Samiroonjha
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I was seven years old when someone first told me to "sit like a lady."
I didn't know what that meant. I was just sitting the way children sit when they're free and unbothered, legs crossed on the floor, wholly absorbed in something that made me happy. But apparently, there was a right way and a wrong way to exist in my own body. And I was doing it wrong.
That was my first lesson in what it means to grow up as a girl.
Be Pretty But Not Too Pretty
Nobody hands you a rulebook. It arrives slowly in whispers and glances and offhand comments. You piece it together over years.
Be pretty but don't be vain. Wear makeup but not too much, or you'll look like you're trying too hard. Dress nicely but not too nicely or people will think you want attention. Smile more. Don't be so serious. Don't be so loud. Don't take up too much space.
The instructions are endless and they contradict each other constantly. Society wants us to be beautiful without effort, confident without arrogance, soft without weakness, and strong without being too much. We are expected to balance on a razor's edge every single day and when we fall off somehow it is always our fault.
I spent years trying to figure out the right formula. The perfect amount of everything. Not too ambitious, not too passive. Not too emotional, not too cold. It was exhausting. It still is.
The Career Tightrope
When I was growing up, the women around me were told: you can be anything you want to be. And they meant it kindly. They really did. But nobody mentioned the asterisk.
You can be anything you want as long as you also cook, clean, raise children, support your partner, stay thin, stay young, stay gracious, and never, ever complain about any of it.
In the workplace, we are told to speak up then called aggressive when we do. We are told to be leaders then labeled bossy. We negotiate for our worth and people wince. We stay quiet and get overlooked. The game has rules that change depending on who is watching.
And the most painful part? We often find ourselves policing each other. We have absorbed these expectations so deeply that we enforce them without realizing it. We call women "too emotional" or "too ambitious" in the same breath that we wish someone believed in us more.
The Motherhood Question
At a certain age, the questions start. You can almost set a clock by it.
When are you getting married? Do you want kids? You'd better not wait too long. Your biological clock is ticking.
If you want children, you are expected to sacrifice your career for them — quietly and gratefully. If you don't want children, you are told you will change your mind, that you don't know what you're missing, that something must be wrong with you.
Your womb becomes a topic of public conversation. Your choices about your own body are debated by people who will never live inside it. Society feels entitled to an opinion on the most intimate decisions of your life.
And if you try to have it all a career, a family, a life of your own you are told you are selfish, or stretched too thin, or not doing any of it well enough.
There is no version of this where we simply get to choose without consequence.
The Emotional Labor Nobody Counts
Here is something that took me a long time to name: the invisible work.
The remembering of birthdays. The noticing when someone is upset. The smoothing over of tensions in a room. The anticipating of needs before they are spoken. The keeping of peace. The managing of feelings — ours and everyone else's.
This labor is real. It takes time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. But because it is invisible, it is rarely recognized, rarely thanked, and almost never shared equally. It is simply expected like air, like gravity as though it comes naturally to us and costs us nothing.
It does not come for free. It costs us deeply.
What I Want Instead
I want to live in a world where a girl can be exactly who she is in whatever shape, volume, ambition, and softness that takes without needing to justify it.
Where we are not too much and not too little, because those measurements don't exist anymore.
Where our worth is not attached to how pleasing we are to look at, how accommodating we are to be around, or how seamlessly we perform the role that was written for us before we were born.
Where we are simply fully, freely human.
I don't think that's too much to ask for. I think it's the very least we deserve.
I didn't know what that meant. I was just sitting the way children sit when they're free and unbothered, legs crossed on the floor, wholly absorbed in something that made me happy. But apparently, there was a right way and a wrong way to exist in my own body. And I was doing it wrong.
That was my first lesson in what it means to grow up as a girl.
Be Pretty But Not Too Pretty
Nobody hands you a rulebook. It arrives slowly in whispers and glances and offhand comments. You piece it together over years.
Be pretty but don't be vain. Wear makeup but not too much, or you'll look like you're trying too hard. Dress nicely but not too nicely or people will think you want attention. Smile more. Don't be so serious. Don't be so loud. Don't take up too much space.
The instructions are endless and they contradict each other constantly. Society wants us to be beautiful without effort, confident without arrogance, soft without weakness, and strong without being too much. We are expected to balance on a razor's edge every single day and when we fall off somehow it is always our fault.
I spent years trying to figure out the right formula. The perfect amount of everything. Not too ambitious, not too passive. Not too emotional, not too cold. It was exhausting. It still is.
The Career Tightrope
When I was growing up, the women around me were told: you can be anything you want to be. And they meant it kindly. They really did. But nobody mentioned the asterisk.
You can be anything you want as long as you also cook, clean, raise children, support your partner, stay thin, stay young, stay gracious, and never, ever complain about any of it.
In the workplace, we are told to speak up then called aggressive when we do. We are told to be leaders then labeled bossy. We negotiate for our worth and people wince. We stay quiet and get overlooked. The game has rules that change depending on who is watching.
And the most painful part? We often find ourselves policing each other. We have absorbed these expectations so deeply that we enforce them without realizing it. We call women "too emotional" or "too ambitious" in the same breath that we wish someone believed in us more.
The Motherhood Question
At a certain age, the questions start. You can almost set a clock by it.
When are you getting married? Do you want kids? You'd better not wait too long. Your biological clock is ticking.
If you want children, you are expected to sacrifice your career for them — quietly and gratefully. If you don't want children, you are told you will change your mind, that you don't know what you're missing, that something must be wrong with you.
Your womb becomes a topic of public conversation. Your choices about your own body are debated by people who will never live inside it. Society feels entitled to an opinion on the most intimate decisions of your life.
And if you try to have it all a career, a family, a life of your own you are told you are selfish, or stretched too thin, or not doing any of it well enough.
There is no version of this where we simply get to choose without consequence.
The Emotional Labor Nobody Counts
Here is something that took me a long time to name: the invisible work.
The remembering of birthdays. The noticing when someone is upset. The smoothing over of tensions in a room. The anticipating of needs before they are spoken. The keeping of peace. The managing of feelings — ours and everyone else's.
This labor is real. It takes time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. But because it is invisible, it is rarely recognized, rarely thanked, and almost never shared equally. It is simply expected like air, like gravity as though it comes naturally to us and costs us nothing.
It does not come for free. It costs us deeply.
What I Want Instead
I want to live in a world where a girl can be exactly who she is in whatever shape, volume, ambition, and softness that takes without needing to justify it.
Where we are not too much and not too little, because those measurements don't exist anymore.
Where our worth is not attached to how pleasing we are to look at, how accommodating we are to be around, or how seamlessly we perform the role that was written for us before we were born.
Where we are simply fully, freely human.
I don't think that's too much to ask for. I think it's the very least we deserve.
