Last night I was watching an episode of a show I have been binging for the past couple of days called "The Morning Show". I am going to give some background context that will set the tone for this article. In the show, there's journalist (Mitch Kessler played by Jim Carrey) who has been fired for sexual misconduct at work and is pretty being 'canceled'. He flies to Italy, meets this woman who wants to interview him and get his version of the story. He refuses at first, then ends up saying yes and in a very raw and authentic interview Mitch unveils a side of him you can't feel in the tabloids when you read about this story: he is a loving father who has deep regrets about what he did and sincerely expresses the desire to do better. He later asks the woman to delete the interview, because he's afraid it could get out there and he does not want his kids to see some of the things he said. To what she responds: "God forbid your kids think you are a three-dimensional person" and he said: "The world does not want complex or complicated, they want easily digestible". This made me pause, and I sat with it for a couple of hours. I think the truth of this statement hit me really hard : human beings like to have a simplistic view of other people, we like things to be as black or white as possible in many scenarios, so it becomes very easy to judge people who we deem have "sinned" even when they are committed to do better. This is the very reason why cancel culture exists, we feel superior to people who have done "bad things", we are so quick to demonize them when the skeleton in our closets do not look any more appealing ( and I am also guilty of this).
This also reminded me of how women are judged in this world for being one way vs how they think women should show up. It's like the expectation for women (in the most part) is to be "classy", always open, soft etc... and the minute a woman does not fit those cultural expectations (God forbid she's a mom on top of that) she is put at the stake to be burned. I believe most women are not given permission to embrace their multifaceted being, and live a very repressed life. I recently started this journey of discovering different aspects of myself and I am still learning to embrace and integrate different parts of my womanhood, which allows me to have approval for the multidimensionality of humans.I am a seductress, an enchantress, a priestess, a goddess just like I can also be soft and fierce at the same time or I can be elegant or "ratchet" when I'd like to be. My goal is not to be perfect, I just want to have more awareness around my tendency to judge other people and reflect on where I hold judgment against myself because in the words of one of my favorite coaches "other people are a mirror of what is happening inside of you"
Until Next Time,
Winnie