Making you breakfast when you lose your job. Driving you to buy pregnancy tests and morning-after pills. Giving your friend a place to stay when you and your boyfriend get into an argument. Baking your favorite dessert for you on your birthday. Helping your boyfriend pick out your birthday gift because she knows you better than he ever could— I never had a love more profound than experiencing girlhood with another woman.
Oh, How I Love Being A Woman.
song recommendation: Sofia - Clairo
