With all the skincare advice females get, this one is the best of all! Why? Because this does not come from dermatologists or beauty experts. This comes from the place we least expect! If growing thick skin is something we can do, sure, why not! Keep feeding us junk and unhealthy nutrients, expose us to UV Ray lights without SPF 100 formula, and we will work on growing thick skin!
Beauty is reality. It's being who you truly are. It's being positive after every breaking point you have. It’s getting over your past. Beauty is free. It's empty of any dull materialistic routines. Beauty is how someone holds himself. The way a faint smile leaves the mouth. It's the way your mother hugs you after a very long day or even the way back home when you’ve been too long away. Beauty is gold qualities of heart. It's the lack of hatred and jealousy. Beauty, my dear is everything, and anything, and you.
I always wanted to be a mother. The thought of someone hugging on to me, someone calling me ‘mama’ always excited me. My husband and I had to wait for 4 years until the arrival of our little bundle of joy. When I got pregnant, I never thought of all the sacrifices I would have to make. My pregnancy was not as smooth as I thought it would be.
We fear what our neighbours will think. We fear about our standards. We fear about our clothes, hairstyles, looks etc. We fear about our jobs. We fear about careers. We fear about our results. Even, we have fear for our lives. We fear about our favourite things. We fear that our comfort zone would be away from us one day.
It took me some time to start getting over the past and to re-build myself, but through introspection, prayer, and affirmation, the process of healing is in effect. Don’t let someone’s impaired vision of you affect the love you have for yourself. Don’t let your own self-imposed doubts get in your way.
This lockdown induced a new trauma through the online learning system. Well, starting off with the fact that not everyone has access to laptops and computers to attend classes. Even I’m one of them, so no - we are not in this together, because you might not even know what it’s like to wait for your turn to use a laptop.
At an individual level, people's experience of reactance strongly depends on the most attainable goals and values when the threat occurs. In the COVID-19 case, fundamental goals and values such as education, the right to freely move, and religious practices are threatened. Two main factors that determine the reaction to these announced health-related measures are the absoluteness and self-relevance. If the threat is absolute, people rationalize it. If it is not, people respond with reactance. Both become stronger when the threat is self-relevant.
It's not happening to us. Death was a distant entity. The COVID crisis in no time has collectively given us the sudden realization that it is happening to us!! All our reassuring narratives and stories that soothed us have been questioned. The helplessness and powerlessness is making our minds chaotic. Our reality has been crushed. Truth came very abruptly. The truth of our mortality, our vulnerability, our weak existence in the face of this adversity.
Please stop dividing women. Modern or traditional, female is a female. In Pakistan, we all are suffering in our known and unknown ways. Living in a context where tradition wins over common sense or science, the transfer of intergenerational trauma becomes a part of the DNA of our society. Expressed or unexpressed, we all carry this silent mutation.
Many of us are hampered in advancing our careers because of our difficulty with self-promotion. Women have unconsciously internalized that self-promotion is shameless and in poor taste, is egocentric, and that indeed it is not “professional” to toot your own horn. However, this is not true.
When I was a child, all I aspired to do was hang a college degree on my wall, get a sustainable job, and make my parents proud. Well, not only me, probably almost all of us, the 90’s kids, shared a similar outlook towards our future. And while some of us still do, for me, things changed!
I know so many girls in my country who want to wear jeans but are not allowed to do so because you see “decent girls need to dress a certain way”. Your jeans are too tight, your shirt is too short, lower your dupatta and cover your face, if someone touches you it’s probably because you dressed a certain way.
Gender roles expect girls to marry a man of their parents’ choice and if they don’t, they are labelled as characterless or disobedient. Boys are expected to follow the footsteps of their fathers. If a man has worked day and night to build his business, his son is bound to take over.
So much is going on in this world that I feel so sad like when I see innocent people suffering due to terrorism, genocide, racism etc. This is the case where people who have done no wrong are suffering. The major question is why? And nobody is going to answer this why and this is the thing that I am afraid of.
