How Much is Too Much?

“I want to love glitter and also stand up for the double standards that exist in our society. I want to wear pink and tell you how I feel about politics. And I don’t think those things have to cancel each other out.” – Taylor Swift

In the world we live in, the most courageous act is to own who you are, regardless of the burdening expectations that society never fails to weigh you down with. And even braver is to be a woman, discarding all labels that threaten to steal her individuality. What are we or rather who are we when we see ourselves? I’m sure none of us look at our reflections in the mirror to see a “divorced woman”, or an “over-sensitive person”, or a “rape-victim”. Instead, we see a human being, with the same hopes and aspirations as any other. 

But that is not how people generally perceive women to be. American author Letty Cottin Pogrebin once said “When men are oppressed it’s a tragedy. When women are oppressed it’s tradition.” Women are often labelled as being either “too emotional” or “too bossy”, “too shy” or “too outspoken”. But how much is too much? Why is it that anyone else should get to decide how a woman must be described? Why has it become so normal to put women in boxes and not even consider how they choose to describe themselves? 

Time and again women have proved that they are much above the gender roles and categories assigned to them by societal expectations. But that’s the thing, they shouldn’t have to prove it. The right to choose who we are and what we want to become is bestowed upon us by birth, and it is for no one else to determine that but ourselves. And so, we shall be dramatic and loud and fearless and shy, be artists and presidents and bikers and scientists, as long as we are ourselves and happy with it.