Women Watching Women
Women performing for men is an age old conversation. Women have spent centuries learning how to present themselves in ways that felt desirable, safe and worthy of acceptance. To be beautiful, but not vain. Intelligent, but not threatening. Emotional, but not difficult. Accommodating, but not empty. Entire generations of women learned how to survive through perception.
None of this appeared out of nowhere. Historically, a woman’s safety, status, financial stability and social value were often tied to how she was viewed by men. Her appearance mattered. Her likability mattered. Her ability to be chosen mattered. Women learned very early that being perceived well was not simply vanity, but survival.
And although the world has changed dramatically, traces of that performance still exist everywhere. Women still soften themselves. Still apologise for taking up space. Still feel pressure to appear effortless, put together and endlessly capable. Social media has only intensified this. Women are now expected to not only be beautiful, but healthy, productive, emotionally evolved, socially active, self aware, ambitious, feminine and thriving all at once.
None of this is revolutionary to say. Women performing for men is a conversation that has been had many times before.
What interests me more is something else entirely.
Why do women perform for other women?
Why do women perform strength, perfection and resilience in front of women they know are struggling too?
A few weeks ago, I wrote an Across the Month column on the performativity of womanhood. One of the most striking parts was not the post itself, but the conversations that followed it. So many women told me they had known their entire lives that something about womanhood felt performative, but it had taken them until their late thirties, forties and sometimes even later to begin shedding it. Some women spoke about how exhausting it felt to constantly maintain an image of being “fine”, “easygoing”, “put together” or “low maintenance”, even around close friends and other women.
That stayed with me.
Because I do not think it is uncommon knowledge that women struggle. Women struggle with painful periods, hormonal fluctuations, chronic illness, body image, burnout, anxiety, fertility issues, loneliness, exhaustion, low self worth, changing identities, complicated relationships with food, the pressure to stay attractive, the pressure to stay productive, the pressure to remain emotionally regulated whilst their bodies fluctuate constantly beneath them. Women struggle with being perceived. With being wanted. With being rejected. With trying to age correctly. With trying to succeed without becoming “too much”. With feeling simultaneously invisible and overly visible all at once.
There is almost an unspoken understanding amongst women that womanhood, in many ways, comes with struggle attached to it.
And yet despite this shared understanding, many women still seem deeply afraid of openly embodying that struggle in front of each other.
Social media has made this especially visible. A woman with endometriosis might post a beautifully curated “day in my life”. Pilates in the morning. Matcha and supplements lined up perfectly on the kitchen bench. Healthy meals. Work. Friends. Productivity. Smiling clips in good lighting. A life that still appears disciplined, soft, high functioning and aesthetically composed.
And somewhere amongst all of that, there may be one quick clip of a TENS machine attached to her stomach. One passing mention of pain. One sentence acknowledging the endometriosis before the video moves on again.
What often remains unseen are the four days beforehand where she may not have left her bed. The pain that made her cry. The isolation. The fear that she is falling behind. The frustration of living inside a body that sometimes refuses to cooperate with the life she wants to live.
I see it in body image too. Women posting photos captioned with self love and confidence whilst privately tearing themselves apart in mirrors beforehand. Women pretending they “just threw something on” before an event as though visible effort somehow makes them less admirable. Women shrinking their ambitions, appetites, insecurities and emotions so they appear more effortless to the people around them. Even insecurity itself often feels performative online now, packaged into something polished and self aware enough to still be aesthetically acceptable.
And the strange thing is that the audience is often not men.
It is other women.
Women who likely understand painful periods. Women who understand hormonal fluctuations. Women who understand feeling disconnected from their body. Women who have also forced themselves through work, social plans, workouts or relationships whilst quietly struggling beneath the surface.
I do not think this performance is malicious. I think it is deeply conditioned.
I think many women have learned that suffering is only acceptable when it is presented correctly. Softened slightly. Made digestible. Framed through humour, productivity, self awareness or inspiration. Women are allowed to struggle, but often only if they can still appear beautiful, resilient and composed whilst doing it.
Even vulnerability online now feels strangely performative. Carefully lit. Carefully captioned. Carefully resolved by the final slide. Social media has turned womanhood into something women are not only experiencing, but constantly observing, curating and presenting back to one another in real time.
And perhaps that is part of the sadness of it all. Women are surrounded by other women carrying the same fears, insecurities, pains and quiet griefs, yet many still feel isolated inside experiences that are actually deeply shared.
And I am not exempt from this either.
I have always considered myself an open book. I will openly speak about period pain or hormonal struggles more than the next girl. But even then, I notice the ways I soften it. The ways I present it lightly. The ways I turn it into something humorous, self aware or easier to consume rather than allowing it to simply exist honestly for what it is.
Maybe that is what so many women are doing online. Not lying. Not pretending. Just trying to make their pain feel easier to carry, both for themselves and for everybody watching.
But I sometimes wonder what womanhood would feel like if women no longer believed they had to perform strength before being worthy of support from each other.
This month, I encourage you to step off the metaphorical stage for a moment. Speak openly with other women. Ask for help. Admit when things feel hard. Allow other women to do the same.
One of the most powerful things women have always had is each other. I think we deserve to experience that sisterhood honestly, not just performatively.
With love,
Ava
