Stop telling me how to be a woman

Everyone seems to have an opinion about what it means to be a woman (or a man), and after reading Talayna Fortunato’s blog post about dealing with comments from her ex-boyfriend about not being feminine enough, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Growing up I went to a school where girls had to wear skirts and you were an outcast if you liked to play sports at recess. I walked around with a nearly constant skinned knee from playing basketball or soccer on cement in a skirt. I learned not to care what other people thought of me, and if they didn’t understand why I loved sports so much, then I didn’t want to be friends with them anyways.

Years later I feel like the world has similar pressures. I’m tired of all of the magazines in the grocery store telling me I need to lose weight or dress a certain way. I don’t think I can listen to another person say that women shouldn’t lift heavy weights because they will get bulky. It kills me to hear my friends complain that their arms or legs are too muscular or to see the posts on Pinterests on how to get a “thigh gap.”

In an interview with Vogue, Annie Thorisdottir said –

She wants to inspire women, especially young girls, to focus more on what their bodies can do than on how they look. “I’m not preaching that everyone should try to become a CrossFit champion,” she says. “But I want to show them that training can give them more confidence—and that being strong is beautiful.”

It’s time we all do the same.

I can be a badass and a woman without being “butch” or “unfeminine.” I wear dresses to work and tear my hands busting out muscle-ups at the gym after. I have callouses on top of callouses. My hands aren’t soft as silk, and the bruises on my legs mark my PRs, my mistakes, and the times I kept going even after I wanted to stop. I don’t own a single pair of heals, but I have shoes for every athletic occasion. I don’t wear makeup because I don’t see the point in sweating it off every day, and my hair is almost always in a ponytail so I’m ready to go for a run or head to the gym. That doesn’t make me less of a woman.

If styling your hair or dressing a certain way makes you feel good about yourself, do it! Who cares what other people think? It’s time to be ourselves and stand up for what it really means to be a man or a woman.