At times I feel surrounded by a storm that pretends to be progress but is really another disguise for the same old demand: look better, look thinner, look younger, look stronger. I see women injecting themselves with quick fixes or posting endless gym sessions, and yes, it captures attention for a moment, but the obsession behind it leaves me uneasy. I cannot help but think of those other women who lived and created beyond this obsession. I think of Arendt, Pizarnik, Hunt, and how they managed to carve out spaces where thought mattered as much as appearance, where the self was not consumed entirely by how it looked in the mirror. That contrast is what keeps me restless, because it feels like we are losing balance in ways that cost more than we realize.
Beauty is mandatory, I admit it without hesitation, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. I know when I walk into a room I want to feel seen, and I enjoy when I sense admiration. This is part of being human and I do not intend to rise above it with false modesty. What troubles me is when beauty devours the rest, when it begins to stand as the only measurement of value. There are nights when I ask myself what we are leaving behind while perfecting appearances. Where do the words go, the thoughts that might challenge us, the imagination that expands a life beyond what the body can show. In those moments, I feel the absence of that other richness as something heavy, like a silence pressing down on all of us.
Curiosity leads me back to women who dared to live differently, even if they did not escape the pressures entirely. I think of Hannah Arendt writing about responsibility, or Pizarnik pouring her solitude onto pages with a voice that still cuts through time. They remind me that a woman can carry beauty and contradiction, intelligence and fragility, all at once. They remind me that life is not only measured by how disciplined our bodies appear but also by how far our thoughts can travel. Their existence is proof that there are other ways to be present in the world, and it comforts me when I feel tempted to shrink myself into simpler shapes.
Doubt lingers though, because I am not immune to the very obsessions I question. I have stared at my reflection longer than necessary, compared my body to others, envied the ease with which some women seem to perform their attractiveness. I know the small humiliations of not fitting a certain mold and the relief when, for a moment, I think I do. These confessions are part of me too, and I am not writing from a pedestal. I write from a messy space where contradictions live together, where I can want beauty and still crave more than beauty. And maybe that is the point, to accept the contradictions instead of letting one erase the other.
Eventually I come back to the idea of home, not just a physical home but a space inside myself where I am allowed to be more than a reflection. A place where my flaws do not disqualify me, where I can hold both vanity and thought without shame. That kind of home matters more than the likes or the scales or the way leggings fit after months at the gym. It matters because it protects me from losing sight of what else there is to live for. So when I think of the women who still write, who still imagine, who still refuse to disappear into silence, I feel less alone. They remind me that the storm of appearances will pass, but what we create, what we dare to think, has a way of lasting longer. And that is the life I want to remember, the one beyond mirrors.
