"How do we reclaim shame?"

The other day an aunt was talking about how she dislikes the word female. It seems almost crude to her to call someone of the same gender as her a female. She much prefers the noun woman or lady as she connotes both words with a sense of dignity and respect. The word female on the other hand, if one were to play a word association game, is followed by words like cringey but really the word that comes up is shame. This is no surprise. Being female is intertwined with feelings of shame, embarrassment and guilt and unfortunately no girlboss instagram posts can reverse that.

From a young age we are conditioned to feel shame about our bodies, our clothes and what we wear, the way we speak, the way we laugh, our achievements and the way we present ourselves to the world. For every action the reaction or consequence can at some point be boiled down to shame, whether it may stem from the action or is projected onto us by society. When girls who menstruate, first get their period a sense of secrecy abounds. “Coming of age” never felt more embarrassing and this embarrassment is tangible in the way pads are hidden when taken to the bathroom and the constant fear that you may stain something. Reaching puberty is also when slut shaming becomes sharper and more upfront, cat calling becomes common, wearing clothes which expose skin becomes a safety hazard and going out after dark is no longer forbidden because you are young but because you are a young girl.

Another perfect example of how women are shamed and made to dislike their own femininity is the commonality of the “i'm not like other girls'' phase. Other girls, we are taught, are weak, boy crazy, make up obsessed, shallow and all beauty with no brains. Being female becomes a stigma onto which society projects the qualities it perceives as “bad”, being bitchy, gossiping and caring about one's appearance to name a few. You don't want to be like other girls, you have to be better we are told, as if femininity is tied to a few defining traits and isn't a vast and complex experience. We are conditioned to turn against our gender while continuously being discriminated against for it.

Shame warps the way we perceive ourselves, we see ourselves no more through our own eyes but through an external lens, one provided by society and capitalism, both of which feed off of a young woman's insecurity. It's therefore important to ask how we can reclaim that feeling of shame and turn it into something deeper than mere confidence, a feeling of self worth maybe that is absolute and unalienable. Confronting internalised misogyny and relearning self love that isn't dependent on conditions imposed on us but is rather defined by consistency is one step in the right direction. If we can learn to show up for ourselves, constantly, on good days and bad we may reclaim shame and inhabit a new dimension of self worth.