UNAPOLOGETIC…

Unapologetic is a word unknown to the girls of my city. We don’t know how to be us without feeling like we need 8-lettered adjectives to be approved by the people especially men of the society. We want to be called goddesses and praised as saints unless our bra straps don’t show.
And God forbid if they do, the aunty sitting in front of you, on the public transport will try to tell you in sign language of what heinous crime you have committed. Our own language falls short when we talk about the menstrual cycle so we have different names for it so that people don’t recognize that we are talking about it. Oh, and how we carefully wrap up the packet of pads so that people don’t see that we possess it shows how the society views female body as some hidden treasure under the layers of skin and associates words like shame, honor, and dignity with what is just layers of flesh and bones made from the same fucking cells and tissues like that of a male body, or a body of any other animal. I don’t know exactly at what age do we start developing self loathe and self-consciousness towards own selves but by the time we hit our teen years, it suddenly comes in the form of body shaming and bullying leading to body masks, fairness creams, disorders like bulimia nervosa and even surgeries in order to be approved and appreciated for our looks by the society.
Hypothalamus is a part of the brain which secretes enzymes responsible for human emotions. I read this in a science book when I was 7. But why is it that the emotions of girls are associated with the dignity of the family?
A girl cannot express her affection for a boy, it’s normal, it’s natural but good girls don’t do it. In forbidden love, Norma Khouri describes how Dalia was killed in an honor killing because she loved a guy of the opposite religion. The world doesn’t keep count of the dalias killed since then just because the hypothalamus is part of the brain which secretes enzymes responsible for human emotions.
What is dignity anyway? Is it some ghost living behind the closed doors of haunted buildings who makes rules for girls on how to live in a society and curses the whole society if girls don’t start to behave?