Nov. 3, 2014
Samantha Morley
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I know that I am a woman. I have been one for several years, but I cannot exactly pinpoint when that happened.
Did I become a woman when I got my period at 14? No, I was too young.
Did I become a woman when I turned 16 and took a strong interest in boys? No, not quite then either.
Or did I become a woman at 21 when I had sex for the first time? No, I already was a woman at that time.
There isn’t a specific time when I realized that I grew into my womanhood because becoming a woman is a frame of mind, not a state of physical being.
In the past, society used to dictate that a female became a woman when she menstruated for the first time. This was because she could marry a man and bear children. We don’t live in a society where 14-year-olds are expected to get pregnant anymore.
Instead, womanhood becomes more of an awakening, an opening of the mind to observe the world in a new way.
It’s different for all women. Some develop a sense of wanting to become a mother, others just want to be in a stable relationship and others define their womanhood through stable finances and the ability to be independent.
My revelation occurred at some point in high school. I knew it happened when I drifted away from most of my friends. Something internally clicked and my mind opened to a new vision of the world.
I no longer found importance about which boy in the class was the cutest, or what was the next trend. Instead I saw the prosperity of good grades and hard work and what that would yield me in the future when I would need to strongly establish my independence.
Unfortunately, it seems that girls determine their womanhood through the acceptance of others, particularly men. If a girl is considered desirable by men, then she considers herself a woman.
That’s not how it should be. I know plenty of females that are not mature enough to be considered a woman, yet they have had plenty of experience in the bed.
Instead, females should classify their womanhood as the point which they realize that the world is bigger than themselves, when they start to consider others in their decisions.
I am a woman now because I think of the future and what that means for both me and everyone else around me.
I am a woman because I don’t let little things like someone being prettier than me make me hate them. I am a woman because I found out things like that don’t matter.
Think about your own circumstances and whether or not you have developed into womanhood. I may look back years later and realize that I actually had some more growing to do, but the fact that I consider this possibility defines me as a woman. Not menstruation, or infatuation, or copulation.