Who Told You to Make Yourself Smaller? The Invisible Rules Women Live By
- Rachel Amies
- Aug 14
- 3 min read
Thought For The Week
Many of the beliefs we carry weren't consciously chosen. They’ve been steadily absorbed over the years.
Nobody sits young girls down and teaches them to make themselves smaller.
There isn't a lesson at school on speaking more quietly, apologising before expressing an opinion, avoiding taking up too much space, or worrying about being seen as too much.
And yet many of us arrive in adulthood carrying those exact beliefs.
It’s not because of one conversation, one person, or one experience. It’s because of thousands of small messages accumulated over a lifetime.
A comment here.
An expectation there.
Something observed.
Something rewarded.
Individually, they might seem insignificant. But collectively, they affect the way we experience the world.
Eventually, those messages stop feeling like something we've been told, and start sounding like our own voice.
Perhaps that's why changing our inner dialogue can feel so difficult. We often assume those thoughts belong to us, when in reality they've been shaped by the environment we've spent our lives in.
Recognising that doesn't mean we stop taking responsibility for our choices, but it can help us meet ourselves with a little more understanding and compassion.
Instead of asking,
Why do I think like this?
Perhaps we can start asking,
Where did I learn this? And do I still want to carry it with me?
Exercise Focus
Have you ever felt intimidated walking into the weights area of a gym?
Sure, there’s the men. The mirrors. The new exercises. The unfamiliar equipment.
But there’s something else, too.
Strength training asks us to do things many women have spent years being discouraged from doing.
To take up space.
To make ourselves visible.
To stop apologising.
To trust our bodies.
To look strong, rather than trying to look smaller.
To pursue our ambitions.
Perhaps that's why it can feel so unfamiliar at first.
But every time we pick up a heavier weight, try something we didn't think we could do, or discover our body is capable of more than we realised, we challenge those old assumptions.
Perhaps that's one of strength training’s most unexpected gifts.
It doesn't simply change what we're capable of physically. It gives us the chance to notice which rules and expectations genuinely feel like our own... and which ones we might have inherited.
And that's a very different kind of strength.
Nutrition Focus
Many of us grow up receiving subtle messages about food, too.
Don't eat too much.
Choose the smaller portion.
Order something light.
Don't be greedy.
Don't make a fuss.
Just as we inherit expectations about how we should behave, we can also inherit expectations about how we should eat.
Over time, those expectations can change our relationship with food. Eating stops being simply about fuel, nutrients, energy and enjoyment, and starts becoming another way of managing how we're perceived.
The obvious risk is that we don't give our bodies the nourishment they need. But perhaps another loss is that we slowly stop trusting our own hunger, appetite, and judgement. Our relationship with food becomes guided by a set of unwritten rules we may never have consciously chosen in the first place.
And so perhaps the kindest thing we can do is to start noticing what our bodies are asking for, and stop worrying about how those food choices will be perceived.
Explore More
From the archive: Healthy Behaviours, Unhealthy Psychology explores how modern fitness culture can reinforce many of the same expectations we explored in today's article, and how even healthy behaviours can often be driven by unhealthy pressures.
From the archive: Why Values Matter More Than Willpower picks up where today's article leaves off, exploring how we can begin replacing inherited expectations with choices that genuinely reflect our own values.
Book: Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez explores the ways the world has historically been designed around male experiences. It offers a broader perspective on many of the invisible expectations and assumptions that shape women's everyday lives.
Takeaway
Comments