Our. Misunderstood. Female-Self.

I watch from my office window this foggy morning, my coffee cup resting on a ring of paint on the frame as an April snow swirls in thick bursts in the backyard.

I'm about to log into my PC and want to avoid my social network. How irritating is it to find out how much Facebook knows about you? Besides, I’d most likely see someone I haven't met in years, looking flawless and smiling like they just won a beauty pageant. If I continued scrolling, I'd accidentally encounter the images of her last party, in which she would casually fling back her hair, wearing a sparkling v-neckline dress. And then the whirling of thoughts would sweep into my somnolent head. All good women exhibit those images on their accounts, don't they? ( in mine, my hair is tied up, my dress is soft tangerine). That aside, why is this feminine identity we uphold and display daily still churning in those retrograde stereotypes in these times of social networks plus pandemic outbreaks? As a good Gemini woman, prone to dualism, I voice a little of today’s ambivalence because there's much contradiction and frustration around all this.

As if it were a cosmology, rising on the heels of hyper-femininity and casting an overwhelming shadow on the world below, there are those celebrities to whom hordes of less lucky women aspire. The next level is for the demi goddesses, today's influencers and socialites. Some say their media accounts feed on women's vulnerabilities, not unlike those of their "macho" counterparts. The only benefit their supposed feminism radiates is that "their business" is justified consensually (as if one could reduce it to the act itself). But that's not reinventing women's roles, is it? Now, watch them emerge out of the vignette in leather and thongs singing, " you want it, I ain't giving it ". Indeed, I want to ask how big it has to get for a fantastic visual experience? ( and I am not referring to your screen) Would those attributes have a chance for future success when we're all half bionic? Wouldn't that kind of standardization leave us stunted and without passion? The contrary disposal of irony.

Since tomorrow is the only imminent thing we can speculate on, the AI ​​boom is just around the corner, but that may mean nothing new. The future could be as overpopulated with statues of Venus as the social networks that supply our daily sustenance. From this vantage point, I hear the echo of a simplistic algorithm screaming digitized narcissism ad infinitum, because no matter where you are, it's the hugeness of it all.

While wonderland may be on the other side, not all women who make up and wear fitting clothes are trying to emulate the Kardashian tribe. In fact, there's nothing about being a woman that can be easily defined with less than five variables. Instead, shouldn't we be asking why society still sees those crazy standards ​​as desirable for a successful (female) life? At the same time, these days many women agree there are essential parts of our personalities we have learnt not to overdo. Things like our talent, care, strength and sadly, even our intellects. Because a strong, intelligent woman is dangerous. It kills me when a woman is treated as if she had to take it, only because she looks fit for the struggle. It doesn't work like that. Women shouldn't have to live on either of these extremes, a goddess of fertility or an empowered, dangerous creature. Or both. Or neither, and just as a portrayal of all the fakeness we see in today's world.

And so, what is the ratio for sexy vs motherly? hard as that is, not impossible if you try. Like Audrey Hepburn said, " nothing is impossible, the word itself says I'm possible". Is that what she meant? I doubt it.

The following will sound like a L'Oreal campaign. It's the typical thing good women do : I frequently subscribe to the mascara and lipstick remedy, foundation and blush only sometimes. Let me be super clear, my mascara never runs down if it's waterproof. No matter how bad things get. Right? So, everything lived so far and left to live will be by this female self, this dignified and misunderstood feminity that trusts waterproof mascara through thick and thin.

And for a bittersweet ending, this bitter mouthful of in extremis: the global pandemic. It forces me to ask again, why are we doing this? I don't have clarity on that. So, I move rooms but the puffy snowflakes still swirl behind the baby ballet pink curtains in an unknown style.