Beyond Definition: A Day for Women

Today is the International Women's Day. You see, Women’s Day is a big deal in my part of the world. We celebrate it all women, men, young and old. In my early childhood this would be the only day in a year, when my father and all other men around me cook, wash dishes or do something around the household to substitute for the other 364 days a year when these were purely women’s chores. 

I brought flowers and made cards for all my female teachers, sisters and in some years, I myself received gifts and flowers from boys that recognized and celebrated the fact that I was a girl.

Only years later, I have learned the history of this day and the real reasons of why women marched for better rights. It was then that I truly realized the significance of this celebrated day. The eighth of March is a big deal in my part of the world, but not because it is a holiday that celebrates women's right to vote or equal access to labor or political rights, but because perhaps this is one day a year when your womanhood is celebrated officially. 

And when it comes to being a woman in a relatively conservative society with strong family values, being born a girl means being constantly defined. It starts with being an adorable baby girl, cuter sweet girl, obedient daughter, smart girl, silly girl, tough girl, pretty girl, pretty woman, tender girl, strong woman, wise grandmother.

The list can go on forever but the point is from birth to the end of your life, you are a woman never free of some type of classification that makes you "good" or "bad" "tough" or "tender" "bossy" "obedient" "pretty.” I see my female friends torn between complying with the requirements of the traditionally "good girl" and independent feminist woman that the global world requires us to be. I watch them disappointing their family. their colleagues, their husbands, and most of all themselves, just simply because they are unable to match to all they "ought to be.”

So, today I use this opportunity to tell all the females out there:

• You are beyond definition.

• And always, enough, just the way you are.

• And you are all beautiful.