"You can't wake up looking for the recession." - Jenifer Lewis
While doing some research, I came across an episode of Black Actress featuring the incomparable Jenifer Lewis. As soon as I heard that quote, I internalized it in a way that told me something I needed to hear that day: "Bee - stop looking at the things you lack. Stop claiming your deficits and ignoring your gifts." It's easy to fall into a self-confidence recession, and sometimes I have to ensure that I don't fall into that hole.
There's an air of audacity around self-confidence in women. From birth, it's drilled into us that it's more noble to minimize compliments and to not toot our own horns. We're taught that it's preferable to be more sugar than spice. We try to embody "everything nice" until we see that the jig is up - "everything nice" usually serves others at our expense, and that realization sometimes comes too late. To buck those trends - to accept compliments, to celebrate ourselves, to stop worrying about being nice and start busying ourselves with being authentic - breaks the mold of what "good girls" do, thereby fragmenting the view of what a "lady" is.
You're more malleable when you aren't self-aware. You're easier to predict and control when you aren't self-assured. People know what to expect of you and how much space you'll take up when your words and actions show that the answer is "not much." I realized I didn't want to be malleable, predictable, or controllable. I wanted more than the basics and more than the small space I allowed myself, and the key to that is through self-confidence.
There's levels to this, though. For me, self-confidence is rooted in the fact that there ain't nobody else out there like me. No one with my skills, laugh, height, skin tone, hair texture, voice. No one with my past. No one awaiting the gifts that are coming specifically for me in the future. There's no one who possesses all these things the way I do - and for that fact alone, how can I not revel in the fact that I'm a 1 of 1?
I work damn hard, too. If someone compliments something I've done, I'd be a gotdamn fool to act like my merits are minuscule. And trust me - I've been that gotdamn fool. I've said "Oh, that was just a thing I did," or "Gosh, it's nothing big" when I've actually wanted to heartily say "Thank you!" and bask in the fact that yes, I did that.
I love me. I didn't always - I didn't hate myself, but I was indifferent - but I do more and more as the years pass. I love me enough to bounce back when someone else doesn't. Or when I've failed and had to remind myself I'm worth the effort to try again. I love me enough to say "I want more" and follow up with "You deserve it. Go get it." I love me, so it makes bouncing back from "I'm not feeling me" to "I'm dope as a muhfucka" a bit easier.
When did we start to believe that any step into self-confidence equated to arrogance? When did we start to believe that it was more important to make others comfortable than to take up our rightful space in the world? When did we decide to wait for someone else to confirm the things we already saw in ourselves? When did it begin to matter that other people sometimes don't like the fact that you like yourself?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: low self-esteem is an epidemic of massive proportions. Playing yourself small under the guise of "being humble," denying yourself the opportunity to be enriched by others, not celebrating the things that make you you - I don't know about y'all, but acting like this starves me. I like feeling full, and when someone tells me it's bad to be full of myself, I remember another necessary quote from Nikki Giovanni:
and he said: you pretty full of yourself ain’t chuso she replied: show me someone not full of herselfand i’ll show you a hungry person