Shake Off Your Goldilocks Conditioning
Celebrating the feminine's voracious appetite for life.
P R E F A C E. Even before Jo Koy bombed his Golden Globes monologue with yet another display of rampant disrespect for the talented womxn in the entertainment industry, I had drafted this week’s letter of self-discovery. While it’s serendipitous that publishing this comes on the heels of a fresh discussion about the merits of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, my letter this week is NOT intended to be a men vs women narrative, or even a hot take on feminist theory. It won’t even give you my thesis about the Barbie film, save a comment about that monologue.
This letter is just me, dancing at the edges of what makes me curious. I consider this interesting for any human being to ponder, because we all have an Omega energetic (feminine) and an Alpha energetic (masculine) within. Like yin and yang, we each exist and relate to the world on a spectrum of this polarity. This isn’t just about the womxn in your life, it’s about the Omega energy in all of us.
As you read this week’s letter, I invite you to witness where you have strong reactions. What’s most activated in you? Notice that. Write it down. Explore it by writing, stream-of-consciousness style, why that might be so active in you. Does it hit a little too close to home? Do you recognize it in someone who was influential in your life? Does it feel icky and sticky, why?
Before I begin this letter, let me acknowledge that in some parts, my writing will be very gendered and maybe even heteronormative. Please, bear with me and hear my intent. When I use gendered pronouns to reference the feminine and masculine energetics, it is for ease, not to label us in binary terminology.
Our Goldilocks “Just Right” Conditioning
Last year, America Ferrera’s iconic monologue in the Barbie movie sparked a lot of discussion and debate. For about two minutes, Ferrera delivers one of the most talked about scenes of the film—an all too familiar tale of the impossible double standards of being a womxn. It’s a searing, emotive monologue, designed to bring the narrative and its themes together.
It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.
You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can't ask for money because that's crass. You have to be a boss, but you can't be mean. You have to lead, but you can't squash other people's ideas. You're supposed to love being a mother, but don't talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people.
You have to answer for men's bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you're accused of complaining. You're supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you're supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.
But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.
You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It's too hard! It's too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don't even know.
While I admire Gerwig’s commitment to radical candor and it was powerfully delivered by Ferrera, I felt this part of the script was oversimplified and the victimhood overtones didn’t sit well with me. Apparently I wasn’t alone in that assessment. But as Ferrera said herself in response to these critiques, “there are a lot of people who need Feminism 101” and while her character Gloria's remarks "might seem like an oversimplification" for some, it is worth noting that "entire countries" banned the movie "for a reason."
She makes a fair point.
That said, I am opening this letter with this oversimplified monologue to set some context, albeit in a clumsy way. I believe Gerwig’s script was attempting to establish the perils of ‘Goldilocks Syndrome’.
Most children have probably heard the classic fairy tale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” A young girl with golden hair wanders into the empty house of three [different sized] bears. She comes upon a table with three bowls of cooling porridge and, upon sampling each one, discovers that the first is too hot, the second too cold, and the third just right. She eats all of the porridge in the third bowl. The same happens when she comes upon three chairs and, finally, three beds. The third item in the series always proves to be the most comfortable, as the intermediate option between two extremes, but more meaningfully, Goldilocks always judges it to be “just right.”
—Zen Liu
Was this seemingly innocent children’s fable the first of many plot points in my social conditioning to always behave ‘just right’ and forsake parts of myself to make others more comfortable? I can’t say with certainty, frankly there’s a lot more in my childhood that I could point to for that. However the tale of Goldilocks has been used for about a decade to illustrate what Sarah Ware called “one of the biggest disadvantages that women face in business today” in Forbes.
In this letter, I want to go deeper. Get under the skin of the Goldilocks conditioning that apparently directs many of our experiences of life.
Although, unlike much of the feminist discourse that often takes a black and white, men vs women stance on such matters… I am going to attempt to explore this topic in a way that doesn’t presume the masculine exclusively occupies the persecutor role or the feminine must languish in the victim role of the drama triangle. Navigating life as a human being is far more nuanced than that. As I said at the top, we all have both Omega (feminine) and Alpha (masculine) energies within us, regardless of our gender identity or gender assignment at birth.
Hunger Makes Me
For the last few years, I’ve worked with an incredible teacher, Sophie Josephina, who has curiously unravelled my perception of what it means to be a core Omega essence in a world that favors the Alpha energetic expression.
In one of our first encounters, Sophie shared ‘Hunger Makes Me’, a highly gendered, yet potent longread on Hazlitt, in which Jess Zimmerman explores our Goldilocks conditioning. It is a poignant commentary on the forbidden nature of a womxn's appetite for life. It highlights the internal and external conflicts womxn face in expressing their desires and needs, conditioned by a society that often (overtly and subversively) expects us to be content with less and to suppress our true appetites in order to make others comfortable.
A man's appetite can be hearty, but a woman with an appetite—for food, for sex, for simple attention—is always voracious: she always overreaches, because it is not supposed to exist.
Zimmerman explores the complex and often suppressed nature of the feminine’s appetite, including her desires for food, sex, attention, and emotional fulfillment. She delves into the societal conditioning that teaches womxn to minimize our needs and desires, learning to live on emotional and physical diets, constantly curbing our desires to fit into the mold of being less demanding and more accommodating.
“[We] talk ourselves into needing less, because we're not supposed to want more—or because we know we won't get more, and we don't want to feel unsatisfied. We reduce our needs for food, for space, for respect, for help, for love and affection, for being noticed, according to what we think we're allowed to have. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we can live without it, even that we don't want it. But it's not that we don't want more. It's that we don't want to be seen asking for it.”
Zimmerman goes on to explore how womxn are often labeled negatively when we express our desires. A womxn with an appetite for food might be called a glutton, for sex a slut, and for emotional care, high-maintenance or an attention whore. Her thesis is clear: these labels stem from a deep-seated societal belief that womxn's desires are excessive and unwarranted.
[The] 'attention-seeking' label has become an all-purpose way to gaslight feminists, silence those who demand restitution for a specific wrong, and shame women for the way they present their bodies and selves in public,” writes Rebecca Onion in Slate. But underlying the attention-seeker's supposed sin is the eminently reasonable craving to be seen, considered, and taken seriously. “The desire to be known—to be paid mind—is profoundly human,” Onion writes. It becomes “whorish” (itself a word designed to shame the concupiscent woman) only in a context where any hunger, no matter how mundane, is considered outrageous.
Zimmerman also vulnerably shares her personal experiences, reflecting on her own relationship with food, romance, self-worth, and how these were shaped by societal expectations. Perhaps my favourite aspect of this piece is how Zimmerman describes the journey of rediscovering her hunger and the challenges of acknowledging and expressing her needs in a world that often deems them as excessive or inappropriate.
What would it take to feel safe being voracious? What would it take to realize that your desires are not monstrous, but human?
At the time Zimmerman’s writings found me, I was cautiously navigating (and attempting to curb) some desires of my own. Zimmerman’s story allowed me to see that I was subconsciously making myself ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ for even considering going after what my heart wanted, but my head deemed dangerous. I allowed my desires to break free from the cage I kept them in. I opened myself to receive in a relationship and it profoundly changed the way I relate to the masculine energy in the world.
I hope you’ll read ‘Hunger Makes Me’ in its entirety—especially the paragraph about the kid with the chocolate cake! I hope you give yourself the same permission I gave myself after my first reading—to get curious about my longings, my insatiable desires, and being compassionate with myself whenever I feel that ache for more bursting from my soul. Zimmerman grabbed my heart and demanded that I reflect on all the times I’d made myself ‘smaller’ or ‘less voracious’, especially in my relationships. She gave me permission to ask whether keeping myself small was more than just self-inflicted inner critic and was perhaps something more.
Women are often on a diet of the body, but we are always on a diet of the heart.
—Hunger Makes Me, by Jess Zimmerman
A Culture of Starving our Feminine
I’ve been exploring this idea of our feminine expression being shaped by a culture of starvation, even before I had this language for it. I distinctly recall the moment that I felt my core Omega essence hit hard against the limitations placed on me by the strong Alpha energy in New York City.
It was Christmas 2017. My mother had flown from Australia to visit us in Manhattan. I was determined to give her the ‘white Christmas’ she’s dreamt about since she was a little girl. So I rented a car and a quaint farmhouse in the Middle of Nowhere, Vermont. Yes, it snowed, a lot. My mum got her white Christmas fairytale, while I disconnected from the hustle of NYC, meditated daily by the open fire, journaled, learned Tarot, finished a 5000 piece puzzle, took long walks in the snow with my dog, and set an intention to ‘Follow My Heart’ more consciously in 2018.
For more than ten days, I flowed with the rhythms of nature and my heart’s longings. With no distractions or interruptions, I was more ‘me’ than I’d felt in years. It felt like my energy had expanded beyond the confines of my physical body. It felt like I energetically took up more space in the world. My Omega heart was wide open and I knew I wanted more of this feeling.
As we drove home from Vermont, the closer we got to New York City, I felt a need to contract. My nervous system didn’t feel safe to be so wide open, so exposed, to take up so much space in the city. I felt myself gently stuffing my Omega energy, shrinking back into the shield of armour I wore to do battle as a corporate executive in Manhattan. At the same time, a wave of grief flooded me.
Feeding ‘The System’ vs Feeding Ourselves
So how do we shake off our Goldilocks conditioning? Especially when the system that gives rise to such conditioning feels insurmountable at times. Here’s my hot take: rather than pointing to a system that fails us, I want to feel empowered to change it from the inside-out. That requires a healthy dose of self-reflection and accountability for my own decision-making and my actions.
I do find a peculiar sense of hope in the supposition that perhaps all human beings experience this Goldilocks syndrome at some point in our lives. Some more profoundly than others of course, but please show me a human that has not developed maladaptive behaviours that are subconsciously designed to protect them from pain, shame, rejection or loss? I’ll wait.
Maybe this current system is just an enormous clusterfuck of maladaptive behaviours, collectively architected to protect loss of power structures, avoid facing the abhorrent shame of our historical actions, and prevent change (which, by definition, necessitates loss). Before you rage-quit this essay at the suggestion that the majority of us have partial accountability in this system being the way it is… please get curious and stick with me, just a moment longer.
A different monologue, also delivered by Ferrera in 2019, offers a richer, more textured perspective that hits deep into that nuance of being a human in the face of a patriarchal, colonialist, inequitable system.
“I thought sunscreen and straightening irons would bring about change in this deeply entrenched value system. But what I realized in that moment was that I was never actually asking the system to change. I was asking it to let me in, and those aren’t the same thing. I couldn’t change what a system believed about me, while I believed what the system believed about me. I believed that it wasn’t possible for me to exist in my dream as I was. And I went about trying to make myself invisible.
What this revealed to me was that it is possible to be the person who genuinely wants to see change while also being the person whose actions keep things the way they are. And what it's led me to believe is that change isn't going to come by identifying the good guys and the bad guys. That conversation lets us all off the hook. Because most of us are neither one of those.”
As she spoke, I found myself leaning in for the lesson… and then feeling gently called out. (Which, by the way, is one of my favourite things—being generously called out is a doorway to a new awareness and that tickles my senses in a very unique manner.)
While Ferrera is speaking to how she denied her identity as a “brown, poor, fat Latina” (her words, not mine!) in order to find her place in Hollywood, her story rang a bell in my white, economically-comfortable, skinny, Caucasian heart. Perhaps it does for you also?
Despite desperately longing to inhabit and embody my Omega essence more fully, for decades I’ve found myself ‘playing the game’ designed by the Alpha energy in the world, denying enormous parts of myself to be deemed acceptable for opportunities that I know I deserve and let in to spaces where I want to feel like I belong.
On the surface, many of my actions appear ‘just right’ or may even be deemed valuable by society, such as being a ‘strong, independent woman’, being overly caring about others, being a #GirlBoss in business, or sticking with an unfulfilling commitment because I initially said yes out of an urge to not disappoint others.
But in doing so, did I also inadvertently mask my divine feminine essence and voracious appetite for life?
It is a sobering thought to accept accountability for my role in this. It’s tough to admit that I too often choose to act from my Goldilocks conditioning to avoid pain, rejection, or the shame of being denied what I’m worth.
I’ve begun to ask myself regularly, what beliefs do I hold about being ‘acceptable’ to others? To what extremes do I go to avoid rejection or loss? When do I abandon myself to feel like I belong?
Am I feeding the system? Or am I feeding my soul?
My answers are—in a word—heartbreaking.
“Change will come when each of us has the courage to question our own fundamental values and beliefs. And then see to it that our actions lead to our best intentions. I am just one of millions of people who have been told that in order to fulfill my dreams, in order to contribute my talents to the world I have to resist the truth of who I am. I for one, am ready to stop resisting and to start existing as my full and authentic self.”
—America Ferrera
So much is written about ‘authenticity’. (I can’t be the only one that feels nauseated by this word?) Its overuse has led to the loss of its soulful, powerful meaning. And that’s a crying shame. To make matters worse, I’ve also seen people use ‘authenticity’ as cover for their immature, disrespectful behaviour.
So, I’ve adopted a new phrase in its place—my fullest, mature expression of Self.
Anything that inhibits my fullest and most matured expression in the world—a situation that contracts me rather than expands me, a decision that holds me back or makes me feel smaller—is a gentle invitation to investigate with a sense of curious wonder.
Facing my shadows* is the medicine I need to shake off my Goldilocks conditioning, and start taking up more space, existing in the world in my fullest, mature expression of Self. I have to remind myself: other people’s comfort is not my responsibility. How they receive me is out of my hands.
“I wanted to play people who were complex and multidimensional, people who existed in the center of their own lives. Not cardboard cutouts that stood in the background of someone else's.”
—America Ferrera
How much richer could the world be if we each had the courage to exist in the center of our own life story? What gifts are you holding back from others because you’re afraid of rejection? How can you show up in your fullest, most mature expression of Self in every room, conversation and relationship?
*Pssst! If you’re hungry to dive deeper into this topic of feminine shadows and the immature masculine and feminine, consider diving into Healing the Masculine with Sophie Josephina. I was one of the first through this program and it fundamentally changed the way I relate to the feminine and masculine energy in our culture, in my relationships and most importantly—within myself.
After reading this, feel what comes up about your childhood and the ways you learned to be accepted, acknowledged or validated? How does this silently influence your behaviours now, as you relate to the world?
To what extremes did you go to avoid rejection, loss or abandonment? How does that still show up in your life today?
Journal about what else surfaced for you? What does your full, mature expression of Self look like, feel like, sound like?
Make space in your heart to witness all of this. Give thanks for how these behaviours have helped you to feel safe in a world that doesn’t always feel supportive for the wildness of our fullest feminine expression. A releasing ritual of your choice may be supportive at this time.
I'm going to read that essay at some point. Thanks for highlighting it.