Don’t Put a Woman in a Black and White Box

If you put a woman in a black and white box, she’s likely to color outside the lines.

I’ve been reading Vogue since I was ten years old. I also read The Atlantic, The New York Times and listen to Pod Save America every week. I love a good party and a bottle of champagne, and I also love to curl up on my sofa in my pajamas with the Shit Pickles and a good movie. I’m a beauty product aficionado and a book nerd. A stylist and an activist. A fine leather goods lover and a tech geek. I drink bourbon and green juice (just not in the same glass).

Because here’s the truth: women contain multitudes.

We’re not just “one thing.” We’re many things.

A woman can be a devoted mother and a fierce businesswoman. A Harvard MBA graduate who obsesses over astrology and crystals (or the latest lip gloss from Glossier) in her spare time. A pop culture aficionado who also runs an award-winning architectural firm.

Women get put into rigid, black and white boxes all the time. If she wears short skirts or posts revealing images on social media she’s labeled a slut. If she speaks her mind or dares to interrupt her male co-worker, she’s a bitch. If she talks about fashion and pop culture, then surely she doesn’t know a thing about business or politics.

ENOUGH.

All too often, in the media, women who unabashedly love fashion, beauty, makeup and other traditionally feminist pursuits are lambasted for being “shallow” or “air-headed.” But it’s this kind of snap judgment that is tremendously shortsighted.

We must set the record straight: women are not just one thing. We’re many things. We’re multi-dimensional, multi-faceted, dynamic human beings with the capacity for so much more than we’re given credit for.

Look at someone like Shakira for example. She’s done incredible philanthropic work, creating educational opportunities for children in her home nation of Columbia. She’s a smart, generous philanthropist, a talented performer, and she loves wearing leather boots, midriff baring tops and Salsa dancing in her music videos. She’s brilliant, kind, talented, an activist, an artist, energetic, fit, athletic and sensual. Shakira is a woman of style and substance.

Not one or the other – both.

Women are not an either/or proposition.

I believe you can be seriously ambitious and seriously into having fun. You can be a woman who cares deeply about the state of our world and and one who loves champagne, lipstick and her Louboutins. Fashion and politics. Feminism and Fendi. Beauty and brains. Style and substance.

Amen.

 

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