the performance review

womanhood often feels like one long annual review conducted by people who have never had to survive as you.

needs improvement:
too emotional.

needs improvement:
not emotional enough.

too ambitious.
too soft.
too loud.
too intimidating.
too pretty to be taken seriously.
too intelligent to be comfortably desirable.
too maternal at work.
too career driven at home.
too sexual.
too reserved.
too much.
always somehow too much.

there is no KPI for womanhood, and yet somehow we are all being evaluated constantly.

by men.
by mothers.
by strangers.
by other women.
by the internet.
by ourselves most brutally of all.

the first performance review i ever received was not in an office.

it was girlhood.

sit correctly.
speak softer.
don’t be difficult.
smile.
be wanted, but not too wanted.
be beautiful, but effortless about it.
be smart, but never enough to threaten fragile people.
be kind, but not naïve.
be sexy, but pure.
be desirable, but impossible to accuse of knowing it.

and heaven forbid you fail publicly.

because women are allowed humanity only in carefully measured portions.

men can unravel and become “complicated.”
women unravel and become warnings.

i became very good at performance.

exceptionally good, actually.

i learned how to read rooms before i learned chemistry.
i learned how to regulate other people’s emotions before fully understanding my own.
i learned how to present competence even when internally collapsing.
i learned how to make pain digestible.

that last one especially.

women are taught early that suffering is only acceptable when it remains aesthetically pleasing.

cry pretty.
age gracefully.
break quietly.
heal quickly.
do not inconvenience anyone with the reality of your humanity.

and for a long time, i confused being well-reviewed with being well-loved.

that is a dangerous confusion.

because eventually you wake up exhausted from trying to achieve excellence in every category:
mother.
partner.
employee.
leader.
friend.
daughter.
beautiful woman.
healed woman.
strong woman.
soft woman.
grateful woman.

meanwhile there is a version of yourself somewhere underneath all the performance reviews asking a very simple question:

if i stopped performing entirely, would i still be worthy of love?

and for the women reading this already exhausted from earning their existence: yes.