Question 4

The speaker discusses feeling pressured to look or act a certain way around others, sharing personal experiences of insecurity, societal expectations, and self-acceptance. They mention feeling self-conscious about their appearance, facing dress codes at work, adapting behavior in social settings, and finding confidence through supportive relationships. Ultimately, they emphasize the importance of staying true to oneself despite external pressures. That's a great segue into our next question. Molly, have you ever felt pressure to look a certain way, act a certain way, or present yourself in a certain way around others? And what does that feel like? How do you respond? Yeah, I think we all have felt this in one way or another. And I guess there's many layers to this for me. First and foremost, when you said to look a certain way, I think, weirdly, one of my insecurities from growing up, I come from an Italian family, and I always had very bushy eyebrows and also darker, hairier arms. Growing up, I was more of a tomboy. And I remember wanting to shave my head and donate the hair to cancer, and my loving mother did say, she was like, you look too much like a boy. And I think, weirdly enough, hearing that from such a young age, I think every now and then, if I do dress in a more masculine way, I feel so silly saying it, but sometimes I do get a little self-conscious of, I don't know, just doing that. Totally. Or even at work, when I worked on an internship this summer, I did feel a pressure to not necessarily dress. If you were a man, there was a jeans dress code, and you could get away with wearing huge, fun, baggy jeans, like a polo, that needed to be more fitted jeans. But then I think on the other end of that, when it comes to acting a certain way or presenting yourself in a certain way around others, I think, obviously, every now and then, it comes up in social settings. If somebody's acting more reserved, I'll be more reserved. Obviously, things like that. But I do think that what has helped me to really have a sense of self and to know who I am and how I want to act and how I want to look and how I want to present myself is just having people around me that make me feel so confident in my sense of self. Lahari being one of them for the past four years. But I think, you know, in high school, I didn't necessarily have that as much. And so coming to college and having people that loved me, no matter what I was wearing, no matter whether I was being awkward or obnoxious or loud or interruptive, like just really fully loving me helps me to just be like, okay, like the people that I care about care about me, and so that means I'm doing something right. And so I think that's kind of how I've responded, is just reminding myself, like truly, if I ever find myself in moments of insecurity, I think like, okay, if a person like Lahari could love me, if any one of our friends could love me, if my family can love me, like those are all people whose opinions I care about and who I trust. So if I present myself or look a certain way or act in a weird way around other people, that's more of a, yeah, that's something with them that I can't control. So I just got to be me. That's a beautiful painting.