Dear Daughter (part 2): When the World Is a Funhouse Mirror, Trust Your Reflection

Notes on Identity in a Patriarchal Culture

May 08, 2025

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Dear Daughter,

Me again with more ~~dribble~~ wisdom to share. Since you’re back, I’m hoping that means you found Don't Be a Clone—the first letter in this “Dear Daughter” miniseries—relatable. Today I want to talk about identity.

Figuring out who you are is a lifelong task. The hope, of course, is that as we get older, some of the noise in our heads decreases so we can better hear ourselves. But for girls especially, that noise is LOUD. It will take some serious consciousness raising work to drown out the patriarchy that’s been infiltrating your sense of identity from birth.

The noise sounds something like this: Girls are flighty and frivolous and oh—the drama of teenage girls, especially! So I’ve got to make sure I don’t come across as too girly. I mean, being seen as butchy would be worse so just find a happy medium. Don’t laugh too loud or be too vulgar but do giggle at dick jokes and sexist slurs. Make fun of chick flics and remember female singer-songwriters are cringe. Obviously rappers (who degrade women) are way cooler. Just be chill…not like other girls.

Always remember that dressing up is “trying too hard,” but showing up bare-faced and unstyled means I’m not quite girly enough. Posting selfies is attention-seeking, unless I’m effortlessly beautiful and pretend I “just woke up like this.” Gotta be thin like a TikTok influencer, but also have curves in just the right places. Lift weights, but only to “tone,” not to bulk up. Speak up in class, but don’t “talk too much.” Be flirty, but not forward. Be sexual, but not too sexual. Know how to do makeup like a YouTube pro—but don’t let it show that you practiced.

I could go on (and on), but I’ll spare you. The point is: with so much conditioning to reject anything labeled “feminine,” while also being careful not to veer too far into what’s considered “masculine,” it gets real confusing—real fast. It becomes hard to tell what you truly like, what you actually need, and what’s just you trying to fit into a box someone else built.

When you privilege other people’s feelings, perceptions, and comfort over your own, it muddies your sense of what really makes you tick.

I remember feeling so cool for liking the Ramones and The Rolling Stones, while keeping quiet about my love for The Indigo Girls and Aimee Mann. Even all-male bands who sang “girly” songs—soft love ballads and breakup anthems—like the Eagles or REO Speedwagon, were to be mocked. To this day, I’m not sure whether I truly disliked those songs or just thought I was supposed to. But when I hear them now, I crank them up. They’re the soundtrack to my teenage years—and nostalgia always wins.

My hope is that you don’t believe the hype. Men are not actually smarter, funnier, and more capable than women. You’re probably thinking, Duh! I know that! But research shows that many of us—often totally unconsciously—associate brilliance with men, but not women. Those deep-seated beliefs drive much of our action, and how we think and feel about ourselves and our potential.

As I write in my book, low-level sexism often slips by barely noticed—each remark, assumption, or offhand joke too small to name, too common to question. They are mere paper cuts to the psyche that sting momentarily. Over time, though, they accumulate, becoming festering wounds of self-doubt.

I’m asking you to tune in to the white noise of the culture—the static that hums so constantly you forget it’s there, even as it tells you who to be. I hope I’ve been teaching you to be a critical consumer of social media, your friends, your teachers, your brother. And me and dad, too. Even the most progressive of us have implicit biases we’re passing along. So when you sense you’re not being taken seriously, when you’re interrupted or hear your opinion, anger or laughter isn’t welcome and all that seems to matter is your looks, remember this mantra: I am not broken, the culture is broken.

The gaze of our culture is a male gaze—the way men might want to see girls and women but not necessarily how girls and women see themselves. A lifetime of being held in a gaze not reflective of you can do a number on your mental health and sense of self. It’s really difficult not to mistake their vision—or lack of vision—for your truth. But you're not alone. Find your people, hold them close, cherish environments that celebrate your aliveness. Don’t take that job or choose the more prestigious school if it’s going to mean shrinking yourself to feel accepted. I promise, it’s never worth it.

Also? Maybe hang out with lesbians—whether you are one or not. I’m only half-joking. There’s something very powerful about being in spaces not shaped by the male gaze. That’s what helped

Jameela Jamil

find herself. And actually, it helped me too.

During my master’s program, I was surrounded by more queer people than I’d ever known. There was freedom in that space—a loosening of the usual rules about how to look, speak, or take up space. People weren’t performing femininity for approval; they were just being. And while queer people aren’t free from patriarchy’s grip—they’ve had to develop their own survival tactics—it felt like a room where resisting the script was the norm. Where expanding, not shrinking, was celebrated.

I moved on from that space when I could’ve stayed. I needed more time to quiet the noise; to remember who I was before the world told me who to be.

That’s why I want to share Jameela Jamil’s story. You probably remember her as Tahani on The Good Place—all glitz and glam and name-dropping. But offscreen, she’s become one of the fiercest voices pushing back on the culture that told her (and all of us) to be small. Once a teenager starving herself and suppressing her personality to fit the mold, she’s now an outspoken activist calling out fatphobia, misogyny, toxic beauty standards, and the insidious ways women are taught to disappear.

When Glamour UK named her Woman of the Year, she described the exact moment she felt most empowered. It wasn’t on a stage or in a spotlight—it was at a lesbian birthday party. Here’s what she said:

The atmosphere in that room was unbelievable. For the first time in my life, I saw a room full of women who were not positioning themselves towards the male gaze, which is something that straight women especially do, whether or not men are in the room, because they've been conditioned to make themselves smaller, to not give out all of their opinions, to not be as funny as they really are, to be as vulgar as they really are. And these women were just bold. They were unapologetic. They were having so much fun together. They weren't reducing any part of themselves because they were around people who found the bigger they were more attractive and they looked comfortable in their skin and their bodies and with aging, and aging was considered sexy and beautiful in that room. And I felt so limitless. It was such an incredible feeling. And it made me really sad afterwards realizing how many of us have been trained and conditioned to mask ourselves and position ourselves towards this expectation because that room felt like the first time I'd ever seen who women really were when no one was looking.

Isn’t that what we’re all trying to get to? That place where we feel limitless—whole, unmasked, unbothered by whether we’re “too much” or “not enough.” That’s what I want for you. And for me. And for all women.