“the stories are what no one wants to talk about. so you make up a story because no one is going to tell you the truth.”— Sandra Cisneros
success for women is anything but straightforward. in a world ruled by profit, we are forced to choose between auctioning off our beauty or our intellect, our body or our talents, our sexual prowess or our sexual shame. women are placed in the arena, facing off with one another for power, respect, and admiration from the world.
as small girls, our dreams were filled with having a beautiful wedding, the perfect husband, and a couple of cute kids, all sponsored by the Disney franchise. eventually this narrative of success turned into obtaining a college degree, financial stability, and the beautiful wedding, the perfect husband, a couple of cute kids, yada yada. in reality, our narrative of success is an enigma.
success for women continues to sound like a fairytale where nothing can go wrong but this assumption is naïve to the reality of stories. when chaos ensues, women are programmed to tell themselves the fairytale, the bedtime stories, in order to remain calm and forget about the monsters living in our own head.
what if women indulged in the legend of their story instead? one where the fire does not consume them. spirit broken. hope lost. torn to pieces. and yet, resilience is the plot of the story.
imagine if we went to bed knowing we were the legend, the story unfolding, looking forward to the next battle instead of afraid of our own power.
why does success seem to elude women? we get the wedding, the husband, and the kids, immediately beginning to convince ourselves that we’re happy when we know we are not. we opt for the career and money, and yet we regret the life we could have shared with a partner and children. we choose to be single while yearning for companionship. we decide on a partner and suddenly miss a life without one. success for women will not be found in the fairytale we have been told but rather in the ways we can become and evolve.
so what does success really look like for women? what does success look like for a group that has been convinced to despise themselves? i look towards women i admire for answers, ruthless & vivacious women who became the legend in a history written by men. Medusa, Cleopatra, Frida Kahlo, what do these women possess that make them appear successful? an endless dedication to knowing themselves.
i may not know where my success lies but i know this: my success does not lie in the hands of a partner or the love for children, it does not lie in youth or physical beauty, it does not lie in my intellect or my productivity. my success does not lie in serving and catering to the world. as a woman, my success lies in loving myself wholly and unequivocally…dark, divine, and excellently female.
