What is WOMAN?

My search for signs of womanhood in the universe

A woman is not hairless, ageless, or shapeless. She’s not free of wrinkles, lines, or bumps. She doesn’t smell like vanilla frosting and she’s definitely not wearing a school girl outfit while holding a teddy bear on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.

Millennial women are currently grappling with the fact that our experiences of girlhood (Bath & body Works, Victoria’s Secret, Estée Lauder companies, etc) were directly tied to the most powerful sexual predators in modern history. And it’s breaking our brains.

For me this is coming at a time where I just entered my 40’s and am leaving my baby-making years behind me. AKA the time where women start to become “invisible” through the male and patriarchal gaze. I’ve already been dealing with my own postpartum identity crisis, and then all of the uncovering of this systemic bullshit in the beauty industry is just adding to the mind fuck of it all.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve had thoughts like, “So what is a woman’s body?” “What do I like, and why do I like it?”, and in terms of fashion, “What’s even left? What do we have that’s just ours?”

I’m literally rethinking everything. I feel like I need to make all-new fashion/design mood boards and inspo collages that are purely taken from Coco Chanel, Patti Smith, and just straight up nature. Anything that man has not tarnished, if that even exists.

This is happening in part because of the vast amount of women my age spending so much time, energy, and money on trying to look younger, smaller, and more like a hardened-face doll (and therefore less like a person). The “standard” or goal post has moved so far away from what is inherent to WOMAN, I sometimes forget what that even looks like.

Clothing, style, colors, textures, and haircuts have always felt like a joyous form of expression for me. So it doesn’t feel right or genuine for me to consider just giving up- dropping 100% of my time and energy spent on anything related to beauty. I love piecing together an outfit in my head ahead of an event. I get joy from considering my next hairstyle or chop at the salon or playing with a funky-colored eye shadow from time to time. I’m a creative person and how I present myself to the world is a form of art.

And yet- I do feel the desire to rebel. I’m here to reexamine my own beauty standards and figure out what I have to do not to comply with pedophile culture because it’s absolutely disgusting and enraging.

In the last 7-8 months I’ve started lifting heavy weights. I love it, I feel so powerful and strong, my digestion issues have decreased as a result, and STILL I have to battle with the lifelong voices in my head saying, “Don’t get too big. Men don’t like that.” It’s insane.

I like remembering when I was about 11 and watching my sister play softball with 14 and 15 year old girls. There was a player who was just a total beast at the game and strikingly gorgeous. She exuded power and strength while also having softness and curves. She had large, muscular thighs displaying nothing close to a gap, and I remember just desperately wishing I would have thighs like hers when I grew up. So it feels appropriate to be making some “gains” in the gym and allowing my body to grow and expand instead of shrink away.

Today still, I like wearing outfits that accentuate my long, strong legs. Is that desire and that part of my body tied into my womanhood? If I do it by wearing those trendy pleated skirts that sort of resemble a high school uniform, does that suddenly make it more of the teen girl or doll-like aesthetic? Is that fake freckles fad a pedo thing? Are the space buns I adorn a symbol of girlhood in a gross way or more of a playful/embrace my inner child way?

I have not figured this out, you guys. I’m in the trenches with you. I just came here to try and articulate what I think a lot of us are processing and trying to makes sense of.

I am also here to take any and all recommendations for fashion/beauty/style/design content that feels drenched in bona fide womanhood. Or platforms that don’t serve me AI women every 3rd slide (like it seems my Pinterest algo has done). I’ll share some of my recs below too:

Jessica DeFino is a beauty reporter helping decode all of the insanity for us

Chloe Malle, the new Head of Editorial Content at Vogue (succeeding Anna Wintour) known for “sustainable storytelling”

My friend Rebecca Tuite who is a fashion historian and doing some amazing work in championing the work of the innovative women in the fashion world - buy her books!

Gloria, the modern media brand for adult women

I’ll leave you with a beautiful image of WOMAN that I pinned about ten years ago on my private board “Womanly beautiful bods”. I started that little visual project for myself to put more mature, curvy bodies in front of my eyes and aid in my transition away from acting. I had a lot of work to do to reclaim my body for me and what I think is beautiful- and to forget what that casting director told me about my shoulders being too broad to ever be on television.