The Radical Art Of Self-Creation, Gabby Petito and Male Violence
Create yourself and do not give any man the opportunity to overshadow you.
What do Cardi-B, Chimamanda, Diana Ross, and Mata Hari all have in common? These women all created themselves. None of them are using the names that they were given at birth. They did not outsource the task of defining themself to society. These women created new identities and became the persona required to carry their new selves.
Self-creation is more pronounced on the internet, where everything is essentially a performance. Digitally, you can create any persona. You can be as “unhinged” as Trisha Paytas, as “fun” as David Dodrick, as “relatable” as Emma Chamberlin, or as “serious” as Jordan Peterson. The question is, which role are you playing, and did someone else create that role for you?
What does it mean to create yourself? It means to intentionally disregard the societal roles and mores, and live by self-prescribed values. It means taking the necessary time to cultivate an environment that nurtures your most authentic self.
For women, particularly, self-creation means taking the attention, time, and effort that have been historically reserved for a romantic partner or children, and reinvesting that into yourself. Self-creation requires patience and self-dedication. You are essentially an artist carving a mold that you feel is beautiful enough to share with the real world.
When it comes to the art of self-creation, too much emphasis is placed on the physical aspects of transformation. We see it in our movies, where the shy, unassuming girl is transformed into a conventionally attractive woman. However, all this does is tell women that they have to present themselves in a certain way to be deserving of love. It does not teach women how to build a woman that they would be proud to become.
It only teaches women how to become an object that men desire. These are some things that have helped me in the process of self-creation:
Find archetypes, goddesses, role models, and fictional characters that resonate with you. Try to find patterns between all the characters and answer the question: “why do I love these people?”
Write publicly and pseudo-anonymously. Writing will force you to organize your thoughts and articulate your ideas.
Pick a difficult task and pursue competence. When you gain competence in one aspect of life, you get the courage of feeling like you can do the same in other aspects.
Opt into life. Choose life. Understand that life will eventually be kind to you. The people who mold society are not any better than you. You can be one of them.
You do not know your upper limits, so stop acting as you do. Break the self-imposed boundaries that you have placed on yourself. Once you start doing this, you will realize that your life could be far larger than you could ever imagine.
Be kind to yourself. You only have this one life. There is no virtue in flagellating yourself.
Affirmation: I made myself, piece by piece.
Gabby Petito and Male Violence
Unless you have been living under a rock, you are aware of the case of a missing 22-year-old woman named Gabby Petito. She went missing willing on an across-country road trip with her fiancé Brian Laundrie, 23. Her fiance is currently “missing” even though he is a person of interest in this case. Lastly, he did not say anything to the police and did not report her missing until ten days after his return.
I have always found it fascinating how women are the primary audience of the true-crime genre. Whenever there is a story of a missing woman, other women are fascinated to learn what happened to that woman. Maybe it is an evolutionary way of protecting ourselves. We study the lives of the women around us that are victims so that we do not fall into the same crimes.
Is there any wining for women in patriarchy? When men have the physical, social, and economic strength to overpower us. On top of that, we have biology that has hard-wired us to still seek out those men, even if they are a threat to our well-being.
Her story reminds me of the life of Tina Turner. Turner described her life as an “abusive one." Although she had achieved so much, “the good in her life did not outweigh the bad.” The majority of the career success came after her separation from Ike Turner, the man who abused her for decades. However, the public did not stop asking her about her abuser. Imagine at one time, being the most popular rock star in the world and selling out arenas, yet still having to answer questions about your abuser.
This illustrated that people would not tell the Tina Turner story without bringing upIke Turner. The same thing is going to happen to Gabby Petito.
Although I hope and pray that she is found, I have concluded that might not happen. Her life and death have been turned into a spectacle where she is the victim of the main character, her boyfriend.
Do not put a man in a position where he can strip you of your agency. Do not let any man think that he has that power because he will abuse it. Do not let any man prevent you from being the main character in your life. Dating men always had a poor return on investment, so I quit. Do not let the sunk costs of any relationship make you want to stay in the relationship for longer.
If you loved this, I wrote about how women have a Moral Imperative To Make As Much Money As Possible. This is a premium only article. I also write about some interesting jobs of the future.