I’ll be honest, when I was growing up, I spent a lot of time wishing I’d been born a boy. It didn’t take long for my younger self to realize the world felt like it was “built by them, for them.” While we were being conditioned to be “well-behaved” and face the music for every little mistake, the boys got the “boys will be boys” pass. It felt like we were playing a game where the rules were rigged before we even stepped onto the field.

But then, I grew up. And I realized that if you strip away the unfair head starts they get and the hurdles we have to jump daily,

Oh, how I love being a woman!

A woman is all I ever want to be. A woman is the greatest creation to exist. We are the heartbeat of our communities and the very reason life continues. Quietly but surely, that power vibrates tectonically.

We are not just fascinating, we are the architects of life and the glue of society. We are soft enough to provide comfort yet hard enough to endure. What a beautiful paradox, one that the world still hasn’t figured out how to categorise.

There’s a beautiful, intense energy in the way we move through the world. Look at our friendships. People love to call female friendships “dramatic and complicated” but they just don’t get it. We don’t just feel love, we scream it. We express it in every check in text and every long hug. We show up for the messy parts but also the happy ones. We communicate our issues with such a raw honesty which is exactly why our friendships last longer. It’s not drama, it’s a lifeline. I would trade almost any other kind of relationship just to have my female friendships.

We are often told we’re the “weaker” gender, usually because we might not lift a couch as easily as a guy. But that’s such a narrow definition of what it means to be powerful.

If anything, real strength is the way we carry ourselves through the world. We navigate hormonal shifts every single month while maintaining our poise and handling the chaos of life like a queen, often without anyone even noticing the discomfort we’re moving through.

And I know you don’t like to hear it but we win the mental toughness game every single time. Often times, we are thrown the label “too emotional,” but what goes unnoticed is that there is a profound strength in that emotional intelligence. Where some might resort to aggression or ego (which are also emotional reactions), women often times choose to lead with empathy. We aren’t weak, we are just resilient in ways the world is only just beginning to respect.

It’s easy to forget, however, that the freedom we have, to be this version of ourselves didn’t just appear.

As the saying goes, “Every right, women have today was bought with the inconvenience of a woman in the past.”

I am given the opportunity to write this because of women like Jane Austen, Maya Angelou, Virginia Woolf, and Mary Wollstonecraft.

It’s heartbreaking to realize how much of our history was erased or quietly hidden away. For centuries, women were the hands behind the science, the art, and the inventions, yet history frequently labeled them as “anonymous” or “assistants” while the men standing next to them claimed the titles. For example, Rosalind Franklin, whose data was so important in discovering the structure of DNA, or Fanny Mendelssohn, whose musical compositions were published under her brother’s name. Not because women couldn’t but because it was deemed that they shouldn’t.

Today, on March 8th, we reclaim that legacy.

International Women’s Day started in the early 1900s, not as a day for brunch, but as a stand from factory workers demanding better pay and the right to vote.

As Rosa Luxemburg famously said, “Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”

Standing up and moving forward is what causes that friction, and while it’s hard, and it’s inconvenient, it’s how we break the links.

This is why we have to talk about internalized misogyny. When we judge one another, we are often just repeating the scripts that a biased system taught us. The irony is that the very platform any woman has to express an opinion exists today only because of the ground shattering women who refused to stay in their place.

Women who chose to be “inconvenient“, “difficult“, “rough” so that today, we get the opportunities that they could only dream of.

And if you have seen the trending “girl in me, boy in me” reels, let’s take a step back and recognise that there is no “bro in me“, it’s just the girls in us. The ones who are adventurous, gritty, and fearless. That’s pure womanhood. We don’t need to borrow a masculine label to justify that.

Today, let’s choose to love being women.

We aren’t just existing. We are thriving, evolving, and rewriting the narrative one day at a time.

Happy International Women’s Day! Let’s keep showing the world exactly what we are made of.

I will leave you with this empowering monologue:

“It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough.

Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin.

You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass.

You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean.

You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas.

You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time.

You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people.

You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.

You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.

But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you!

And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

– America Ferrera, Barbie

Penned By:

Rtr. Rana Rilwan

Editor 25-26