I bought lipstick a week ago.
It is still sitting there.
Unused.
Every morning, I see it. Every morning, I tell myself, Today.
Then I shower, moisturize, get dressed, pick up my bag and leave.
The lipstick stays behind, probably wondering why it was recruited into a job it has never been allowed to perform.
I bought it because I want to look good.
Actually, let me correct that.
I want to look put together.
You know that woman.
The woman who walks into a room looking like she woke up with a five year strategic plan.
I have been imagining her since I was a girl.
In my head, adulthood was very corporate.
I would graduate from university, get a good job and become one of those women who clicked confidently through office corridors in heels.
Pencil skirt hugging my hips.
Crisp collared shirt tucked in.
Fresh manicure.
Fresh pedicure.
Hair done.
Lipstick.
Eyes drawn.
Mascara.
Maybe a tasteful handbag hanging from my arm, containing important documents and absolutely no old receipts.
I would look expensive.
Not necessarily be expensive.
Just...
fiscally intimidating.
And I did graduate.
I did get the job.
I built a career.
The woman arrived.
Her uniform did not.
Because apparently, somewhere between childhood imagination and actual adulthood, nobody told me that heels hurt.
And wigs?
Beautiful.
On other people.
I don't like anything touching my face. Or my neck. Or generally behaving as though my scalp has signed a tenancy agreement.
As for mascara, we have a complicated relationship because I cry whenever anything comes near my eyes.
Not emotionally.
My eyes simply reject foreign policy.
So there I am, blinking furiously while another woman calmly applies mascara as though she isn't holding a tiny black weapon centimeters from her cornea.
Then there are the nails.
Oh, the nails.
I admire women with long acrylic nails.
The clicking.
The colors.
The designs.
The effortless way they hold a wine glass and suddenly the entire hand becomes an event.
I want that.
Then I look at my own nails.
Short.
Occasionally bitten.
Very committed to manual labor.
And one practical question always returns to me:
How exactly are we cleaning our behinds with these things?
I am sorry.
Somebody had to ask.
Maybe there is a seminar I missed.
Maybe there is a technique.
Perhaps it is passed quietly from woman to woman after your first acrylic appointment.
Congratulations. Your nails are beautiful. Now, regarding bathroom logistics...
Nobody has briefed me.
So I continue admiring from a safe distance.
For a long time, I think I confused looking like I had made it with actually making it.
And the woman in my imagination had a very specific costume.
She was polished.
Feminine.
Corporate.
Always groomed.
She didn't bite her nails.
She certainly didn't wear the same comfortable black T shirt whenever life permitted.
She looked like the women we grew up seeing in magazines, television adverts and office buildings: women whose clothes announced that they were serious before they ever opened their mouths.
There was something aspirational about it.
Especially as an African girl imagining adulthood.
You would become educated.
Get the job.
Earn your money.
Buy nice things.
Wear good clothes.
Do your hair.
Look respectable.
Look successful.
Look like somebody's daughter had made it.
And there is nothing wrong with that woman.
I love her.
I occasionally want to be her.
I want fresh hair and a fresh manicure and perfume lingering behind me after I've left the room.
I want the pencil skirt.
I want the heels.
I want to enter somewhere looking so put together that people assume I know what the meeting is about.
Sometimes I do.
Sometimes I absolutely do not.
But must I perform that version of womanhood every day to qualify as feminine?
Because most days, do you know what makes me happiest?
A black T shirt.
Jeans.
Converse.
A sling bag.
Done.
No negotiations with my wardrobe.
No suffering for beauty.
No heel quietly amputating my smallest toe while I smile professionally.
Just me.
Comfortable.
Clean.
Confident.
And apparently, according to some corners of the internet, perhaps radiating masculine energy.
Masculine energy?
Because of Converse?
Please.
Have you seen how beautifully I moisturized these ankles?
Since When Did Femininity Have a Uniform?
I find our ideas about femininity fascinating.
A woman in heels, a fitted dress, long hair, manicured nails and lipstick is immediately read as feminine.
Put the same woman in jeans, sneakers and a T shirt and suddenly somebody wants to discuss her energy.
Maybe she is too hard.
Too independent.
Too masculine.
Not soft enough.
Not girly enough.
Not trying enough.
But femininity cannot possibly be that fragile.
Surely it cannot disappear because I changed shoes.
I can wear Converse and still be soft.
I can earn my own money and still enjoy being cared for.
I can be assertive at work and tender at home.
I can wear lipstick today and forget it tomorrow.
I can be soft without being fragile. Strong without becoming hard. Independent without surrendering tenderness.
Hennessy in a teacup.
Delicate looking, perhaps.
But nobody should confuse the vessel with what it carries.
Maybe that is the kind of femininity I understand.
Not femininity as performance.
Femininity as permission.
Permission to be many things at once.
Because surely being a woman is bigger than the packaging she arrived in.
I can bite my nails and still be a woman.
A badly manicured woman, perhaps.
But a woman nonetheless.
And maybe that is what adulthood has slowly been teaching me.
The girl I was imagined womanhood mostly through appearance.
The woman I became experiences it through choice.
There Is Also the African Beauty Department
Of course, being an African woman adds another layer.
Hair alone could qualify as a government ministry.
Braids.
Twists.
Cornrows.
Wigs.
Natural hair.
Relaxed hair.
Afro.
Extensions.
And every hairstyle comes with opinions.
You cut your hair?
Why?
You wear a wig?
Why don't you embrace your natural hair?
You wear your natural hair?
You should do something with it.
You braid it?
How much did that cost?
You leave it alone?
Apparently, civilization has collapsed.
There is always an auntie somewhere conducting quality assurance.
And I understand some of it.
Looking neat matters to me.
Taking care of myself matters.
There is a particular pleasure in leaving the salon with fresh hair, catching your reflection in a window and suddenly remembering that you are, in fact, somebody's fine daughter.
I love smelling good.
I love nice clothes.
I love feeling beautiful.
I want to look clean.
I want to look confident.
Sometimes I even want to look like I have made it.
But I don't want beauty to become another job I have to report to every morning.
I already have one.
The older I get, the more I question the woman I imagined becoming.
Not because there was anything wrong with her.
But because perhaps I was looking at the wrong things.
Maybe “having made it” isn't the pencil skirt.
Maybe it's being able to buy the pencil skirt and still choosing the jeans.
Maybe success isn't the handbag.
It's having somewhere meaningful to carry it.
Maybe confidence isn't walking perfectly in heels.
Maybe it's knowing you don't have to wear them.
Maybe femininity isn't something I put on my face before leaving the house.
Maybe it leaves the house with me.
That doesn't mean I have given up on looking good.
Absolutely not.
The lipstick is still there.
I will wear it.
Eventually.
Probably.
I want to experiment more.
Dress up more.
Try the manicure without immediately chewing through the investment.
Maybe even conquer mascara.
I want to meet different versions of myself without feeling that any one of them must become permanent.
There is the woman in heels.
The woman in Converse.
The woman with fresh hair.
The woman whose hair has been surviving entirely on prayer for three weeks.
The woman with lipstick.
The woman who forgot it again.
The professional.
The wife.
The daughter.
The woman sitting comfortably in jeans wondering why everybody is so concerned about her energy.
They are all me.
And perhaps that is what I wish I could tell the girl I used to be.
And any girl who is still imagining the woman she will someday become.
Wear the dress.
Wear the jeans.
Paint your lips red.
Forget the lipstick at home.
Grow your hair. Cut it. Braid it. Cover it. Let it breathe.
Wear the heels when they make you feel powerful and the Converse when your toes have suffered enough.
But don't spend your life assembling yourself into somebody else's picture of a woman.
There is no uniform waiting for you at the gates of womanhood.
You don't become feminine because you are soft spoken, beautifully dressed, perfectly manicured or agreeable.
And strength does not cancel your softness.
You can be both.
Hennessy in a teacup.
Soft, but strong.
I still want to walk into rooms feeling polished, confident and like I have made something of myself.
I just no longer think I have to dress like the woman I imagined when I was younger to prove that I became her.
Because somewhere along the way, I became someone else.
Me.
Black T shirt.
Jeans.
Converse.
Sling bag.
Maybe lipstick.
If I remember.