My GirlFriends

Maya Bledsoe from Houston, Texas, hosts the Miss Unapologetic Podcast. The podcast focuses on women prioritizing a self-sustained lifestyle and entering adulthood gracefully. In the first episode, Maya chats with her college friends, Jayla Bates and Aliyah Archie, about their experiences in college and their thoughts on femininity. They discuss how femininity is not just about appearance but also about mindset and being comfortable with who you are. They also talk about the influence of their mother figures in shaping their worldview. Hey, girl, this is Maya Bledsoe from Houston, Texas. I am a student at the Xavier University of Louisiana, and you're listening to the Miss Unapologetic Podcast. In today's society, women are shifting into their soft femininity by prioritizing a self-sustained lifestyle. On this show, I chit-chat with some college girlfriends who encourage females to enter adulthood gracefully, how to navigate friendships, and being the elegant women in society. Welcome, everyone, to the first episode of Miss Unapologetic Podcast. I feel like I was led to start this podcast whenever I started in college because I wanted to leave my legacy in any state, any being that I am in life. So being a child of God, I feel that I was called to serve to help other women, especially other women that's growing up, especially other people that's coming to Xavier. So yeah, and I feel like I shouldn't do it alone, so I have some members that's a part of my support group here. I have two guests, and these are two lovely ladies that I am honored to call my friends. So we have Miss Jayla Bates and Miss Aliyah Archie. Can y'all say hey, guys? Hey, y'all. Hey. So just a little background, I met Jayla by taking a couple of classes with her. I sometimes jokingly say I owe her a part of my degree because, you know, your girl helped me out in college. And yeah, Aliyah was one of my first friends in college. A funny story is one day, like, a group of girls wanted to go to Bourbon, and I forgot how we hit it off, but we're still friends to this day. So overall for this episode, I wanted to title it My Girlfriends, and I'll touch on it a little bit later on why I actually named it My Girlfriends. So I just wanted to briefly talk about how we navigated through college thus far. And there's, like, a little old proverb that actually reminded me of this episode, which is birds of a feather flock together, or show me your friends, and I'll show you who you really are. And whenever we talk, we pretty much have, like, surface-level conversations, and I just wanted to have an opportunity to get to know my girlfriends a little bit better. So I just wanted to start off with an icebreaker because I don't want you guys to think it's, you know, all that serious, but since I named the episode My Girlfriends because of the show, obviously, and that's the name of our group chat as well, so I just wanted to break the ice. So what character in the show do you think that you most resonate with? I would definitely say Maya. Okay, Maya, why would you say that? I kind of just took the pros and cons from everybody else. I'm like, Toni was a horrible friend, Lynn was also a horrible friend, because she was like, you know what I'm trying to say. They were over here looking at the camera. I had to look them up because if I'm being realistic, I would have to pick Joan, but not for any of her negative qualities, but because, like, she has that motherly figure aspect to her when it comes to her friends. Like, she's always going to go above and beyond, and sometimes she forgets how to say no, but then that other stuff of being jealous of her friends, yeah, that's not me. Exactly, and I was also thinking Joan, because Joan was a boss. Okay. She was a boss. She was a doctor that day. She was a lawyer at her own house. She didn't need nobody for anything. She was always depending on her, but she was just so doggone needy, and she wasn't a man so bad. I'm like, girl, settle down. Settle down. Just stay in your bed. But, yeah, the reason why I chose this show, obviously, because it's about four, I feel, strong black women that are just trying to make it in this life. They all have their different relationship, careers, and everything else that comes with life, and that kind of reminds us of us. We're just trying to make it through college, and I feel that we will all be successful. So that brings me to another dialogue, which is, I'm going to edit that out. Okay. So I want to introduce the discussion for today. Today, a lot of people identify with the titles It Girls, That Girls, Soft Girls, or Black Girl Luxury to basically base their womanhood off of. Based off of Google, femininity are qualities or attributes regarded to the characteristics of women and girls. So I just want to ask, how does that look for you, femininity, in your own life? I think, for me, femininity is not, I know everybody, like, confuses it with this concept of, like, being in their soft girl era or their soft girl bag, but I feel like it's more focused on, like, your mentality, your mindset, and how you think, because, in my mind, you could be a strong black woman simply, not necessarily through your struggles, but through your accomplishments and everything that you've done. to get to where you are, like, both the negative and the positive of your journey. So, like, for me, femininity isn't necessarily, like, oh, like, I get my nails done, I do this, I do that, I uphold a certain look. I think it's more of a mindset, if that makes sense. I agree. I agree wholeheartedly, because, you know, I feel femininity, for me, is just, like, being comfortable with who you are and who you are in your skin. Because I'm very much into myself and my femininity, but that doesn't mean, oh, I'm going to get my nails done all the time. That doesn't mean I'm going to wear pink, purple, like, all these, you know, girly-type colors, but just who I am. I know I'm a woman. Period. We both. We definitely took out the words out of my mouth, that concept of just, that mentality of being in your bag, but not being in your bag. Right. Like, yo. Like, I don't have to, like, I don't have to be in your bag. Like, I don't have to wear 10 pounds of makeup every day if I don't want to. I don't have to wear a dress every day. I don't have to get my nails done all the time, but I am comfortable with who I am within myself, and I love myself. Knowing who you are, I think that's, like, one of the biggest concepts of femininity. As long as you know who you are, what you stand for, and you're the same person no matter what kind of room you walk into, girl, that's femininity. I agree. Personally, I don't like the whole soft girl term because it's dumb to me, honestly. Like, okay, so what's a hard girl? Yeah. Like, I feel like you could be a hardworking boss, like Joan, and still, you know, take care of yourself, still treat yourself, and still be very much in tune with yourself. And she showed that on the show as well. I think that some girls that do identify with, you know, the whole soft girl, it girl, black girl luxury type of thing, if that's what their mother showed, then that's what they're going to be. If they feel like their mom always has some makeup on, if their mom always had their nails done, things of that nature, they're going to mimic that and be like, well, I'm in my femininity bag, things like that. So that brings me to my next question. How has your mother figure helped shape your way of how you show up in the world? That's a great question. Do you want to go first or do you want me to go first? I'm going to let you go first. I have to think about it. I say, well, I was raised by a kid. That's how my mama and my nana like to put it, because my mom was so young when she had me. But not only was I raised by my mama, I was raised by the concept of a village, because everybody dibbled and dabbled of making me who I am. But I think when my mom, she holds, even though, like, of course, you'll think because that's your mom, she'll hold a special place in your heart. For me, it's more so we grew up together. So I had that opportunity, even though, yes, a lot of people say a kid shouldn't be raising a kid, but I had that opportunity to see through her mistakes to know, okay, this is what happened when my mom did this. So therefore, why would I want to go through the same things with her? Because she wants me to be better than her, and I want to be better than her, if not like her. But why not make her proud by not following in similar footsteps that she has? So, like, I think the best example is she ended up getting pregnant at a young age and had me at 15, 16. I had a teenage pregnancy, by the grace of God. So I think, like, that's one of the better examples of it, because we were able to grow up together, and I had the opportunity to not only get that concept of do you want motherly advice, and do you also want a friend advice from someone who's been through it? Not only can I give you, like, what I want to say as a mother because I want to protect you, but I can also give you what I would think if I was your friend with the wisdom that I've obtained from living through all of this. So I think I definitely, like, retained those traits from her of being mindful, but also looking at all perspectives of, like, a topic or a conversation or, like, a problem or dilemma that I'm in with. Can you repeat the question? I said, how has your mother figure helped shape the way you show up in the world? Okay. So I feel a lot of myself is similar to Jayla, but in the opposite way, in a way, because I'm the youngest of six. I have four sisters and one brother, so, you know, we grew up in a majority girl's house. And my mama, she was a little older when she had me. She was, like, in her late 30s. So today, I'm not going to lie, my mom, I feel like she raised me like it's her mini me because I was kind of like the last one, but I had a lot of positive female role models in my family. Like I said, having four big sisters as well as my grandma on top of that, they just really showed me, like, what being a strong black woman is. And like Jayla said, not necessarily having to protect your negatives, but, like, showing your positives. Like, all of them were smart in their own ways. All of my mama's kids have at least two degrees. Like, even my grandmother. And I feel like it's very admirable because she was, my grandma was 89 when she passed away. My grandma was born in 1931. And just thinking about, like, the years and, like, different eras of United States history that she lived through, she, like, beat all of that. She lived through Jim Crow. And I'm from Mississippi. She lived through Jim Crow. My grandmother had a bachelor's and a master's. She taught school for 40-plus years. She was well-respected in that community. Even in afterlife, I feel. And so just having those, like, I feel like I'm living off the strength of them, honestly, because my grandmother, she was a God-fearing woman. Very heavily active in the church, so was my mother. And so just having those strong female figures and having my siblings still be role models for me, I feel like that shaped, like, kind of, like, my worldview, one of the reasons why I chose to attend HBCU. It wasn't all that I knew, but it was what I was surrounded by. And it showcased black excellence for me. And I saw it firsthand in my own household. You know, my grandmother, a Jackson State alum. My mother, an Alcorn State alum. I have a sister who went to Tougaloo, a sister who went to Jackson State, a sister who went to Alcorn, and I chose to come to Xavier. So all of that helped to shape my worldview. Just having those positive examples, positive role models, and showed me that tough love. Like, they weren't, like, just badgering, like, on me, like, you have to do this, you have to do this. And my mother, she also, she's very supportive of me in anything that I want to do. It doesn't matter. I can say, Mama, I want to go to the moon. She's like, okay, baby, let's see how we're going to help you get there. So no idea is a bad idea to her. And that's what I love about her. She's very supportive. Anything that I want to do, anything that's going to make me happy, she's down for it. That's good. Since we are on a little bit of a time constraint, I wanted to wrap up this podcast by allowing you guys to give one thing that is, hold on, let me figure out how I want to ask this question. Okay, so wrapping up with this podcast, I wanted you guys to give one gem to a younger lady if you were able to have the opportunity to, and also give yourself some self-love as well. One thing I would tell a younger girl, you don't have to be like everybody else, just be you. Especially kids growing up today. When we were growing up, social media was kind of just jumping out, like Instagram. I feel like we were finding ourselves then, but also had already established ourselves in a way. So I don't feel like we were as influenced by social media. But I definitely feel like the younger generation behind us, they are heavily influenced by social media. I feel like everything that they see, they want to dress like this person, they want to look like this person, they want to talk like this person, they want to wear their hair like this person. It's okay to be you. If that's not your style, be comfortable with yourself. That's the main thing, just be you. Yeah. I think my piece of advice would fall under that, with that concept of learning to love yourself young, and learning to love the person who you are. Ooh, goodness. Learning to love the person that you are, whether it's your mentality, whether it's your body, and being comfortable with who you are, while also learning to make spaces for yourself within areas you may not know, whether it's in a racial setting, or a gender setting, or just anywhere where making space for yourself, because you have to remember that you may walk into a room, and in that room, it may have already been predetermined, there is no space for you. So therefore, you have to always be prepared, especially as a black woman in America, to make a space for yourself, and you have to know who you are, and understand who you are, to be prepared to, when you are met with negativity, or when you are met with hard hitters of people coming in, whether it be your mentality, whether it be what you stand on, or anything to do with how you feel, or how you're passionate about something, you have to be prepared to defend that, and sometimes even to be able to walk away, and to just allow them to say what they want to say, so that concept of just knowing who you are, and learning to love yourself, and being prepared to make room for yourself in settings that you may not be able to, you may not already have, so that you can withstand anything, because any woman that can withstand anything is a strong woman within everything. That was so sweet. I love how vulnerable you guys were. I thank you guys for being so transparent. I thank you guys for even taking the time to even have this podcast and discussion with me, and just even sharing your guys' upbringings, and just how you guys were brought up by your mothers, your grandmothers, your sisters, things of that nature, so that was beautiful. I loved all you guys' responses. It was a pleasure to be y'all's host today. If you enjoyed today's episode, let us know to continue the conversation. Until next time, be blessed. Thanks for listening to the Miss Unapologetic Podcast. If you enjoyed today's girls' chit-chat, mm-mm. Thanks for listening to the Miss Unapologetic Podcast. If you enjoyed today's girls' chit-chat, we want to hear your thoughts. DM me on Instagram at mayakaren.