Ever since I was small, I struggled with identifying as a girl, because everyone had a different idea as to what a girl should be like.

“A girl should be this.., a girl should be that..” was something I heard countless times. 

As I grew older, however, I saw more and more that girly girls were not acknowledged and that being ‘not like other girls’ was the ideal.

So I completely let go of my girly side, trash talked everything that was considered to be girly, and spoke highly of things that were tomboyish, desperately trying to hold on to one definition of who I was as a person, even if I secretly liked girly stuff.

Fast forward to a few years later, and one of my friends asked me why I disliked being called girly so much.

That question made me second-guess everything. She sent me a video titled ‘Like A Girl’ made by Always (the menstrual hygiene products company) that talked about how society perceives what it is to be a girl and how this perception is ingrained even in women’s minds as we grow older.

After years of hearing that one part of me was not acceptable and that I had to stick to one box, I was finally told that I could be more than just one thing.

So what are women? Are we girly or are we tomboyish? In short, we are all of it.

For years, we have been taught and shown that the girly girl who is sensitive, shows her femininity unapologetically, loves all things pretty and the colour pink, etc. is unimportant,  mean, superficial, stupid, a joke, and not strong or worth it. 

In contrast, the tomboy is seen as cool, strong, ambitious, nicer, and as someone who hates girly things and isn’t feminine, etc.

However, women are beautiful, important, smart, and strong, whether we are girly, tomboyish, or a mix of both.

We are taught that there is a war between girly girls, feminists, and tomboys, when that is not true at all.

We are not each other’s enemies; instead, we are different branches of femininity – we are two sides of the same coin.

We are all as important as the other and should work with and love each other despite our differences since we are all fighting for acceptance.

To date, there is a barrier between girly girls, tomboys, feminists, and girls who don’t identify as either and are a mix of all, because they are taught to laugh at one kind of girl and to only let one kind of femininity exist.

So while we fight for equal rights and acceptance, we are fighting our own, looking down on them and making them feel lesser; there is no feminism or acceptance in that.

Being a woman is a beautiful thing and femininity is a spectrum consisting of many kinds of women who are all important and strong.

We should not separate ourselves into stereotypical boxes such as ‘girly’ and ‘tomboy’ because we are whatever we want to be and we are still feminine and our own kind of woman.

We do not have to pull one woman down to raise another, so let’s stop the hate and increase the love, because we are so much stronger together.