the voice we inherit
you look gorgeous, shut up - and other ways we break the spell
This week I went out with a group of women I love, my witchy companions. We went for an evening of storytelling about Goddesses, we giggled endlessly, hugged and had loads of fun.
The next morning, someone sent a photo to in our chat group. A blurry moment of smiling us. And before anyone could say anything, I beat them to it: “This light makes me look like I weigh 200kg.” A reflex, really, a joke, if you want to call it that.
Quickly corrected myself: “Not that being fat would keep anyone from looking gorgeous.” This is me relearning and reframing my beliefs due to a self loathing obese family, my aunties who grew heavier and heavier with age, not just in body weight. Silence and shame, fear and loathing.
One of my friends in the group said: “you’re gorgeous, shut up”.
“Well, I can agree, just not in this photo”. We laughed. And kept joking. About a lady that photobombed us, the camera’s bad settings, about the cursed overhead lighting that no one could ever survive unscathed.
And then we all caught ourselves, mid criticism. We changed the tone and corrected each other, held each other. Confessed the insecurities from our younger selves that we still carry. The bullying, the lies we've been told about ourselserves.
The voices we've been healing.
The thing is, underneath the jokes, the disclaimers, the deflections, there’s a script. I didn’t write it, and neither did you or any woman.
But we’re proficient in it.
Very early on, girls learn the ritual of noticing, ranking, adjusting.
“Is she lumpy or is it her dress?”, “that colour does not do her any favours”, “wow, she’s old now”. We learn to look at other women and silently assess. Her hair, stomach, skin, clothes, her butt. Her choice of lipstick. Her body before and after babies. Her face before and after… well, life.
And then… we vomit all that cruelty back into our own laps. We say it about ourselves. We call it modesty or humour or “just being honest.” It’s like we are all under surveillance disguised as self-awareness. It’s a voice we carry in our lips and minds.
But I honestly would not call that voice something of our own creation.
Let’s call it inheritance.
My grandmother, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, the one who gave me precious gifts of life and stories… she carried a deeper voice of constant disapproval of herself. Such a heavy, relentless duty. She wouldn’t, couldn't, shouldn't be seen without lipstick. She posed for photos reluctantly. Getting older was a real burden for her. Her angles were practiced stillness, chin down, cheeks up, belly tucked in spandex… sometimes I felt she didn’t know how to exhale. A tall beautiful woman, always trying to shrink herself.
She was absolutely appalled by my lack of decorum, walking around the house in my pyjamas or old t-shirts and bed hair (and look grandma! no bra! the audacity!).
She ended up destroying her lovely hair with years of much hairspray, tight bobs and scarves, and she resorted to wigs in her late 70’s (and she would kill me for writing about it).
Next generation: my mother softened, a bit. She laughs more openly, allows herself more cleavage and messy hair (I love her wild curls). But still… the self-assessing, the endless self criticism, not just in appearance but in intelligence or capacity. It’s exhausting.
We've been relearning together.
Me? I learned to pre-empt the gaze. If I made the joke first, at least I controlled the damage. If I pointed out my own flaws, then no one else could use them against me. That’s also something I picked up as a defense mechanism during my teen years.
Does that sound familiar? Like something you do without thinking? Most of us have. Most of us still do. The little digs, the casual cruelty, the way we speak of ourselves (and of other women) like we’re in the panel of a never-ending talent show. I hear it from women in my circles, from friends, even from strangers.
This culture of self-surveillance, of internalised judgement, of passing the torch of shame... it’s everywhere, like a quiet epidemic that’s been echoing through mirrors, magazines, and mother-daughter glances since the early days of patriarchal thinking. Beauty became currency, self-doubt is a virtue, and I truly think commentary on other women's bodies is a form of survival.
Over time, this critical gaze got internalised, refined, passed down like an heirloom no one really wants but everyone still carries. And a lot of the time, it comes dressed as humour.
And then something shifted. A glitch in the pattern.
About 12 years ago (I was in my late 20’s), something changed for me.
I saw a photo of myself at seventeen, smiling.
However, I remember the moment of that picture, my high school boyfriend took it. That girl was holding back, uncomfortable with her photo being taken, feeling fat and ugly and ashamed and lonely. That girl was being slut-shamed at school, neglected by her parents and pretty much isolated into a relationship that was not good or healthy.
She was scared of her own body. She thought shrinking, disappearing (and eventually even dying) might save her.
When looking at this picture, I felt immense love and compassion. The girl I see now is gorgeous, really freaking cute, and I just want to give her a gigantic hug (and maybe shake her a little - just a little).
I think most of us have had the experience of looking back at an old photo and thinking, "Wow, I looked great then. But not now." And then five years pass, and we do it again. We look back at today’s version of ourselves from the future, and say the same thing. We keep missing the moment we’re in, keep refusing to see our own beauty until it’s archived.
When I see my 17 yo self, I want to wrap her in a blanket. I want to whisper in her ear: You don’t have to change anything to be loved. You don’t have to earn affection. You are absolutely beautiful and always will be.
I also tell that to my now almost 39 yo reflection in the mirror, and I mean it.
So here’s the thing with this voice we inherit: just as any other curse, we can reject it.
It’s not that the voice is gone. It’s the one that tells me to soften the light, to crop the belly, to post it with some filters. But I’ve learned how to interrupt it. With tenderness. With the sticky note affirmations on my mirror. With the same fierce clarity I offer my 7 yo daughter.
I tell myself what I repeat to her everyday: I see you. I love you.
Oh my, this little girl.
She takes life on as it’s her birthright.
She wears mismatched socks and a pink dress with red pants (someone once said pink and red don’t go together and I’ve firmly believed it, I’m not really sure why) with glitter boots and a Frida Kahlo floral headband.
She looks in the mirror like it’s an old friend, a playmate and an investigational partner.
She doesn’t apologise for existing.
And I am really hoping and doing all I can for that day never to come. Cause I’m pretty sure the world is going to do everything to make her feel bad about herself, and soon. I am doing everything I can to make sure she never learns how, and giving me and her grace for when that happens
Because we know this isn’t just about photos or weight or bad lighting. Not even about the bad jokes I still make at my own expense, though it masks hurt and pain.
It’s about who gets to be visible, the conditioning we pass on in our hurtful words, the things that become cursed rituals and are shared as transgenerational trauma. These things we can choose to rewrite, awkwardly, imperfectly, even if we sometimes shrink before we speak, still.
To be honest, most of the healing I’ve done has happened sideways.
Not in therapy (though bless therapy), nor in ceremonies or moonlit rituals (though bless those too).
It has mostly happened in women-only groups and on kitchen tables, over coffee dates with friends and midnight phone calls.
In the jokes that make real space. In the group selfies we don’t delete.
In the sound of women correcting each other with love, in the way we say, “You look gorgeous, shut up. Whatever you dress, you shine from within!” and mean it with our whole healed hearts.
The good news is: there’s a revolution happening.
Does it look like fiery activism and protest? Not always (though bless all that too!), most times it looks like women laughing with each other, naming the lies, and choosing not to pass it on.
We are breaking the spell. One eye-roll, one corrected thought, one small refusal to shrink at a time.
Bless the sisterhood, bless the inner sanctum of private jokes and real belly laughter.
Bless our daughters being loud and glittery and whole.
I'd love to hear you.
- Whose voice do you speak with when you look in the mirror?
- And what voice do you want your inner girl, your daughter, your niece, the girls of the world to inherit?
With so much love, for you, for me, for girls everywhere,
Marianna
If these words stirred something in you, come sit with me in the comments. Tell me what moved, what echoed. I always read with my whole heart.
I truly resonated with this. Beautiful work. "To be honest, most of the healing I’ve done has happened sideways." - Loved this!
Mariana love,
I don't see anything beautiful in saying about those voices we inherit I see them as they're tradition is that just comes along with us and it's beautiful it's pretty it's very powerful influential that we all control maybe bad but we awareness and surveillance we can manage an enjoy the memories together...
This is insanely beautiful my friend 💗