The many faces of women

There are days I hardly recognise myself. In one place I can be the woman who speaks with certainty. Change the company, or even the pecking order in that same room, and my confidence slips. The same voice that once drew praise can suddenly become silent or be called too much.

WOMEN, IDENTITY AND SELF-EXPRESSION

That is the way identity works. We shift. We bend. We reveal different sides of ourselves depending on where we are and who we are with. None of these selves are false; they are all part of our whole. And it is essentially the same for men. Yet women often live under a sharper gaze, measured not just for what we do, but for what we should do.

WOMEN IN ART THROUGH HISTORY

When I think about women and how they are seen, I often turn to art. Botticelli gave us Venus as pure beauty, rising from the sea. Picasso gave us weeping women, broken yet defiant. Frida Kahlo painted herself again and again, fierce and vulnerable, refusing to be reduced to a single image. Across centuries women have been captured as saints, mothers, muses, temptresses. Always partial, never complete.

THE ROLES WOMEN PLAY

A woman has never been only one thing. We carry many women within us: the nurturer, the rebel, the strategist, the artist, the dreamer. Some step forward more often. Others wait in the background, patient and watchful, until their time comes.

And beyond these inner selves are the roles we are asked to play. Daughter, mother, leader, friend, lover, caretaker, professional. Some we choose freely. Others are placed on our shoulders without consent. We are told to be ambitious, but not too ambitious. To be caring, but not weak. To be strong, but not hard. To look after others while still making space for ourselves, as if that balance were simple. It is not.

The weight of these expectations can be exhausting. The labels flatten us. They strip away complexity. They try to make one woman stand for all women. And yet every one of us knows that we hold contradictions, tensions, and truths that cannot be boxed in.

BEYOND LABELS AND EXPECTATIONS

Perhaps the real work is not to escape identity but to live it on our own terms. To say yes to the roles that fit, and no to those that do not. To see strength in shifting between selves rather than trying to hold one steady mask. Identity is not a single picture hung on a wall. It is more like a gallery, alive with colour and contrast, changing with the light.

Art has always hinted at this. In paintings and poems, women appear as fractured, layered, uncontainable. They have been painted as saints and sirens, yet between those extremes lies the truth: we are ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. We are not one story but many.

WOMEN, POETRY AND ILLUSTRATED ART

The invitation, then, is not to ask which woman is right. It is to ask which woman is here today. Which one speaks the loudest right now. And to honour her without shame or apology. Tomorrow it may be another. And that, too, is real.

So I wonder, as you read this. Which woman within you is tired of carrying expectations? Which woman wants to set the labels down, even for a moment? And which woman is waiting to step into the light?

CREATIVE BUBBLES ILLUSTRATED POETRY

These are the questions that inspire much of the work in Creative Bubbles By The Randoms. Among the pieces is Woman, an illustrated poem that explores these very themes of identity and expectation. All of the poems and artworks are free to browse online, and every couple of months new works are shared in the newsletter. If this speaks to you, I invite you to explore the collection, or subscribe and be the first to see what arrives next.

Their short illustrated poems feel close and familiar. I always enjoy their newsletter. It’s a refreshing read, and subscribing means you’ll have something new to look forward to.

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