Who Do You Love ?

As a little girl, when asked what I wanted to be, the options stemmed from what I had seen women be and do. I wanted to be a princess, a mermaid, or a mother. Over time, I saw female doctors, lawyers, teachers — every sort of profession — and my options expanded. When I revisit that question now, it's not how I want to be or what I want to be, but who I want to be. Disturbingly, it is never an endeavor of my own. I want to be the “next xyz,” or I want to do exactly what they do. There is fear in forging your own path. Even when I was little, I was fearful of inventing myself. Growing up, we choose role models, people who have done something that piques our interest. Later, we veer not solely towards people who do incredible things, but also those who have a masterfully curated lifestyle. It is this optic allure that drives an eager and desperate community to its willful loss of selfhood. Our inspiration transforms into an aggressive desire to imitate, and we lose consideration of who we are to the effort of becoming her.

We are no longer drawn solely to women who do meaningful things, but to those who live beautifully curated lives. It is this aesthetic — the highlight reel — that drives a desperate community to its willful loss of selfhood. What once began as an aspiration has evolved into a cultural script that displaces individuality. Even subcultures that market themselves as authentic often mirror the very conformity they claim to reject. The result: a generation of women surrendering not just their image, but their identity.

There is the argument that an imitation of style does not guarantee a loss of individuality. I agree — in theory. But it happens, constantly. The race for replication, especially in women's culture, is becoming increasingly rapacious and unforgiving. Women are reconstructing their faces, going into credit card debt, lying to themselves, to their friends, and family, and we applaud it. We call it confidence. We call it empowerment. Women are wearing less, which can be a magician's tactic; a distraction to the audience so they don’t notice they are a puppet enacting the whims of a puppeteer. Through the generations, I can only imagine it will continue to worsen — the loss of self and a morally grey code of accountability that's hard to crack because it calls itself liberation.

This behavior is partly tragic because it’s celebrated, and women resonate with each other in their shared admiration of the perfect female figurehead. She is akin to a God. She can do no wrong. We cannot admit to flaws in someone we have chosen to become — a fealty conditioned by their enviable qualities. Social media algorithms amass communities, contributing to these blind and deafening echo chambers, repelling all waves of dissent. By fortifying their illusion of a beneficially supportive body, they exist, each member painfully conscious of their emptiness. Their defenses are strengthened by their numbers, buttressed even further by collectively resigning their individuality and a tenuous sensation of belonging. Even if a woman feels apart from this cultural homogenization, she is likely still shackled to another collective parroting someone else.

We call it choice. But most choices exist within a preordained set of rules. Prescriptive femininity isn’t just imposed on us; it is now self-sustaining. Female culture is nothing without its network of women who proclaim themselves to be demonstrably different. They live in the shadow of the cosmetic conformity they protest, affixing themselves in a different culture governed by the same rules. Their desire to be different inclines them to reject genuine aspects of themselves. By enacting this self-effacement, they ascribe to the same notion of favoring fabrication over selfhood. In each faction and all in between, women submit themselves to a specular identity, wherein they often lose their autonomous self-concept. Women are forever replicating and never originating — forever quantifying their value by how well they mirror the ideal or subvert the culture of “other women.” Ultimately, an ideal they did not create.

Women want to become other women. It is not about the job; it is about their look, style, and their entire being. Role models. This insistence on looking like her. Who do you want to be? The girl with the small waist and nose. Why? Because she has a lot of money and friends, and she's gorgeous. Has our culture shifted from finding inspiration in other people to finding ourselves in other people? Which sounds innocent, but by pulling ourselves up the slope to reach another’s likeness, we eventually lose grip on ourselves. This pursuit industrializes self-discovery into self-production, streamlined, packaged, and endlessly replicable. In a distant future, every woman will be an inbred bastardization of a plagiarized original.

I am intimately involved with the fitness industry and how this issue has metastasized through social media. It is a deeply troubling habit to reconcile with, and not one that I am exempt from. It sometimes feels like fitness was only able to become mainstream for women with the condition that we hate our bodies and covet others. Fitness involves movement, discipline, time management, dedication, and real challenges that -- above all else -- should fill someone with pride and confidence. The habits and characteristics a person adopts should be the key inspiration; they should be the goal, and whatever character flaws — laziness, negativity, impulsivity — that lie before them are the ones to overcome, not their hip dips. I fear that all the things I despised about fashion — the sizing, models with eating disorders, exclusivity, shame — growing up are being endorsed wholesale by fitness, where my insecurities drove me to find joy. Now, I will not claim that any part of fitness or fashion was once better. There is nowhere to find the “good ole days.” My criticism lies in the fact that there's progress that could be made to combat this aesthetic economy that simply isn’t. A majority of fitness icons for women have small waists and fat asses. I will not go so far as to condemn them, for that would be contrary to the progress I wish to be seen. However, I will say, without promoting their other qualities and ethics, they are contributing to the social inscription of commodified self-worth. I will not deny that there are malicious women in the industry who do consciously ascribe to performing power through proximity to desirability, but there are also many women who are more and do more than just look good — and they show it. There is a criminal precedent established when women who look good do not need to worry about being good people; rather, they are not celebrated for looking good and being a good person. The rapturous willfulness, especially in fitness, we as women contribute to physical replication, may lead us to prioritizing the spectacle of ourselves rather than the substance.

It is the fact that it is of our own will that we abide by these parameters and aspire to these ideals that leads me to believe we can change the narrative. Stay-at-home mothers, for example, were once the norm — albeit an indoctrinated norm — that is now a choice. Some argue that even making that choice delegitimizes a woman’s place in professional or leadership positions and environments; that as long as women subsist on the belief that their duty is domestic labor and child care, the insidious mindset that women are inferior will continue. Similarly, wearing revealing clothes is, in fact, a form of liberation for a lot of women, even though that very expression often functions within, and is validated by, the same patriarchal system that sexualized them to begin with. And that is the cruel nonstarter nature of these issues. Choices have consequences (good and bad) even if they are the right choices for us. However, the dissolution of autonomy that results from the ambition of conventional beauty is an all-around cultural flaw; it is face-forward feminism with no follow-through. Any woman who chooses this or contributes to this idea is a conspirator against the advancement of women. It can feel empowering and still be complicit. It can be a choice and still reinforce the expectation that a woman’s worth is tied to her visibility, her desirability, her willingness to perform. That tension doesn’t cancel the choice, but it complicates it. And that complication is where most conversations about “empowerment” stop short.

We should provide fuel for each other's passions, be examples of fault, kindness, sympathy, intelligence, resilience, and error. We pronounce our principles rather than our pout and our convictions rather than our curves. Contributing to this effort would be to demonstrate, celebrate, and encourage these characteristics. Features are firm, placeable, and they only appear as one thing. Characteristics are fluid and can be applied to anything. An artist can be inspired by a powerlifter. A doctor can be inspired by an artist. A data analyst can be inspired by a mother. Being inspired by what other women do rather than what they look like opens up a world of women we can be inspired by, broadening the scope of women we can become.

Not the selves we've learned to curate. Not the filtered fragments we’ve rehearsed and reposted. But the version of ourselves we’ve buried beneath borrowed templates, the self that you can love.

It’s time we stop asking, “Who do you want to be?” and start asking, “What kind of person do you want to be?” That answer won’t go viral, but it might be the first honest one we’ve ever given.

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