It’s all by design

I’m still thinking about a friend’s Instagram post I scrolled by at the beginning of this year. It said:

“Whenever I have a bad feeling about my body/appearance, I ask myself ‘who profits off this emotion?’”

In other words, someone benefits from her feeling bad about herself. 

After I read that, I felt determined to shift the way I felt about my body and appearance. It’s my way of ensuring that no one profits from my feeling bad about myself — or, at least, they profit a lot less.

This reminds me of a story Ijeoma Oluo wrote in the introduction of her book “Mediocre.” She paints the picture of an idyllic writing retreat. A group of women gathered for dinner each evening after hours with their creative pursuits. She notes the frequency at which the conversation would eventually weave to the topic of men.

These women talked about the ways men create a real, felt, negative impact in their lives. What it looks like for them to write and live in a world run by men determined to stay in power. Ijeoma hears the stories told and can't help but recall a phrase vocalized in social justice circles: “Works according to design.” 

What exactly is by design

You’re a woman working in a male dominated industry. You’re having a specific experience and are trying to figure out what's creating that experience. Because you’re responsible, you see that some of the responsibility for what you are experiencing is yours. What unfolds when we bring women together is a freedom from some of the responsibility you initially see as yours. 

A much bigger part of what you’re experiencing is by design. Power is conventionally gained by limiting the power of others. My bet is that you feel limited in your power. That feeling in you is the system's intention coming to fruition.

The owners of your company may not have consciously designed your experience to unfold how it is. They’re part of the same dominant systems of white supremacy and patriarchy designed to oppress. If they’re not consciously dismantling the systems, they’re unconsciously upholding them. 

The power some identities hold is wholly dependent on suppressing folx with other identities. Whiteness and masculinity gain power by taking power away from women and people of color. 

The amount of safety, security and freedom those latter groups have has a direct correlation to the amount of social, political and financial independence they have from patriarchy or white supremacy. 

That may sound harsh. It's as confronting as the experiences you have day to day. My hope is acknowledging this will help you, at a minimum, ease up on some of the self blame you’re holding. You can remove the second punch you give yourself. That is just the beginning.

Independence can break the design

That independence from white supremacy and patriarchy can feel difficult to find in the place you work. There’s a pretty stark power dynamic at play where your job security may rest in the hands of men. But I’d like you to think about a 10% increase in independence. 

What can you do to be 10% more independent?

One option for gaining some independence lives in expectations. You hold many roles in your life — worker, employee, manager, partner, daughter, mother and more. Each of those roles carries with it a set of expectations. Many are unconsciously inherited from systems of oppression. When you live into those expectations, you are colluding with the design. 

When you surface those expectations and consciously break them, you gain independence. As the leader of your life, you determine which expectations you want to break and to what degree. 

With each break from those expectations, you gain back tiny bits of power. In doing so, it leaves the hands of dominant identities and begins to break down the very systems oppressing you — consciously or not. As one individual in the system, you may have trouble seeing the larger shift. If thousands of women, however, take power by breaking expectations, we’ll see the impact of those decisions unfold. 

Do it for you. And do it for all. 

Call for reflection:

What expectations are suffocating you? How might you break one?

Shine on, 

Alicia