When someone asks you to shapeshift, do you do it?
Or have you always been one of those rare few who are so sure of themselves that such commands have absolutely no effect on you? Personally, I can’t relate. That’s why, as a wee child when I learned what a ‘good girl’ was, I morphed myself into one.
The praise I received for it became everything to me, and I made sure that I was always colouring within the lines, like my mother told me to. I was aware of the way other aunties scoffed at girls who didn’t. I was careful of that fate. Colour within the lines and find your prize. It’s just the way the world works.
Soon enough, though, I found myself in the company of people whose auras were so slick and shiny that any amount of fucks they could possibly give simply slid right off of them. They appeared to be the ‘suspicious characters’ my mother warned me about, but were far from it. What was good and bad according to her simply didn’t fit the reality I was experiencing, so I forgot about her labels.
It felt liberating, in fact, to not give a fuck. Strange too, to think that the happiness I’d been brought up to chase existed in other places too. Maybe even more so. And as the walls of everything I’d been taught came crumbling down, the shifting began.
I played the role so perfectly, I must say. I stuffed all my shyness under a tight leather skirt and baby pink top. I squeezed myself into fishnets and strapped a garter over my thigh and looked at myself in the mirror, so unlike everything I had ever been before, but so in love with myself. I felt hot. I felt sexy and confident, and for the first time in my life, my insecurities didn’t rage at me like they used to, when pleasing people was more important than dressing for myself.
“I like this shape,” I thought as I leaned against the mirror and snapped the perfect mirror selfie. “This shape suits me. I am in my bad-bitch, girl-boss era. I am shapeshifting into divinity.”
Well, I was. At least until the deep humbling came and the next thing I knew, my mother was screaming at me. Chaos filled my head as she flashed my own picture back at me. “What have you become? What’s wrong with you?” She scrunched her face in disgust as though she smelled filth in the air. “You are an extension of the family. Why are you dressing like a whore? I have never seen you look so cheap.”
She told me that I belonged to a good family — that I was now a bad girl. She reminded me that my father has a weak heart. If he were to see me like this, he’d die, and it would be my fault.
And then my brother called me. Have you ever been chastised by someone who’s meant to look up to you? Ever been called a whore by your baby brother? I hope not — it’s not a very nice feeling.
“I know what men think when they look at girls like you,” he said while I sobbed silently on the phone. I was once again reminded that something was wrong with me — that I must shapeshift again, back to virtue, and somewhere far away from the male gaze.
Do not get too caught up in divinity. God is not a woman. I am a whore.
I tried to squeeze myself back in the box I came from. I tried to find my way to virtue again, lest I lose all my family in pursuit of the abject. God, how could I? And the shame built up in me. It started sleeping with me at night, it lay in my chest, my hips. Stifled my voice.
This must be what it means to be a good woman.
Sarah Ahmed, a prominent feminist philosopher, once said, “Happiness involves a form of orientation: the very hope for happiness means we get directed in specific ways, as happiness is assumed to follow from some life choices and not others.”
But when did I — and when did you — and when did all our sisters and mothers and daughters agree to be responsible for everyone’s happiness but our own?
Ahmed, in her book The Promise of Happiness, said a ‘good woman’ is considered good because “she aligns her happiness with the happiness of others.” She is kind and caring by nature, and it is this virtue that leads to happiness. Conversely, unhappiness and disgrace result from being unvirtuous.
For me, dressing like a ‘slut’ meant discarding everything ‘good’ that I had ever learned. My role as a dutiful daughter meant being the main object of this shared happiness. It was my responsibility to give my parents what they desired. A responsibility that, according to them, went above and beyond any sort of claim that I might have over my own body and the way I decide to decorate it. That, in doing so, I was clearly being bad, unvirtuous, and ignorant of the values my parents instilled in me.
It’s important to look at these signifiers clearly. What signifies a good action and a bad one? How easily do you brand a person as good or bad based on the way they dress, and what does that say about you?
I am sorry that our bodies have become sites of shame and scrutiny. It is a weight that was never ours to bear, and yet we bear it everyday.
I’m not the first person to get slut shamed, and I’m certainly not the last. If there’s any consolation that I can give to anyone reading this, it is that shape shifting for others is a tedious process. What people think of you is a direct reflection of them and not of you. The happiness that will allegedly come if you follow the path others want? Well, it doesn’t exist.
People all around express their freedom in different ways. My ways of being free, feeling liberated, and dressing might be different from yours, and that is completely valid. No matter what that looks like though, honouring our own personal freedom is the most liberating thing we can do. That begs the question: how do we get there? How do we find ourselves in a world where everyone seizes any chance to invalidate you?
I personally don’t know.
I hear my mother’s voice whenever I wear something I know I ‘shouldn’t,’ and it’s difficult to break out of those barriers. Sometimes I feel that when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t see myself anymore, but the girl I ought to be — the girl who is thin enough, pretty enough, and modest enough.
I would like to see myself one day, no matter how tired, how bleary-eyed, how puffy, and bloated I may be. I want to see myself and love myself so badly. Without the voices, without the shoulds, naked without the promise of others’ happiness imprinted on my body like a tattoo I never asked for.
Maybe I’ll get there soon. I’ll let you know when I do. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side.
Editor’s note: Due to privacy concerns, this article was published with an anonymous byline.
