I am a woman and I often contemplate what that has meant. I also wonder what it is truly like being a man. I grew up in a time when baby girls wore pink and boys wore blue. Because I had no hair until I was almost two years old strangers would ask my mother if I was a boy in spite of the frilly outfits that I wore. I suppose that in the minds of those who saw me I was supposed to have a head of delightful curls in order to be deemed a proper female. It seems that I was stereotyped from the beginning of my life much as all of us are. We endure biases both subtle and blatant during our lives. Mostly we learn to live with them even as they sometimes bother us. 

I was a skinny little girl with baby fine hair that tended to do whatever it chose to do rather than obeying the laws of style. The words that I heard most from the people who described me were “cute” and “smart.” In the nineteen fifties and sixties these were not exactly the kind of phrases that felt complimentary in the world of being female. I’d hear my cousin being referred to as pretty or beautiful, which she was, and feel somehow inadequate in the expectations of the world’s view of women that seemed so prevalent. I became a bit shy and uncertain about my worth when I gazed at my own mother who was gorgeous along with her intelligence. Nonetheless, my parents seemed to love me just as I was and they did their best to make me feel special. 

My confidence struggled to unfold as a late bloomer. Just as it took my hair longer than usual to grow as an infant, it seemed that everything about my physical development was slow in progressing. I looked like a ten year old when my female peers were developing into young women. Because so much societal influence taught me that beauty and appearance mattered I became shy and self critical. There was only one trait that kept me feeling good about myself. I was a quick learner, a rock star student who concentrated on making the most of the hand that nature had dealt me. Still, I sometimes got the idea that society was unimpressed with intellectual women. Even my own male cousins referred to me as the “smart one” and my lovely cousin as the “pretty one.” Such a reminder seemed to diminish my worth but I only laughed when I heard such things. I feigned a blasé attitude to shield myself. 

A great deal has happened in the world to change attitudes about women, even within my family. A conversation with my beautiful cousin taught me that she was just as dismayed by being categorized only by her appearance as I had been. She proved to be an incredibly talented and intelligent woman but all too often the world focused mainly on her face and her hair just as it had looked at me through a lens of stereotyping. We both laughed at the thought that a woman’s worth is all too often measured with antiquated ideas. We realized that each of us in our own ways was both pretty and smart. We wondered why our male counterparts had not been judged by similar standards but then realized that even they had to overcome stereotypes about strength and athleticism and other attributes thought to be the domain of men. 

Women are so much in the news these days. Their childbearing capabilities or difficulties have become political fodder. Men are audaciously voicing opinions on how women should serve the world by having families. There is a toxic atmosphere in which disagreements involving women sometimes devolve into name calling that refers to estimations of their appearance rather than the merit of their ideas. It is a kind of regression that worries me, not so much for myself as for my granddaughter and other young women just beginning their lives in the adult world. It reminds me of the painful estimations of both me and my cousin who were judged according to a misleading set of standards that did not take into account the totality of who each of us were. It is the kind of boorish stereotyping that should have been relegated to the past. 

There are now more women in colleges than men. Women have proven to be excellent in virtually every type of work. We have learned to value the beauty of an individual without a rubric of standards. When we begin to see people as they are we understand that every person is lovely and worthy of our admiration. There is no one standard for judging, and in fact there should be no judging. We are unique and wonderful with or without good hair or a beautiful face . There are many forms of intelligence as well that go far beyond book learning. Our goal should be to look beyond the prejudices that have too often created barriers for women. 

I have become comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am and I really like myself. It took awhile for me to ignore the meanness that is sometimes hurled at women. I align myself with people who have eschewed superficialities. I most enjoy people who are willing to embrace me as I am. Women are so much more than we have traditionally given them credit for being, just as we have learned that there really should never be something called a typical man. Girls don’t have to wear pink and boys don’t have to wear blue. We simply have to love ourselves as we are. As the saying goes, “God does not make junk.” If we truly believe that then we will begin to see the radiance of every person we encounter and we will love and support them just as they are.