Pray tell, when you look at other women, do you see a reflection of yourself in them, or do you feel like you are someone else entirely?
The time is 1:32am and I am at the back of a building used for a rave party, wondering what the fuck I am doing there. Maybe it is the weed I had taken a few drags from or the loud music mixed with the heavy smell of alcohol that I cannot stand. I don’t know what exactly was messing with my head, but I just knew I needed to get out of there. I needed to be alone.
So I excused myself from my friends and went to the back of the building. I sat on the cold tiles, and when my bare legs touched them, I did not hate it. I actually felt relief. I looked around to make sure the dark corner I sat in was well hidden from people and, once I confirmed I was all alone, I let out a long breath and began asking myself how I even got here in the first place.
My friends had been begging me for months to attend a rave party organised by the gym I go to, and as a staunch introvert, I flatly refused because everything about it already felt too much. There were going to be too many people, too much noise, too much movement, too much alcohol – in fact, too much of everything I always try to run away from. I do not like loud music, I don’t like crowded spaces, I do not like alcohol or the smell of it, and I don’t even know how to dance without becoming painfully aware of my body. So what exactly would I be doing in a place that didn’t feel like me?
I kept saying no each month until one of the girls came over to my house to help her pick an outfit for it. Watching her talk about it with my other friend at the end of the call made me feel like I was missing out. It didn’t make it any better that I had been silently tired of feeling like I existed outside of things other people seemed to move through so easily. So I suddenly agreed to go with them.
At first, I tried to settle into it; I smiled when I needed to, I saw a few familiar faces, and I managed to convince myself that I was only overthinking as usual. But as the music got louder and the party fully started, I began to question everything. That was how I ended up at the back of the building, relieved to be away from a party I had willingly chosen to attend.
See, I am not like other girls, and no, I don’t mean it in a way that I think I am better. I mean it in a way that sometimes makes me wish I could just be like them. I wish I could loosen up a little, enjoy the things they enjoy, and not be a killjoy whose face suddenly changes when her social battery is low.
I feel different, and sometimes… out of place.
This was the same feeling Bonita, a woman in her mid-twenties I had spoken to, talked about. When I asked her about feeling different, she said she could write a thousand words.
She told me she had known from the early stage in her life that she was different in the most concrete, body-level way. “I had acne the size of little oranges, breasts that were barely there, and an ass so flat it felt like a chalkboard. With society’s standards, I knew I did not stand a chance of being ‘that girl’.”
This was what made her resign early and give up on trying to look like something she was not. However, she had tried to fit in and fought it before she fully gave up.
“I wore my sister’s bra to school. I still cringe when I think about it, but how do you explain being the only SS3 girl whose body had not caught up with her peers? A male classmate once saw me on sports day and said in pidgin, ‘you no even get breast.’ So maybe you should not judge me too harshly for wearing my sister’s cup D bra to school the next day.”
“I envied the ‘happening babes’, the girls who seemed like things were just happening for them. I thought I did not deserve love or relationships because what man would be proud to be seen with me?”
Bonita didn’t stop at padded bras. She started using the triple-action creams that promised to change her skin’s story. She performed every trick she could think of to change how she looked, but eventually she gave up.
I asked her where she was now with that feeling of being different and she said:
“I am at acceptance. I love that I am different. I do not have to conform to societal standards because they are fickle. And honestly, who the hell is society?”
I have been thinking about that ever since because she was right. Women are not a monolith; we never were. We are not made from one template. We come in different body shapes, different experiences, and ways of existing.
This reminds me of Eloise in Bridgerton. She is a woman who exists in a world built entirely around a version of womanhood she cannot make herself want. The whole performance of availability, dressing up for different balls, and searching desperately for suitors is not what she wants for herself. What I find interesting about her character is how she tries to understand why she feels so out of sync with everyone else and why the things that seem natural to others feel like a costume on her. She struggles with feeling different and she questions everything despite living inside that world.
And maybe that is what I have been beating around the bush to say.
That my own version of womanhood is different from yours and every other person’s. That you might have the same body type as someone else and still be different in every other way you can imagine.
For example, I am emotional and overly sensitive, a trait that I used to question. I love food and will drop everything for it. I would rather stay home all day watching movies, reading, writing, or scrolling on my phone than spending time outside. Home is where my fun is, but unfortunately, a lot of people I have met cannot relate to it.
I like makeup, but I think it can be a waste of time for me, so I would rather show up barefaced. But I also admire women who beat their faces effortlessly. My social battery drains quickly — two hours into socialising and I am already thinking about my bed, a semi-dark room, and silence.
I don’t know how to walk up to people and talk. I am very reserved with new people, but I talk too much with the people I am comfortable with. And I am not the only one in this.
There are women who genuinely love parties, maybe even too much, and come alive in the crowds. There are women who love spontaneity, and there are others like me who like to slow down and plan because they cannot keep up with the pace.
There are women who are loud in all the ways you can think of. There are women who do not fit into what society expects women to be. There are women who fall outside every beauty standard that was built long before they came into existence. There are women who struggle with female friendships, who prefer solitude, who want nothing to do with the direction society is pointing them towards.
And so what?
What if the way you think is different from other people? What if you feel unfeminine? What if you feel alienated from conversations other girls naturally enjoy? What if you move at a slower pace than others? What if you feel disconnected from trends? What if you are too stubborn, too expressive, or too quiet?
What if?
All of them count.
And maybe you do not see a reflection of yourself in other women. Maybe you do. But we are not the same, and we were never meant to be, because that would make such a boring world.
