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# THE WOMAN, THE MYTH, AND THE GROUP CHAT
- URL: https://www.comesitwithmemag.co.uk/the-woman-the-myth-and-the-group-chat/
- Published: 2026-11-08T16:14:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-08T16:14:55.000Z
- Description: Who decided what a woman should be, and whose experiences were left out of that definition? Exploring Black women, media representation, feminism and the inherited expectations that influence how women are seen, judged and understood.
- Author: Oluwakanyinsola Opadele
- Tags: Issue001

The image of the perfect woman has had several makeovers. The expectations, however, have proved remarkably difficult to get rid of.

 Every generation seems to inherit an idea of what a woman should be. How she should dress, how she should speak, how much space she should occupy, what she should aspire to and, perhaps most importantly, how she should behave when somebody disagrees with her. These expectations are rarely presented as rules. They arrive disguised as tradition, good manners, common sense, beauty standards and unsolicited advice from people who have somehow appointed themselves the management team of womanhood. But where did these ideas come from, and who decided they were universal? 

Feminist thinkers have spent generations questioning the structures that determine women’s positions in society. From access to education and employment to control over their bodies, political participation and cultural representation, feminism has challenged the assumption that the roles assigned to women are natural or inevitable. Yet feminism itself has never been one single conversation. Different feminist traditions approach inequality from different perspectives. 

Liberal feminism has historically emphasised equal rights, opportunities and access within existing institutions. Radical feminism examines how deeply patriarchy is embedded in social structures and relationships, arguing that meaningful change requires challenging those structures at their roots. Black feminism, meanwhile, has questioned why discussions about gender so often overlook the particular experiences of Black women. And that last point matters. Because when we talk about what women experience, we sometimes speak as though there is one universal version of womanhood. 

One shared history. One set of expectations. One definition of what it means to be oppressed, empowered, respected or free. But whose experience are we using to write that definition? Black feminist thinkers such as bell hooks have challenged the ways race, gender and class shape women’s lives, as well as the tendency for mainstream feminist conversations to treat certain women’s experiences as though they represent everybody. In Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), hooks examines the historical relationship between racism and sexism and how Black women have been marginalised within both wider society and feminist movements. Her work reminds us that simply including Black women in an existing conversation is not always enough. Sometimes the conversation itself needs to be reconsidered. There is also a wider historical question here. Colonialism did not simply involve the control of territories and resources. It produced and circulated ideas about race, civilisation, beauty, sexuality and power.

 Those ideas helped construct hierarchies that outlived the empires that spread them. Postcolonial perspectives allow us to examine how those inherited ideas continue to influence culture, including the ways Black women are portrayed, judged and understood. This is not to suggest that every modern representation can be traced directly to one historical event. It is to recognise that cultural images have histories, and those histories can continue to shape what audiences are taught to see as normal. Perhaps that is why the rules of womanhood can feel so contradictory. Be confident, but not intimidating. Be ambitious, but remember to be approachable. Be independent, but do not make anyone feel unnecessary. Be outspoken, but know when to be quiet. And for Black women, these expectations can be complicated further by racialised assumptions about their appearance, behaviour, emotions and character. The same qualities celebrated in one woman may be interpreted differently in another.

 Assertiveness can become aggression. Confidence can become attitude. Independence can become an unwillingness to cooperate. It is worth asking who gets to define the difference. I sometimes think the group chat of social expectations has been running for centuries. Nobody remembers who started it, everybody has an opinion, and somehow the woman herself is always the last person consulted. But perhaps it is time we questioned the group chat. Not because women should be exempt from criticism, or because every expectation is automatically oppressive. Rather, because we should be able to distinguish between genuine standards of conduct and inherited assumptions about who a woman is allowed to be.

 Womanhood is not a uniform. And Black women should not have to spend their lives trying to fit into definitions that were never designed to accommodate the full complexity of their experiences.