GOD IS A WOMAN, Teyana Taylor and the OSCARS recap | AITL?! EP 54

Hey pod fam! Welcome back to another episode of Am I Too Loud The Podcast with Sophie A? I don't know I'm doing that. Honestly, aka the mother fricking Audity Happy International Women's History Month Welcome to Am I Too Loud The Podcast! Is it International Women's History Month? I guess. Wait a minute, actually. I know it's International Women's Day, but I'm not sure if it's International Women's History Month, except it probably is Women's History Month across the world, so it would be Women's History Month. Anyways, the point is it's Women's History Month and imagine me not doing a dedicated video to women all across the world. Am I a Joker? Where do we start from? God, I have a lot of saliva. Do you know what's crazy? I found out I have a lot of saliva. I'm drinking some liquid ivy with some water and ice. I wonder where you guys watched from? I didn't realize how many people watched me on Apple Podcast or listened to me on Apple Podcast. For the most part, I usually just thought people watched me on Spotify or YouTube, but Apple Podcast has been doing their big one, which is crazy because I don't do anything Apple, I don't do Apple Music, I do new podcasts. I don't really use any of the in-app Apple products. I usually just use Spotify. So anyways, that is my ADHD talking. Where do we start from? First of all, God is a woman. What is that song? God is a woman. God is a woman. God is a woman. God is a woman. God is a woman. I'm going to try to write what's the melody? God is a woman. God, God is a woman. I can't, I can't remember. What is it? Let me find it because I really, I wanted to sing the whole thing as an intro for you guys, and I'm not going to not sing it. How dare I not sing it. And God is a woman. Can you see the top of my head when I bend down? When all is said and done, you believe God is a woman. You love me after midnight. I make ten pretend my one. When all is said and done, you believe God is a woman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell I'm in a good mood? Anyway, guys, God is a freaking woman. Why am I trying to get this episode to? So first of all, let's do some pop culture updates because I've been seeing a lot of discourse around Gianna Taylor at the Oscars. Okay, before we get into that, how do you pronounce the Oscars? Because a part of me wants to say Oscars, another part of me wants to say Oscars. Another part of me wants to say Oscars. Okay, I feel like the second one was the better one. Oscars. The Oscars. The Oscars. Shit, man. Having an accent, isn't it? It's a bit of a tight situation, isn't it? But anyways, I watched the Oscars. Oscars. Oscars. I watched the Oscars last night. I feel like my mouth has a lot of liquid today. I don't know what it is. Sorry, guys, if that's disgusting, I'm so sorry. I just, I get a lot wet. Okay, can I just say this is so authentic with me. I feel like myself in this, like in this video so much today that I hope you guys can tell. I just, I don't know if you can tell how comfortable I am right now just yapping with you guys. I'm not filling my head with being super, what's the word? Super like quick and easy, get you the information. I just want to like yap and that was the whole point of me creating this space. So I hope you can tell that. First of all, this entire intro is just selfie being selfie. Welcome back, baby. I just, I feel like I'm funny in my throat. I feel like I'm, I guess I can, I can see it. I can feel it. It just did me not get emotional because when I tell you going broke, that video is going to come out on Sunday. I did a whole like unfiltered and edited podcast, not podcast. I did a whole unfiltered video for my YouTube channel, my diaries where I talk about this, but I finally just said it. And I think I said it in my last episode too that I haven't got an a brand deal in a long time. And I am just so frantic. I just feel like I've been spending so much time kissing ass and trying to figure out how to be successful that I, I lost the version of myself who realized that to be successful is to be myself. You know what I mean? Like I keep trying to fit into a box and fit into a mold. When I am the mold itself, you know what you mean? You know what I mean? It's crazy. You know what I mean? You guys know what I mean? My mouth is getting so wet right now. Mind you. Let me shut up. Let me shut up. Let me shut up. So yeah, welcome back to my two lot, the podcast. Oh my god. From the okay. All right. If you listen to this episode, then you know I have ADHD. If you listen to anything I post online, you know I have ADHD. So my brain goes 50 miles a minute. But watch who just remembered that she was talking about the Oscars. I'm no higher truck. I am absolutely sober right now. My mouth is still wet. What is it? I don't know why it's so wet. Maybe it's like hold on. I want to see if it's different if I don't have my earphones on. Oh my god. Does my mouth not get wet when I, if you're watching this on YouTube, then you can see what I'm doing. But if you're not watching this on YouTube and watching you're listening to me on audio, I just took off my headphones. And just to be clear, I feel like my mouth isn't wet anymore because I took off my headphones. Why? What is that phenomenon? What is that? What does that even mean? What does that say? What does that say about anything? What? No, I don't actually feel the amount of wetness that was there before. Anyways, okay, let's keep going. The Oscars. The Oscars was last night. Tiana Taylor took home an Oscar. I just, I can't and can I say what is it? The Academy Awards. We're going to do the Academy Awards because Oscars pronouncing that is just flipping my tongue. It's stressing me out. But the Academy Awards. That sounds so sexy. The Academy Awards. The Academy Awards were last night. And let me do my radio presenter voice. The Academy Awards was last night. And sinners took home the prize for the best original screenplay with director Ryan Kugler taking home the win. And Michael B. Jordan, the hot star sensation black man magic taking home leading actor of the year. We were all so incredibly surprised to find out that the Oscars isn't truly white because they gave them what they deserved. Now, should they have given Whommy an Oscar? Abs of fucking Lutley. Was Delroy Lindo robbed of an Oscar? Yes, he was. However, we're going to give you the Academy Awards. It gave us three, four. I think four because they also won cinematographer of the year, I think, as well. So, girl, please go on, watch the news or entertainment tonight or something. If you want to get the actual nominations, I don't know. I just read it and I go and you're even lucky. Sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. I want my yelling at you. I don't know. Anyway, so they won. It was really good. But here is what I want to talk about. And I promise you, if you follow me, it's going to segue into why I say God is a woman and why this is a woman celebration episode. Because Tiana Frickentayler, we're going to play the clip here. She was celebrating when Oscar with her team. She did the battle against tomorrow, the one after tomorrow, some movie. I haven't watched it yet. I heard good things and bad things about movie, by the way, but either or she got the Oscar. So she was really excited and she's visibly excited and she's running on stage. She's like, she's sharing people on when she was nominated and she didn't win. She's still cheering for the person who won. She was basically acting excited. She was in what people might call at my too loud mood or mode. She was being a bit, what people would call too much, too extra, too loud. And you know what I say to that? She wasn't loud enough. Okay. I love that she showed emotion. I feel like in situations like that, we as black people tend to do this thing called respectability politics where we don't want to show our emotions. We don't want to show how happy we are, how excited we are, our brave we are. And I honestly think it stems from this idea that we might lose the things that we're super excited to get or maybe we are scared of failure or shame. I don't know what it is. It could be a lot of those things or maybe one of those things either way. The black community is so oftentimes honestly the immigrant community, POCs, we tend to be so police to behave a certain way to fit into Western culture and frustrates the fudge out of me because that woman was so gorgeous, so stunning, living her best life happy. She's a fucking Oscar nominee and winner. She won an Academy award with her team. They went through hell and back. They filmed a movie. You would tell me she's supposed to sit pretty and just clap her hands because everybody else is doing that? No. If she wanted to gel up on that stage and do her back flip, she should have done that. Okay, because it's personality. It's fun. We people don't want to have fun anymore. Like I blame myself for that too. Like I come down. Sophie, my bad guys. I was getting a bit passionate over there. Let me explain what I mean by that. I remember when I first started content and I was when I watched my videos back, I am so embarrassed for the girl I was. I mean, my makeup used to look horrible. Don't lie to me. I've seen the videos. My makeup used to look horrible. I used to look rough. I sometimes when I brushed my teeth, I just came online and I just existed and I did not think twice about existing in that way because I was just genuinely so happy to be experiencing life. And along the way, I lost that version of myself because I kept thinking and looking around me that everybody does not look like me. And the fact that I'm Sophie aka the mother-fripping oddity, whose entire premise in life is to be an oddity. I still struggle because I looked around and I was like, oh, shit. My peers are very demure. They don't yell when they come online. They have to make sure they put together quality of that content is perfect. Everything is a luxury. Everything is this. Everything is that you better be doing exactly what they're doing because you're embarrassing yourself. I genuinely started thinking that and I lost myself so much because I was trying to, I don't even know who the fuck I was trying to piece. Who the fudge was I trying to look at and say, I need to be like them because I did not. She does not need to be like anybody else but Tiana Taylor. You do not need to be like anybody else for yourself. If you're the kind of person who genuinely, your excitement level is sitting simple and going, low clap here and there. Low chat, low one, two, one, two. That's fine. That's you. Do it. If you feel someone like me, oh, let's me win my first Oscar. Oh, oh, oh, oh. First of all, I'm going to be wearing a green dress. I'm just telling you right now. I'll be wearing a green dress. I'm going to look stunning. Oh, honestly, bald, head will be moisturized to the gods. I might have had a tattoo on. I can see it right now. I'm going to win for a movie where like I play like a really dark sinister person but like I just, I'm able to like champion that emotion and I just killed it and I just told the story so perfectly and I win and I won't have the first seven black women to add them to the list of winning Oscars. You get the point. That's what I'm like. It's in a few, isn't a few years. Don't play. Maybe a few decades. It's okay. I'll wait. I'm patient. Anyways, the point is let me win my first Oscar. Are you guys telling me I should not jump? Oh, excuse you. Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I be excited? I'm like, whoa, we need to bring joy back, bring embarrassment back, bring shame back, especially with the age of AI, the only thing that separates you from artificial intelligence is perfection literally because AI was built on the perfect answer, the right answer, the right thing to do. Every AI platform thing you see, all these influencers are AI. You are always like, oh my god, this is person AI. People think Orlando is AI. She looks delicious by the way. People think Orlando is AI because she's so perfect looking like she looks like a fucking doll. So the one thing that separates you and me from artificial intelligence and taking our jobs is to have personality. Now watch me best believe when I see Tiana Taylor's video. I'm excited because I'm like, oh, that can't be AI. That kind of emotion. You can't get it from anywhere else. I'm yelling at you. Am I too loud? No, yes. I don't care. Anyway, so I think when I watched that video, I was so excited for her and then I started seeing the comments and I was like, who are all these people yelling at this woman for literally just being excited, like ridiculous? And now let's talk about the fact that this is exactly what a lot of women face. Like, I'm telling you, if that was Kevin Hartz, are you telling me if Kevin Hart won an Academy award, are you telling me that man is not going to jump and make jokes and laugh and giggle? If you're not going to say, oh, he needs to act right. Someone also said, oh, it's the situation of right place and how to behave. I'm like, they're all sitting in the theater. Yes, they're wearing dress in even in gowns where they're sitting in a theater. It's personally like a movie theater in a war season. Yes, they're dressed in whatever, but these are people who have worked so hard to get to this position in their lives. Like, forgive them for wanting to have joy, have emotion, cry, laugh, dance, jump like, bring joy back, baby. Bring joy back. Anyways, I just, I hated the fact that like, I was seeing people like trying to tear her down and I love what she said. I'm going to put it here. Her response to that made me so happy because, yes, queen, yes. And it just reminds me a lot about how women's bodies are so police, women's reactions are so police, women's abilities to just express emotions are so police. Like, if you're a girl at the club, you know, tough. The perfect example of this is I saw a clip from my, I'm Joyce's podcast with Patricia, right? And in that video, Joyce is talking about when to go out to the club, that Patricia is a dancer. Like, and I love Patricia Brightdown. I've met her a few times. She's like dancing. She's like the girl who's like at the club having the time of her life. And Joyce is over there talking about, you know, she's, what did she say? Like, the ballads, you don't need to be noisy. You have to sit, sit, sit pretty. You have to sit pretty. You have to no, get top on dance. Like, why are we not dancing in the club anymore? Why are we, why are we, why are we asking like, we don't want to move? Imagine me putting makeup on, putting a hot dress on, looking sexy and going out to sit down because the men would want me to sit pretty. When I wheeled looking by, it's playing in the background. When I should be twerking. And I don't even want to twerk so your guys catching my one. I want me and my girls. We want to turn up. We want to party. We want to have fun. We want to live life. Because that's what life is supposed to be. We're supposed to be having fun. Oh, just dance. What is that? Oh, yeah, get up here. That's dance. I want people to do that more often. Anyways, I mean, my, it'll just dance era. I mean, my, I want to live it up era. I mean, my happy girl era. I mean, my joyful era. I mean, my loud era. Like, all the errors you can think of, I'm in it right now. I just really think it's crazy that my mouth is not as watery because I took my headphones off. What does that say? Is that, like, the noise passes through my head and like locks the moisture in my mouth? I don't know if this is TMI. I'm sorry. Very strange. Anyways, so women get police so much. And so we're going to talk a lot. I didn't have a big sister growing up. And I wouldn't say that. Oh, oh, what does that wouldn't say affected me, but it did. I'm going to do a take talk about it, but I wish I had a big sister. I wish I had a big sister. There's so many things that I feel like I would have learned from my big sister that I had to learn on the fly and had to find friends who were older than me who became my big sister because guys, have you know, woman is so special. It's hard. It's so hard. Like, we are, first of all, being a woman is hard. Being a black woman is harder. Being a dark skin black woman is harder. It's, it's, it's layers to this shit, man. You are constantly fighting so many battles, but you fucking survived. And you look hot doing it. Like, God is a woman. And also, let's first start with that. Do we know that God is a woman because man, imagine, hey, do we really, really think a man created this? Do we really think so? Like, I just, I just don't, I can't believe it. I can't believe a man. And of course, I don't think God is a man per se. Like God, like, I don't think God would be a man in that sense. But I just think, like, I see the world. I see the earth as effeminate. That's the way I want to use like effeminate. It's very moderately, very nurturing, very growth oriented. Because that's what, I feel like that's where being a woman comes in in many ways. Oh, God. Anyways, so we're talking a lot about being a woman. And how much I love being a woman because it's great. It's amazing. And this is not going to be an episode where I'm like, yeah, yeah, boom. And no, because I've been a kind of person who always spoke about, oh, you know, fudge man. We're not doing any of that here. I think it's going to be more focused on what my perception of being a woman is at this age. I'm 28 until any eight. Honestly, I was about to start crying because I'm 30 and I'm like, oh my God, I'm aging. I'm growing. But can I be honest with you guys and say that every time I react to people saying, oh my God, I'm going to be turning 30. I only react that way because social media reacts that way. I really don't give a fudge. Like I've never been the kind of person who was like, oh my God, 30 is like where my life ends or 40s where my life ends. I've never been that kind of person. Of course, I'm nervous about aging, but not from the perspective of a beauty standard or how I'm going to look. But I feel like I'm nervous about aging from the perspective of not achieving my dreams quick enough. And I say quick enough because I want to be in this mindset of achieving dreams, achieving dreams, achieving dreams. So because by the time I'm like 50, I don't want to work anymore. I want to retire early enough where I have enough money. I want an island somewhere. My family's great. I'm happy. I'm content. I don't imagine my life going through the idea of suffering, of pursuing something that I don't need to be pursuing. That I think is where my head is at. I don't generally think of your 30s as the end of the world because I don't believe that. I mean, most of the women I know who are in the 30s are fantastic. They're living their best life. Honestly, if we think about it, you're 20s to your 30s. You don't even know what the fudge you're doing. Like, you don't know where you're doing. Let's be clear. 20 to 30. If someone who was 30 told me at 21, 22, like, oh my god, don't worry about it. It gets better. I definitely didn't believe them because in my head, I'm like, I'm hot shit. I know what's going on with me. I know what I like what I don't like. Now, when I think about it, yeah, no. I did not know what I was doing. 20, 21 year old Sophie. Shoot. I mean, oh, this is how I think it is. So I graduated from college, I think when I was 21 years old. So maybe from 18 to 21, you're still in that maybe education. Now, I also want to put the caveat of Gen Z now. Maybe they be aging pretty, pretty quickly. So I don't want to bring that up from that perspective. So let's first start with that. However, the life that I grew up in, I'm still Gen Z, but I'm like at the cost of 97. 18 to 21, you are figuring yourself out. You just finally are either living college or you're sort of like figuring out to get away from family, get a job, be sustainable. 21 to 25, you're like finally living life. Like there's no structuring your life anymore, especially if you're not in school. So you're getting your first job. You're making new friends. If you're a mood to cities, you're just trying to get friends in the city, you're becoming someone who you could depend on. You're becoming someone who is figuring out what adulthood looks like. 25 to 28 or 29, I think is the stage where you are probably shedding away your early 20s and I'm focusing on building. I think that's why I think about it. Like I'm building now. I'm growing. I'm learning. And then 30, I can't wait to find out. Like I can't wait. I see people say that your 30s is when you're reborn and you're excited, you're living life, you're happier. And I can feel it because my frontal lobe, I definitely remember like my 25th, 26th birthday so much happened during that time for me. Oh my god, it felt like I was generally getting reborn in a way that I just did not expect. And I love that era of my life so much, but I'm just really even more excited for this era of my life. So for a lot of times with women, I think we tend to chase youth in a way that men don't. And I once liked to bunk that because you're going to be sexy at 50, you're going to be sexy at 70, you're going to be sexy at 80. You are in charge of your life. No one can tell you 30s a new 50 like please, they're 30 year olds were killing it and people who are successful now are all people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s because they're just living life for them. I feel like your life sort of changes when you start living it for yourself and I'm in that era too. Let me drink some water. Okay, now let's get into the episode because I feel like I wanted to write this episode and I say right because I made sure I had notes for this episode, I wanted to write this episode because a lot of young women follow me, a lot of older women follow me and a lot of the time when I speak, I speak to women, I speak for women, I speak in support of women, I support women's rights and wrongs, I love women, I do, I love love women. And I admire women so much for being who they are, for being so special, I admire the many facets of who we are and it just, it makes me, it fuels me with such happiness every time when I think about being a woman and I would never take that for granted, I also never want to be anyone else or anything else, I would always come back being a woman, I would love to always come back being a woman, I also can't imagine having a penis in between my legs the whole time, I'll be too overstimulated, like no, no thank you, it just feels like there's too many things I'm carrying, like titties are enough, I'm so glad I have tiny boobs because imagine having big ass boobs on my chest, I would be so irritated half the time, like get out of my face, like I have friends who have to pick their boobs up and push it to the side to rest, oh, shoe, no, can't, can't be me. Anyways, this episode is going to be for the women who are tired of shrinking, of apologizing, over explaining who are tired of just constantly proving their worth in this world, it's definitely not a gender war episode, it's like a women's appreciation, women's reality check sort of episode as someone who loves women, I just really love, I just really love talking about us, so this is to the girl who's tired, to the girl who's trying, to the girls who are becoming, specifically this is to the girls who are becoming, being a woman is so special, but it's really hard, it's really hard to exist in a world that's constantly trying to get you to honestly play the same game, or play at some game, it's hard when you think about hormones, about growth, about being a girl child, about oh, you, it's too much, I was with my friend the other day, we were having a conversation, and I was talking about how I'd been sleeping so much, she was like oh, when is your period, and I was like oh my god, that is so true, I sleep really, really bad before my period, like the week before my period, I'm a zombie, I can't get any work done, my hormones are all over the place, I'm exhausted, I'm delirious, I'm tired, and I was like imagine, imagine this bro, like this is, I was born like this, like I can't control that every month, the universe says oh, you're a woman, you gotta bleed, you gotta do this, you gotta do, hey, we go through a loto, but I love it, I love it because I think at the end of the day, like women are just, we are phenomenal, we are so special, we are important, and I want more women to speak life and to other women, and I want womanhood to encapsulate every single facet of what being a woman is, and what I mean by that is, I think gone are the days where a woman has to be a certain way, so you, as a woman, your told, or society tells you know, you grow up, you finish school, maybe you've been not attend school in some parts of the world, you get married, you give birth, you sometimes have a job, sometimes you don't, you become a mother, you raise your children, the children go off, they take care of you, your old age you die, there's a version of women who the people still describe to, and then I think in modern history now, and in like this century, women who just encapsulates every single facet now of just life in general, you have women who are career pioneers, you have women who are presidents, who are governors, who are like billionaires, you have women who are dreamers and doers and thinkers, and the fact that this is such a recent developments in recent years tells me there's so much more potential for women as a whole, and I just, I'm so excited for like young girls being born to be able to experience a life where they literally could become anything they want to be, like wherever a child is born today, that's a girl could potentially be the United States presidents in 30 years, 40 years maybe, like that's the possibility, I say that because I'm like, I don't know if America is ready for women presidents, like in the next two elections, but maybe four, five elections, maybe, okay, maybe not, maybe 10, a girl could dream, but I don't know, you know, patriarchy is still a little huge part of the world and we still struggle, but you know, ideally like it's really important to see the different facets of what women who does become, and I just, I love it, and I'm talking to you as a woman who has gone against the grain her entire life, like yeah, I went to school and I finished my degree and I have a master's, but I was support, like I'm 28 and if you'd asked my mother what she wanted for me, it was definitely going somewhere around 22, 23, but I didn't do that, I didn't do any of that, and I had the choice and the fact that we live in a world now where women have the choice to do whatever the fudge they want, it feels made with so much happiness because we fucking deserve it, we deserve to dream so big and it shouldn't only be boys alone who can dream this way, like young girls can too, and I think that's the best thing you could ever, ever do. Okay, I think my rant is over now and we're going to talk about why I say God is a woman because God is a woman. Okay, number one, okay, I'm not going to do that. Women are generally the most divine beings you would ever meet, like we create life, we create safety, we create beauty, we create language around feelings and emotions, we are so sacred like our intuition, our discernment, we talk about female energy, feminine energy and we talk about how important that is because genuinely, there's no life without a woman, there's no life without womanhood, there's no like you would not exist without a kuchi, you know what I'm right, you would not exist without a kuchi, that alone should tell you all you need to know, and I think that's crazy to me that we know consciously that a woman, the world exists because of women, we birth, we birth, life, and okay, let's argue that, yeah, you need to see men to like pump in there, but like honestly, you're right, hold on, I guess, but like, we could find a seam in anywhere, you know, you know, you don't know, yeah, you just like, you can't cook a chicken in the oven without the chicken, but the oven still exists, I'm so stupid, I'm so stupid, I know, I know, I know, the point I was still trying to make though is like life exists because of women, and I think that's why we're so special, and I think one of the biggest lies that you're told is that power comes from masculine energy, and I think I've done an episode on masculine energy and feminine energy in season one, oh my god, we're in season three right now, I think I've done an episode on season one versus season three, I think I've done an episode on masculine versus feminine energy, and I always talk about this from the perspective of when you hear or think of power, you often think about it from this masculine perspective, right, of loud and strong, and also fuck ADHD, but as I was saying, have you guys heard of this thing called look looks maxing, like look maxing, or what is it, like this idea that men have started being so invested in like their physical appearance, like wanting to be at the gym regularly, wanting to chisel their jaw and get Botox and everything so they can look their best, I'm just gonna say tada, because I promised I was gonna bring men into this conversation, it's gonna point out that, it seems like a very feminine thing to do, so as you're listed into this episode, I hope you know, I've been a woman, still the best thing you can do because we've been looks maxing before I became cool for the men, thank you very much for coming to my TED Talk anyways, as I was saying, you hear this a lot when you talk about how, you know, masculine energy is more power lies, but I just think there is such a subtle beauty in femininity, and it's not even in the softness, but when we think about matriarchs and powerful women, you know, you you guys have, you know those women, right, like I right now I'm picturing a viola Davis and woman king, excuse me, that sort of like quiet silent power where you're dominating a room without needing to yell, to shout, to scream because of your intellect, because of your intelligence, because of who you are, how, what you're perceived as, men, women, children, everyone can bow down to you, you could feel that power, feminine power is that, no one else in this world can encapsulate power in that way except for women, and when you harness that power within you, I swear to you, your life would never be the same. I think the biggest mistake a lot of women make and bringing the men into this is feeding into the patriarchal system we have where we think that to be a strong woman you need to be at the side of a man, when true womanhood and femininity in a way is the choice of being able to explore who you are, like generally the choice to explore who you are, because let me tell you, the thing that separates a lot of women from men in this sense is choice, do we know that? Like truly at the core of life, you lose your power when you give the power of choice to someone else to choose for you, does that make sense? And so many women do that, you let your choice go, you give up that power to other people, and I don't even say this as something we do intentionally, right? Like think about it from even our body autonomy around abortions, around I think abortions mostly on the street, like how the states has control over that, or around like marriage and virginity and sex and all these things where as women our choices are taking away from us, but mind you we're born, all of us are born the same, like the fact that like you are making choices for me and you are not even me crazy, crazy, like I think about female genital mutilation FGM and how the choice of desire is taken away from young women, because some society looks to you and says you don't deserve desire, like that's why I would always go back to the fact that God has to be a woman because we are so powerful and I hope you listen to this episode that you can feel how much I love being a woman and how much you can feel how much I love being a woman and how empowered I am every day to be a woman and my goal with my podcast and my too loud is to pour into women, to break the mold, to set the standard standard for themselves, to show themselves that they are absolutely equipped to do any fucking thing they want in life, you can do and be anything you want as a woman, fuck what society says, fuck what family says, fuck everything else, because everybody else has choice, everybody else has choice, when we start fighting for our rights to choose, that's when true, true empowerment comes in and that's why we'll never stop fighting for choice for every woman, young old black whites Asian, all of it, all of us, all of us, we deserve the right to choose and for me that's the epitome of feminine energy and that's why someone in people are scared of it, that's why when people when I sit here, people talk about my podcast and how much they love listening to it, I know I'm radicalizing people in the best way because you cannot tell me that the things I'm saying to you shouldn't be the norm, what do you mean you should choose whatever happens to you in your body, shouldn't that be common sense, everybody else gets to choose and by everybody else I mean the other gender, so why don't you, you know what I mean, but yeah I think that's exactly why I talk about being a woman, but I also don't want to romanticize womanhood, I feel like I don't think I'm even romanticizing womanhood because as a young girl, I had my mom who's like for me was like the most powerful woman in the entire world, like she was a single mom, she did everything, but I will not lie that growing up within the community that I grew up in, it still always felt like in some way our culture put women as second class citizens and I know there's some women in the world out there who still believe women should be second class citizens, and to those people I say shame, I say shame, shame on you, because why, why are we second class citizens, why, because of a dick, oh please, have you visiting a coach, much prettier, much prettier, I don't understand this concept, we are, sorry guys, I know I keep going back to this coach, this is like the third time I brought up a coach, but I was talking about womanhood on this episode, why would I not bring up a coach, anyways the point is being a woman is growing up and you're told you're too loud, you're too emotional, you're too ambitious, you're too sexual, you're too much of a prude, you're too needy, you're too independent, you're too much, you're too hard to love, you're too difficult to control, and they say all this about you, and so many of us spend so many years trying to sort of become the kind of woman that gets to be chosen, right, like we grow up wanting to be chosen, because that's what society is told us we need to become, I hope you listen to this episode and realize that the beauty is when you choose for yourself, and you always choose yourself, the whole point of self-love, and this whole, I remember when COVID happened and the world shut down and that was when self-love and body positivity became a thing, it generally was because a lot of women, and this is something that I did not study, but if I had a PhD in this, I would do my dissertation on the fact that during quarantine, the fact that we didn't have to focus in some way on other people's perception of us, shifted us into actually looking at ourselves in the mirror and going, if I simply existed in a silo, in a bubble by myself, would I hate me, or would I love me, and if I hated me, why did I hate me, and if I loved me, why did I love me? And that's why I feel like self-love and body positivity became a thing, because a lot of women, when they were left alone and they didn't have to go outside, they didn't have to get to hear opinions of people, they started realizing, holy smokes, I should really be in love with myself, I should learn to have fun by myself, choose myself, do all these things by myself, and then everything got messed up because the moment the world opened up, we're like, oh, yikes, opinions are back, we're seeing people again, now people are talking about my weight, my heights, my body, whether or not I'm getting married, because then during COVID, you can't start looking for a husband, well, you find a husband, it's supposed to be in lockdown, you see what I mean? I'm telling you, women are, we go through so much, we go through so much, and I've been thinking a lot about who taught me about womanhood, and I'm not going to lie, I said this early in the episode that I really wish I had a sister because the womanhood that I know now, I don't think was taught to me, because I tell you guys all the time, I'm my mom's biggest nightmare, she did not teach me to be this radical, and I promise you, I'm not even that radical, I simply, I'm very curious, and I just really, really love myself, and I don't know, I would never think of myself as a second class citizen, but I, while I was doing research on this episode, I was trying to figure out like who taught me womanhood, I don't want to seem braggied by saying I think I taught myself, but I kind of think I did, because again, I grew up in a society where womanhood was defined by mostly traditional values, right, and now, because I said earlier in this episode that the beauty of womanhood is in choice, so if you are a woman who genuinely, and I know yeah, women like this, who genuinely love kids, love wanting to be a partner, love white, being a wife, love all these things, the fact that you can choose that path for yourself, I would always celebrate you. My issue comes when they're women who do not want that path, but are forced into that path, because to them or to the people around them, that is what is defined as womanhood, are we getting what I'm dropping here? So in my situation, I was raised in a black Muslim home, Nigerian Muslim home, at the African Muslim home. Womanhood in that context was get married to a man who take care of the family, pump out kids, ideally three to four, actually wanted nine at some point, and take care of your kids, pray us a lot, you go to the grave, that was it. Yes, I went to school, that was it. Now my brother could be a doctor, he could have how many kids, he could take his time to settle down, but my biological clock was ticking the moment I became of age, and the aunties could start talking in the mosque about where or how I'm supposed to be getting married and so on and so forth. That, to me, is where my choice is taking away. So I wouldn't even say I read books or I watched, maybe I think would be movies or TV shows, because I remember growing up and watching Disney a lot, and you know, seeing Hannah Montana, and I wouldn't say she taught me about womanhood, but I think Western media influenced me thinking, oh, there is more out there for women. Now it's funny, I say that because America didn't start giving women most rights till late 60s, early 2000s, honestly. I think women just started getting able to have credit cards in 1964 or something. So it wasn't like the West was always for thinking, but to me, isn't it interesting now, and I'm getting really nerdy right now. A lot of society's older cultures, the woman was oftentimes the matriarch, the power horse, the one who led, and if there was a man who was king, it was always very much clear that the woman was still usually the one that she could bring him down, right? We've seen the, is it Daniel that his Achilles heel was the fact that like a woman took him down because he was blinded by lust blah blah blah. That, to me, I think, is so interesting how when colonization happened, men flipped that around and now, you know, men became the ones in power when women were the ones in power to begin with, isn't that strange? My loves, isn't it strange? Pot fam, isn't it? Because we look back at cultures, you would realize the women were the powerful ones at first. They had powerful, powerful communities, villages, towns, they ran the world, and then the white man, the white man, no. And what did people do about it? Nothing. Take a call. That was from you, girl. If you know, you know, if you do not know that, wow, judging it, that was such a random midway segue while yabbing about womanhood. Anyways, so I did not necessarily learn womanhood from my mom. I didn't learn it from religion. The woman who I know I didn't learn from religion. I didn't learn it from culture. I didn't learn it from the internet, from men, from other women. I think I learned it from trauma. And I hate to be like some of the best women I know, I've had to be radicalized off of trauma. But in many ways, I am the woman I am today because I sought a different life for myself. And when as a young child, I would say I want to do X, and they'll be like, oh, you can't do X, but other people are doing X. I was very curious as to why. Because I couldn't believe that, the reason I couldn't do something was because boys do it and girls do it. Now, if you're listening to this and you're so stuck on an idea that girls do one thing, boys do one thing, I think you shouldn't be stuck on that idea. I think that's a ridiculous notion. First of all, there's not only two genders. Oh, gay, gay. Did I throw that in there? Did I throw that in there? Am I going to lose some of you by saying that? Am I? Say what I said. Am I too loud? Nope. Because it's true. Like, guys, yeah, yo, I got just, I wish more people were free. I wish we were embraced life in a way where we were more fluid because structure, structure generally breaks people apart. Structure is why we have so much racism and we have big retreat and we have so much more, because someone, someone thinks they are better than somebody else because they think they know something that they're supposed to know when they really don't. That was a long way of saying, stop judging people. Okay. Stop judging people. Back to what I was saying. So I think I learned womanhood by trauma, but also like living and learning for myself. A lot of times most women learn from trauma and I'm sad that I feel like that's where my perspective on womanhood came from. I really is. I don't mean from my sexual trauma, but I mean from trial by fire, right? Being put in situations where I had to question a law and rely on myself for growth and for freedom. And when I realized that, oh, I could do this by myself. I did not need anybody else. I found growth in that. I found strength in that. And I never want to feel otherwise. I enjoy my strength. I love how powerful I am. I love, I really, oh, I love being a woman. I think it's, it's the best thing. And what happens when I think I am the result of what happens when the scripts you're told doesn't fit. Because the funny thing about the world is, yes, there are people who fit the perfect script of what womanhood is supposed to be. But there are also a lot more people who don't fit that mold. And when you're not a bigot, when you're not racist, when you're not sexist, you realize people should have the choice to fit into whatever the mold they want to have for themselves. Because it's their life and no one else's. So yes, there should be a woman who never wants to have kids. There should be women who love having babies. There should be women who hate working. And there could be women who love working. There should be a woman who likes to fuck. And there should be women who are virgins and really don't want to have sex. You should be able to exist on the different levels of the spectrum of what woman knew his. And that should not take away from you being a woman or not. That I think is my central idea. So I think a lot of women are not actually trying to find themselves. I think what's trying to remember ourself before the world starts to tell us who we are. And that is why I'm so focused on like younger women as they grow up. Because young girls, like have you seen that video where they say they tell young girls, they tell older women to run like girls. And the girls, the older women are like, have you guys seen that video? Or is that an ad where they tell older women to run like girls? And they're like running their hands are like, you know, limp. They're like running really slow. Like actually huffing and puffing. They're running like they can't run. Right. Like, okay, track athletes where women don't exist. Don't piss me off. And then they tell young girls, like I think four to 12 year old young girls to run like girls. And these girls are running. Like they're putting all their strength into it. They're not shaking. They're powerful. They're strong. And that ad was such a good reminder of the fact that society ingrains in you what womanhood is as you're growing up. Because you're not born to second guess yourself. You're not born to think of yourself as second class citizens. How many young girls do you know have audacity? Like you see a five year old girl be like, oh, I'm the smartest in my class. And then they're sharing that and some some guy or some older woman would say, yeah, but that your brain doesn't need to work once you get to see your husband's house. Hey, before you know it, this girl realises, I'm not supposed to have a brain. Let me be quiet. Do you know how many young girls are broken so young because of what society tells them they're supposed to be? Do you know how many? Do you know frustrating that is because we deserve to explore. We deserve to have fun. Young girls deserve to feel the thoroughness of what woman it is. His is crazy. To feel the thoroughness of what womanhood is, womanhood is without feeling like they can't do something because they deserve it. And I hope if you're listening to this, you don't feel like you're too old to change your life and feel like you've given up your choices. I hope if you're young, listen to this. I hope you enjoy this and you think about this from the perspective of you really are living your best life and you can do anything you put your mind to. It doesn't matter what. You are not a second class citizen. You are absolutely phenomenal and you can do everything you put your mind to. The world is so scared of women. I think the reason powerful women make people uncomfortable is because a woman who knows herself is really hard to manipulate. A woman who knows her strength is really hard to manipulate. A woman who knows her power is really hard to manipulate. And a woman who trusts her intuition is pretty dangerous. A woman who is not looking for validation from people is really dangerous. A woman who can walk away from something is dangerous. That work that you need to put in to become that version of yourself, that is hard. I'm not, I'm not going to lie to you. That is really hard. But when you do it the work, when you stop comparing, when you trust your intuition, when you pour into yourself, when you choose joy, you're sexy, you're powerful, you're strong, you're, you're determined. And yes, it's not easy because we're all constantly fighting factors that can be frustrating for a lot of young girls, for a lot of young women who are growing up. But I think we are equipped. Like we're women really are equipped for everything. As long as we put our minds to it, I think we really are. And there's oftentimes seasons where being a woman feels heavy because of expectations, heartbreak, comparison, pressure of wanting to do everything I want. But when you exist to please yourself and choose yourself, nothing else matters. I don't know how best to tell you that being a woman is truly special. And you literally break the mold of second guessing who you are of struggle when you genuinely love yourself and you have boundaries when you sit them when you pour into yourself. You are ahead of half of the world at this point and you're so so special because of it. I think a lot of women get lost because they try to figure out what society wants from them. And then they lose themselves in the process. And then they lose themselves in the process. But a woman who really knows her worth. She is truly unstoppable. She really is. So to every woman who is listening, whether you feel powerful right now or not, I want to say a few things. You do not need to be perfect to be sacred. You do not need to be chosen to be worthy. You do not need to shrink to be loved. You do not need to be painless to be feminine. You do not need to be easy to be a woman. And I feel like I want to get to a point where I'm like, okay, there are also different types of women. And I love every single type of woman. By the way, mask women, feminine women knowing that way. Sorry, my bad. Let me say that. Oh, yo, guys, don't know me over here daydreaming about women. So I just, I always see this discourse online too where we talk about like, you know, women who enjoy the soft life and women who who, you know, are this like tried wives, right? And let me tell you something about me. So when I was growing up, my mom, again, I told you guys, like my mom was the closest person I knew and what I attributed womanhood to was struggle. My mom was the type of person that took the time to take care of herself. She was taking care of everybody else. She was the first of 20-something kids. So her priority was always everybody else. Never her. Like, I don't think she's ever pulled herself first ever in her life, right? So when I was growing up, when I saw women who put themselves first, I felt a certain level of, honestly, it wasn't in jealousy. I think it was deeper than that. I felt a lot of envy because I really felt so jealous of these women who were able to have the time for fabulous activities like spotties, like journaling, like prioritizing themselves, like boundaries, like self-respect. All those things, they just, I just was like, who has time for that? Like, you need to be the one who everybody depends on. So you need to be selfless and, no, start telling the inner, your inner white man because a white man is not selfless. Oh, a white man is selfish. A white man was possibly one of the most selfish people you'd ever meet because they will constantly choose themselves no matter what. I love me a white man. Oh, I don't. I'm sorry. I only said that because I felt like I might clip that part of the video. I didn't want to get in trouble and take talk. I really do not. But the point still stands, okay? You need to have the courage and audacity of a mediocre white man because a lot of women tend to be selfless because they think that's how they need to get ahead. When honestly, you just need to know who the fuck you are and keep going. So I used to be so jealous of stuff like girls. Oh, I used to be so jealous. And then I realized there's a beauty in taking the time to invest in your feminine energy, but also taking the time to truly know what you are and what you like, what you dislike, know what your boundaries are, know what you love, what your wants are, in a world where society hasn't dictated that for you already. So as you're growing up, asking yourself questions like, do I want to get married? Do I want to have kids? Do I want a job? Do I enjoy this job? Do I like vacationing? Do I like solo dates? Do I like drawing? Like taking time to find out who you are for yourself. Most people don't do that. Most women don't do that. Surprisingly, we're so focused on serving everybody else. If you're an older sister, you're focusing on your younger sister. If you had the eldest daughter, you're focusing on the entire family. If you are constantly just everybody else but you. Honestly, I also have a hot take. I don't think feminism is a theory. I think it's about the daily decisions women make. And what I mean by that is we tend to hear people talk a lot about how like most feminists are angry or feminists believe in the equality of men and women. But I think the truth feminism is the facts or the ability or the access that women should have to make choices for themselves. That's all it's simply asking for. It's asking for the equity in womenhood and manhood. It's asking for equity in social, political, and economical factors. It's asking for equity in all these things. The movement is oftentimes co-opted as this, oh my god, the feminists are so annoying. They're man haters, blah, blah, blah. And all they're asking for is pay us equally if we're both qualified. All it's asking for is treat women equally, no second class citizens. That women have choice over their bodies. That women also let women also lend to read in school. That women actually have access to school. That women have access to education. What do you mean as a woman? I don't have access to education because I'm a woman. Are you in my my bed? My bed. My bed, y'all. Yeah. I just love when I was going to get crazy. Hey, I just love being a woman anyways. I feel like that's my way to call myself down when I start getting into the nitty-gritty because I was in a podcast. I'm not episode is coming out releasing with a friend, my first ever collab podcast. And we got so angry when we started talking about how hard it is for women. And I think we hear it oftentimes when men talk about it now. They're like, oh my god, being a woman is so hard now too. Women talk about it enough. Women don't talk about how hard it is enough. I swear we don't. I don't think enough women talk about how hard it is to be a woman in today's society. And I love that we're getting to that point because I think about our mother's generation, right, that they were so selfless. They struggled. They chose to 12 for their children. They chose to make these dreams come true for themselves. In doing that, we're constantly at war with the patriarchy, with a lack of equality, with so much lack of choice essentially. And then our generation that we're becoming so hyper independent because we realize we don't want to be that. I don't want to be my mom's generation. I want to be even better. Like I want to have choice. And we've heard the stories now about how people are talking about women not wanting to have kids anymore. Women wanting to work. I'm like in a society where, first of all, the economy is getting bad. So there's no way just if you're ever talking about women being second class citizens, how much money can the man make to fund the ticket of his family without the woman working too? Isn't that crazy? So of course, we're not going to want to work. And also even outside of that factor, women also should be working because they might have the desire to. They don't want to sit at home. And even that is, oh my god, that's so terrible. That's so bad. We might just say, oh no, please, I can't. I can't be bothered. So yeah, you can have it all as a woman. You can have it all. You can have everything you put your mind to. If you make the decision for yourself and say you want this, you deserve it and you should have it. Let no one make you feel like you can't have anything because you really can. Okay, so before we get into, okay, so before we get into some Reddit questions, I've been liking this Reddit reaction segments because y'all are not sending me voicemails or messages from me to react to. But I also realized that like if I don't tell you guys with the title of the episode for the podcast, then how would you guys send me dilemmas? So maybe I need to figure that out. Anyways, I'm going to answer some questions that people would be asking or curious about about womanhood. First thing is, when do you actually start feeling like a woman and not just a girl pretending? You know that thing when people talk about like girl versus lady versus woman? I've never been the one who knew what the difference was. But I will say, tell me, let me know in the comments what you guys think. I think being a woman, I think you start from like like you in your 30s, I guess. And I feel like you're always, there's always going to be that your inner girl child never like goes away. You're always going to feel like a girl till the end of time. It's just, it is what it is. I feel like my inner girl is always constantly healing. So I never feel a full woman at some point like I feel like I'm just, I'm constantly learning and growing, but that inner girl is always going to be there. How do I become my own version of a woman instead of the version everyone expects? I've said this already. I'll hopefully throw this episode with that. You could just have to choose the version of yourself you want to be. And I honestly think people also have like, I think versions of themselves over the time and over errors. Like you don't have to go with what society says. You really don't. Like it might be hard. Like I'm not going to say my life is easy for someone who's 28 unmarried. No kids. Well technically, I have dogs. But for someone like me, not having kids and all these things from where I come from, that's a bit radical. But I promise you, I am very happy. And I'm going to my friends one year old birthday party. And I'm excited to be an auntie because I really love babies. I love kids. But I just don't see it for myself. That to a lot of people is radical. And they're also people who look at me and go, they can't even imagine being in my shoes because they love their husbands. They love having kids. They love that part of their life. And to them, go. You go girl. Like yes, to all of that. That's not for me. But I think that's the beauty in womanhood, especially the one that we're choosing for ourselves is you should have a say in the kind of life that you want for yourself, right? Okay. Next one. How do you know who you are as a woman when you spend your whole life performing for other people? I think you just have to learn. You just have to take the time to learn about yourself. So many women are stuck in this idea of performance where you have to perform to be who you are. But who are you performing for? And what does it matter? Performing for other people is so disappointing to yourself. And one quote that I constantly live by is I would always want to keep the promises I make to myself because that's what self love is. Make that promise to yourself to find things that you enjoy, that you love, that you want to do and actually actively do them. It is so hard to unlearn so many things that society tells you. But I swear to you, once you start unlearning it, it's like you open a whole new dimension. And it's so much more special when you do that. I'm telling you what parts of women who do you have to unlearn? Oh, this is such a good question. So many. And again, because I think about womanhood as a choice, I never want to say like you have to unlearn that you don't need to get married. I think the biggest thing that you have to unlearn as a woman is choice. Like we tend to forget that we have a choice in our lives as women. We tend to listen to older women, partners, siblings, more than we listen to ourselves and our intuition because we're not oftentimes raised to trust our instinct or our guts. I mean, as a young child, they're telling you, oh, you're as a girl, your emotions are all over the place. We're so dramatic. We're so emotional. Men are more stable. If you met a man who doesn't know what he's doing, several of them, first of all, but as young women, we oftentimes taught not to trust our intuition. And again, I told you women who trust our intuition is so dangerous. So I think that's the biggest thing I would say on learning is that the choice that you have about your life isn't yours. Because everything you want in life is based off of choice. You choose the life you want to live. That's why I wouldn't want to say something. A lot of people might talk about traditional wife values or self-life or women needing men for money. My own thing is I support women's rights and wrongs, but I also would always want all women to have the choice on the path they want their life to take. And ideally, that choice is based off of not society's pressures or trauma, but more so identifying the things that truly make you happy and just going for them. Let's see. What else? What else? Why does being a confident woman make people treat you like your arrogant? I think this is interesting because being a confident woman is seen as an outlier because women are meant to be soft second-class citizens quiet and men who are confident that oftentimes seen as bosses. We've heard that story so many times and a confident woman is seen as arrogant. I think times are changing now, hopefully, but I think a powerful woman is a threat to society. So of course, society is going to find ways to make her feel terrible for being herself. You just have to not give a flying fudge. Like Hillary Clinton, Kalmala Harris, two of the most qualified women in the entire world to run a country over the president office right now. But the fact that they were confident made them very arrogant, made men not trust them. Do we see the pattern here? But you have to generally not give a fudge. And honestly, the more women who are arrogant in that way, the more it becomes the norm. And so I hate it so much when I see the infighting between women when people are talking about like, oh, just be the mirror. No, fudge that. Like if you see a woman celebrating her confidence, being bossy, being strong, celebrate that. If you're kind of a woman who likes to be quiet, that's fine too. Allow us to have choices in life. You need to have choices for yourself too. So people are always going to talk about a confident woman being arrogant, but that's their problem. It should never be yours. They want a man who hate me. Guys, I didn't realize that. Especially African men, they can't stand me because they're like, oh, who does she think she is? She's talking too much. I think I'm the baddest bitch on the planet. Now what? What's tough? How do I feel feminine when I don't always feel soft and delicate? I don't think femininity has anything to do with soft and delicate. I think that's what society has told us femininity is. I think femininity comes from a deeply rooted sort of energy source, right? And I know that sounds like very much kumbaya, all that. Woo-hoo. But generally, I look at femininity more as the innate desire to be who you are and like truly, like truly being your own person. I think femininity isn't something that you can define. If anything, I think it's less soft, but more desire and choice. That's how I see femininity. I think femininity has strength. I don't think it's soft or delicate. Like a woman who is in her sitting in her own feminities, a woman who knows herself, who self assured. So I don't necessarily think of that as soft or delicate. I just think being who you are makes sense. If you're a soft thing, you're soft. If you're tough, you're tough. I just think as long as you know what that urge is and what that desire is, you're sitting in your defined feminine era. We've talked about being in this divine feminine era, which I think is like growth, introspection, intuition, less softness, like flower petals, and I've also met some people who love that softness, but who can fight, and they're still feminine. Over that makes sense. Let's see. Can I still be a good woman if I'm loud, ambitious, sexual, opinionated, or emotional? There is no such thing as a good woman. Let me just be clear, because good women are good to who. I don't think there is anything like that. I think you can be who you are and be all those things too. I think a good woman is whoever the fuck she wants to be. Like I don't think there's no who who is telling me I'm good or bad and to who to who to who and look at out, not saying who but really. I don't think there's such a thing as a good woman. I think you simply can be who you want to be. Like if you decide that you want to be loud or ambitious and sexual opinionated or emotional, then be that and that to me is good. To someone like me, all those things are great things because I am those things. I'm not a bad person. I'm not a bad woman. So I think that to who? No one exactly. Why does being a woman feel like being judged all the time? I think it's because of what society says. Like I'm telling you guys being a woman is so powerful that like of course people are going to judge you, especially other women, which is something that we should also talk about. Society has put us in a space where we have to compete against each other because of how much power we have when we're together. I hope we understand that. And this is not me just saying this to say it. It really is facts. When women come together, they are so much more stronger. So of course society is going to want to put us apart. And when I say society, I mean literal society from our moms who are aunties to everyone, they keep trying to put us apart because a women were together. Like this is such a stupid example, but I think about it from a man who has four wives, right? And who hates to have his wives get along because when those women get along, he's out of power because those women, those wives will show that man a hell on earth because they are in sync. I think that's usually the example I can think of when I, when we pull out polygamers families, when the wives are fighting against each other and the men are just living his best life. I'm like, of course he's happy. You're fighting each other when you should be all fighting him. He's the one who made the choice. Make his life hell. Anyways, so women as a woman, you're always going to be judged, but there's nothing you can do about. So you just keep sort of like living your best life. How do you build confidence when you don't look like the women who are always celebrated? Become a woman who celebrates herself. That's it. Don't compare yourself to the people. And what does that mean, women who are celebrated? I really do believe that everyone is beautiful. I generally do. I generally do. Beauty standards are a thing for a reason, but the beauty standards in Brazil, in India, in Nigeria, in South Africa. I do not look like a South African woman. If I go to South Africa now, I don't have a big ass. I am bald, but I'm a big ass. I'm not going to be the beauty standard. If I go to Peru, I'm not going to be the beauty standard. If I go to Argentina, so you're going to constantly fight this idea of what a beauty standard is, unless you're just yourself. And I promise you to somebody out there that's 8 billion fucking humans in the world. Someone out there, you're beautiful. Own it. And I don't know if you guys saw that tick talk about the girl who said she's a guy's first baddie and so many women, especially in the comments are like, oh, you're ugly. How freaking disgusting. How spiteful. How disappointing that I am confident enough to say I'm someone's first baddie. Didn't say his first his other girlfriends did not be mentioning anybody else. I just said I am someone's first baddie. And that confidence made people want to pull me down. You just have to have the strength of a thousand elephants to be a woman. And I would constantly fight to get that strength because no one is going to tell me who I am when I live my own life. I think that's the energy that you should always have as a woman through the world because they will try to bring you down, but you cannot let them do that. Gotta keep going, babe. Okay. Okay, let's see. Why are women taught to be chosen instead of taught how to choose this? You guys know, if you watch my podcast, you know how I feel about this too many, many, many times as there been a situation where like you guys, if you watch my podcast, you know how I feel about this question because I say this all the time, women are taught to be chosen. Men are taught how to choose. Men are taught how to handle rejection. Women are not taught how to handle rejection. And because of that, the psychology between men and women are so different when it goes into dating, into the workforce, into relationships, into familial stuff. Because from birth, as you're growing up, you're telling young girls they have to wait for this person to like them. They can't shoot their shot. They can't do this because that's what society says. Who is society? And who does that benefit? Who does that benefit? No one. No one. It does not benefit the woman especially. So if you're listening to this, I dare you to start choosing for yourself. Choose, choose, choose. God is a freaking woman. Choose. Choose for yourself. Choose the life that you want. If you like that boy, go for it. If he says no, there are 50 million other boys. Generally, generally there's this actually 500 million plus other men who probably will go for you. If not in this country, in another country, choice. There's so many fishes in the sea. We know that, right? Why is making real female friendships so hard as an adult? I don't know how to answer this question, but I also do, because I think my thing with female friendships, I think I've heard an episode on this, is I have really solid female friendships. I mean, the love I have for myself is generally because of my female friendships, but I've also had really terrible experiences with female friendships as well. Now here is the thing. I think it's a disservice to women, to constantly talk about how women are in good friends to each other. When people who say that probably have good friends and just probably also didn't know how good friends. Do you know what I mean? Most of the times when people talk about terrible female friendships, they are talking about some family friendships I did not work out in the past while also having really good friendships happening and occurring right now. But this rhetoric of terrible female friendships constantly happens because women are constantly pitted against each other. Yes, women can be mean. Men can be mean. Dogs can be mean. Life is mean. So many things can be mean. Doesn't mean that all the entire female species are mean. Also, by the way, I hate the word female. Is that a pet peeve? When someone is talking to me, they are like, oh, that female over there. Who the fuck are you talking to? You homo sapien? Who are you talking to? Anyways, so no, I don't think it's hard. I think we tend to follow a lot of what society says around female friendships because they are solid, good female friendships. And I also hate the fact that for a lot of women, especially those whose lives have been shaped by this idea of having to be chosen by men and whose sometimes have their world revolving around men in colloquial terms would call it the pickmies. They tend to talk about this idea of terrible female friends. And honestly, it's usually the friends who are telling them the truth about themselves or who are honest with them and they don't like that. I think that's unfortunate. How do I set boundaries without feeling mean? Sometimes boundaries are mean. And that's okay. Sometimes boundaries are necessary. And that's okay. Sometimes boundaries are selfish. And that's okay. It is okay. It is okay to be mean. It is okay to set terrible boundaries. It is okay to set boundaries. It is okay. And if the person leaves when you set a boundary, they're not meant to be there in the first place and the story. I'm never going to say too much about this because you guys know how I feel about boundaries. Boundaries can be mean and not to end that. How do I honor my culture without letting it trap me? I think it's an important question because as someone who comes from a culture that has very oftentimes defined terms for what womanhood is, I like to say that I oftentimes like to take from my culture the things that I generally enjoy and take away the rest of the things that I don't enjoy. That's just a personal preference of mine. So, for example, in a, I'm a year-about-girl and in year-about weddings, the family gives away the woman to her husband's family in that sense. I enjoy that part of the culture. I don't know why. And honestly, I don't like the idea of someone being like gifts given to someone else. However, I think it's a fun aspect of the culture with the deeper meaning that it brings that I would want to participate in. And often, if I do get married, the person who I'm marrying would understand that this is all just for the culture but you get to have sense and know that like I don't really think that I'm your property that has been given away if that makes sense. So, I think I just pick and choose because I think culture is ever changing too. Like, people tend to pretend that culture is static when it's really dynamic. It's the people that make up the culture. So, things change over time. And honestly, it is not a bad thing. People tend to make it feel like culture changing is a bad thing when it really isn't because the world is evolving. Culture has to evolve with it. And if it doesn't, that's disappointing because you're going to be living in the past when the entire world is flying by. So, there is so much more I would want to answer, but I think we will talk about this for like two hours if I'm not careful. So, let's answer some reddits because we love reddit. Okay, so this is from two X chromosomes. How can I feel more secure in my relationship? Hi there. Just curious from women who are unsuccessful, healthy relationships. What advice you might offer someone who has a tendency to feel insecure in relationships? I've been dating an amazing guy for two years and yet I still can't help but feel jealous or insecure if I see him talking to a beautiful girl who's closer to what he's professed he has an immediate attraction to. I'm the opposite of his usual type. I hate that I feel so insecure. I don't have a lot going on for me, but sometimes that's two people in my head and putting my stomach makes me feel like I don't deserve him and that one day he's going to want someone else. By the way, he has done nothing to inspire this insecurity. He's always told me how beautiful he finds me and how much I turn him on and all that. He has also always conducted himself in a respectful trustworthy manner. I've never done anything to make me feel he couldn't be trusted. It's very much of me and my brain problem. How can I learn to become more confident and secure my relationship with a great guy who has done nothing to undermine how he feels about me? So many women feel like this and I honestly think it's because of the lack of self-work that we don't do. I, to be in a relationship with me, is to understand that I am the prize. Point of blind period. You could be your prize too. Don't get me wrong, but I know what I bring to the table. I have worked really hard to become somebody who is valued, who is intentional, who is happy in myself and self-worth and I've worked hard to, like, to be the person I want to be and I'm constantly learning and evolving and growing. A lot of women, especially in relationships and this is the issue with, like, being raised to be chosen and not choose. When you're raised to be chosen, you're raised with different parameters of what this idea of the ideal choice is. So for this young lady, maybe she's been told that if she's the prettiest kind of girl that she's going to find the perfect guy, but then the perfect guy comes, or then the perfect guy comes with another pretty girl there. So then while you're going to feel like, oh, I'm not the prettiest girl, so that means he can't love me. Do you understand how you're constantly going to be in competition with a version of something that does not exist? That is why I always tell people to invest in themselves and truly understand what self-love is. She's clearly talking about how insecure she is because of choices she's making, right? He's, he's done nothing because he's living his life. Kumbaya, he's living his best life. But there's a lot of self-work that has to come from breaking that cycle that we've heard that you have to compete with other women that you have to be the prettiest woman in the room. No, everybody can be the prettiest woman in the room. No, everybody can be the smartest woman in the room. No, everybody can be the hottest woman in the room. We all can't be any of that. You can find somebody who is like the dumbest person in the room, no offense is that person. And for that person, they are still the most confident. So you will never think of them as dumb because they are so confident that they just move so amazing. Like you can never tell that, oh, this person actually doesn't know what they're saying. Those people, be like them. That's it really might just be like them. So I hope that helps for that advice. If you're someone like that who's in a similar situation, I promise you you can work on yourself. I was in a relationship once where I felt like I wanted more attention from them. And what I ended up realizing was I actually didn't really want attention from them. I just really needed to fill up my own time. They were so busy living their lives. I was forgetting how to live mine because I was living my life for them. And you never want to be in that kind of situation in relationships because that's so disappointing. That's also not feeling or facilitating anything in your life. You know what I mean? Okay, I could really use some sage wisdom on decentering my value as a woman from beauty and societal standards. Please be kind. I'm turning 29 this year. Me too. I generally want to love myself and appreciate who I am as a person rather than constantly focusing on what I do or don't like. I've been in therapy for just over a year. I have an amazing support system. I'm slowly getting back into my hobbies and passions after medically difficult 2025. Hey, me too. This is me. Intellectually, I know confidence and self-worth aren't supposed to come from appearance, but I'm still undoing years of subliminal and explicit messages from society, my upbringing, and people around me. I've been trying to stay off social media and actually work or not time my value to how I look, but it feels harder every day with constant bombardment of messaging from everywhere. I'm not conventionally beautiful and the way people talk about beauty around me makes me feel like I'm a monster. Family, friends, and my partner will use words like nice and cute but nothing really be on that. I'm exploring the meaning of those words and why they're important to me in therapy too. What's frustrating is that I find so many women and non-binary folks beautiful for their unique traits. I value individuality so much especially as Instagram Facebook comes more widespread. I just can't see the beauty in my own unique traits or truly appreciate the life or experience that I've had at the non-tangible traits I embody being kind and trusted confident for many, being loving. I would love any wisdom, personal experiences, book or essays or resources that help you descend to beauty from self-worth. I become, I'm built a more grounded sense of value. This is the perfect question or ready reaction or ready question I guess around exactly what I've been talking about all episode. So if you heard that, do you have your answer? If you have your answer based on what I've said, right? You already know what I'm about to say. If you've been listening, then you know, yeah, you probably do. In situations like this, I really generally think it's a matter of unlearning so much and that is constant work that would continue to have to happen. You can't simply wake up one day and say, I'm the most beautiful girl in the world. Everybody needs to realize that. You genuinely need to get to a point where you realize you are going to kill yourself if you constantly compare yourselves to other people because you can't change. Do we see folks who get plastic surgery who never stop at one? They get Botox, they get BBL, liposuction, they get the breast augmentation, they do this and they do that and they get micro shading and they constantly constantly keep changing until they become unrecognizable because there is no goalpost. There is no way to win. There's no way society is going to let you win because you've already lost the moment you're changing and I'm not saying this about plastic surgery and don't get it. I don't, I don't, that's your problem. That's again, choice. What I mean by that is at the core, if you are unhappy with yourself, nothing anyone can say or do would make you happy. Except for you, you are literally the only person in this world who can decide today to be happy. You're, I literally decided on Saturday. It's Monday that I'm going to be happy for the rest of my life. I don't know how it's going to go but I'm pretty sure that I'm going to choose to be happy for the rest of my life because I can't be sad. I can't be sad. I can't be sad anymore. I can't keep thinking everyone else is doing better than me because what then? What happens then? What happens? Okay, they're doing better than me. Okay, what then? What else? What else happens? How do you move past that? How do you move forward? If you don't have that mindset, you're going to constantly give yourself a knack cycle where you're constantly suffering, constantly comparing yourself constantly struggling and you don't deserve that no one does. You need to live in a world where you generally realize, oh shoot, I, I'm the only one who's going to cheer for myself. And to this woman who's talking right now, gloomy, implement 9370, I started reading the mountain is you, but I've also started doing a lot of journaling and reflecting on stuff like, okay, if I don't feel like I'm the prettiest person in the room, why do I feel that way? One, and how can I change that perception of myself? She's talking about how she's not conventionally beautiful, but who's convention? Is Kim Kardashian conventionally beautiful? Is Ruby Rose conventionally beautiful? I don't know why I would say Ruby Rose. I don't know why I would say that. Is Tiana Taylor conventionally beautiful? Is Taylor Swift conventionally beautiful? Is Selena Gomez conventionally beautiful? Is Jela conventionally beautiful? Am I conventionally beautiful? Who are you conventionally beautiful? If you constantly keep chasing after this idea of conventionally beautiful, you're going into a rat race. But if you tell yourself, oh, I'm the prettiest, most beautiful girl in the world. Who's going to check you? Someone's going to tell you know. I've never thought about it. I've never said to somebody, oh, I think I'm the most beautiful girl in the world. Someone's like, no, you're not. Because if somebody, if I ever told someone, well, I think I'm the most beautiful girl in the world. And tell me, no, I'm not. You are a hit You are the devil. Because even if that's not true, let me think that. Let me feel that way. Let me be happy. It's all about self-love and choice. And I think for this woman, it's really all about de-centering again, her value from what society says. And also doing things that makes her feel good. Like I think she's so focused on Instagram and outside validation that she's forgetting that like she said, finding her hobbies and passions. Sometimes when you, when you pour into yourself so much, you really begin to quiet the outside noise. That's something I'm learning now too. Like when I start realizing, oh, I start doing this thing where I don't scroll too much on social media anymore. And when I scroll every time I feel a hint of maybe jealousy or comparison, I immediately either turn it off or I ask myself, why? And how can I switch that thinking? And I swear it's done wonders for me. Feeling lost as a 20 year old. I turned 25 days ago and realized I'm going through this huge slump where I'm not happy with how everything is going in life in general. I'm in college, but I feel so scared all the time. I'm wondering if my career path would ever work out, whether I'll meet some people, make more friends than I have. I've also been single for 20 years. I wish we never had a serious relationship. I just feel this sense of doom that nothing is working out for me. I think it's ever going to work out. It almost feels like a huge crisis. I just want some advice from anyone older. Anything that could, they could offer as advice. Does it get better? I'm a girl, by the way. Of course you're a girl, baby. So reading this reminds me of a really close mentee of mine. She's currently about a graduate from college. She just turned 21. And she came to visit me last summer and she was just ranting about how sad she is and how depressed she is and how she's struggling and she feels like she's unhappy and she's so sad. And I just looked there and I said, you have so much time. And it's hard to hear that as someone who's 20 years old because I was 21s. And if anyone told me then that what I was feeling was invalid, I would, they didn't understand because it felt so real. And it is real. This, especially in the age of social media where 14 year olds are having millions of followers and are making millions of dollars where you feel like you are far behind, but you've not even started yet. Like you've literally not started yet. The idea that you don't even know how to boyfriend and you're 20 years old. Just to be clear, it should be illegal for you to even have had a boyfriend between one and 18. So those 18 years, maybe let's say even 14 if you like start dating in high school. Those 14 years, you're still not really in boyfriend era. So maybe it's just been six years or two years. And even that, there's no validation around being yourself and how a boyfriend comes into play because it doesn't really matter. You have time. And the best thing I would say to this young girl and to any 20 year olds watching is spend the time finding out who you are. So rather than looking outside all the time, take some time for you. And that might be the most uncomfortable thing to do. But I wish I did that sooner. I was so focused on going, going, going. And I'll see someone do something I'll try to do or emulate it that I didn't really know who I was until later in life. And I wish I knew who I was pretty early on. So if you don't like journaling or writing stuff down, maybe spending time doing activities or experiences that are independent and other people, whether that's making new friends, making doing new hobbies, doing stuff that make you feel like you're not behind. And like you're so focused and pouring into yourself before you know everything you want will come to you. And for the youngins who are graduating this year, I swear to you, you have time. As a 28 year old, please, please listen to me when I say you have the time. You have time. There is time because there are 38 year old people who tell me that I have time. And I'm looking at them like, how do you know? Because they've lived through the time. So someone who's lived through that time for eight years, you have the time. It might seem very overwhelming at this point, but I think it's overwhelming because you think you're supposed to be at a certain space in life. But you are the only one running. No one else is running. No, like generally, you're the only one running. You're running that race yourself. So at some point, you just got to figure out if you want to stop running and take string some water, want to stop running to stretch. If you want to keep running, you have that power. You can do that. And stop comparing your lives to other people because it makes no sense too. They're living their life. They're running their race and they're not living the life you're living. So that's something that's also helped me too. I've learned that if I'm comparing myself to Creator A, I always think to myself, this Creator A come from a two-family home or one-family home. This Creator A have loving parents. This Creator A have ADHD or anxiety or depression. When I start bringing things down like that, I'm like, I don't know any of these things. All I know is my race and my life. And that means all I need to do is focus on me. Last one because I saw this one as well. Never had a mother or sister to teach me. Well, girl advice for every daughter here. I everyone I'm 19, female growing up. I never really had a mom who passed down beauty secrets since she focused more on studies and didn't have much interest in my side of things. I also do have an older sister so I never had anyone to give me girl advice. Most of what I knew I've had to figure out on my own through research and trial and error and I'm socially learning as I go. I really love to hear from others. What are the beauty tips, self-care routines or general girl advice you would want to pass down to your daughters? What do you wish someone that told you earlier? Thank you in advance. I really appreciate any wisdom you really need to share. Okay. Beauty tips. Shower oil. A really nice, like smelling shower scrub. Scrubbing your buddy dry brushing is really fun. I'm an exfoliating facial facial thing as well. I love getting my brows done. I wish I started that early on. I think it's something that makes me feel so girly, so cute. I love investing in like a pamper or facial at some point. 19 might be too young, but a massage is something to take care of my body. My physical health has always been important to me. Let's see. Self-care routines. I always thought self-care routines were frivolous. As I grow older, I realize that moment it takes for you to go still, for you to relax, for you to breathe, it's really special. It's generally so special. I wish more people did that. I miss where people took the time to pour into themselves. Whether it's for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, find a self-care routine that works. Whether it's going to a bathhouse, getting a massage, journaling, drawing, hobbies, date nights, solo dates, whatever it takes to pour into yourself, please start doing that. I love doing solo dates. I go to a steakhouse every month, and it's one of my favorite things I always look forward to. It just gives me time for myself, and I really enjoy it. Let me know what other comments you guys would have put in the description. Sorry. Let me know what you guys think. Also, what advice you would give to someone around this. Let me know in the comments. General Girl Advice is, shoot your shot. I want more women to learn to shoot their shot. I don't care what you say. I don't care what you're going to argue. Shoot your damn shot once. If he rejects you, try again until you don't get rejected. That's all I always tell it girls that shoot your shot. Shoot your shot. Never let anybody be little you. Never let anyone make you feel less than you're not a second-class citizen. Always have your own choice. Always make sure you choose yourself every single time. Selflessness doesn't pay. Always learn to be selfish and choose yourself, and be unapologetically yourself no matter what. No matter what. Always always always be yourself. Again, like I said in the middle of this episode, you are strongest when you are truly doing you every single time. I think some of the most powerful people we all look up to are women who are generally themselves and they invest in themselves, so learn to invest in yourself too. Let me know some other girl advice or women's advice you guys have in the comments below, and that is the end of today's episode. I think I yapped a lot today guys. So single moms, aunties, girls raising themselves, immigrants, dark skin, light skin, soft girls, love girls, choir girls, healing girls, angry girls, etc. Comment one thing you love about being a woman. Send this to a woman you admire. Send this to someone if you think they could learn something from this episode, and don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe. Even rate the podcast guys. I never told you guys. Again, oh, I love being a woman. I will never apologize for it. I think God is a woman always and forever. And this episode I think is so fun for me because I'm coming into my own. I can see it. I think when I first started the podcast on my too loud, I knew what I wanted it to be. And I won't lie. The first three episodes was me just bearing it all. And then after that, I started listening to the people's opinions and I went to a certain way and then I started interviewing people. And now I'm in that space where I want to find my voice again. And I'm finding my voice through this episode. And I hope you guys can see that. Because being a human, no, even just a woman is a constant learning experience. And you just keep going. No matter what, just keep going. Alrighty, my loves. I will close out this podcast episode. I'll see you next week. And oh, by the way, would you guys hate if I started doing guest interviews, but I wasn't in person with the guests. Instead, I was like zooming them. Let me know if you guys will hate that. I feel like I want to bring some guests on the show, but I just don't have the capacity to fly to where they are. So if I'm able to start doing zoom interviews, but I just don't know if you guys are going to like it. So please let me know if you get to this part of the episode, whether or not you're going to like me doing, so you would care. I feel like if you're someone who listens to audio, you wouldn't care. But if you're someone who is watching video and for clips online, that might be an issue. So let me know in the comments. And I'll see you guys in the next episode, pod fam. I love you. Bye guys. And don't forget you done and I could bond you. Something something something my one. When all is said and done, you're really good. It's a woman.