Shame.
A loaded word—the word, shame. It beats at the core of a woman, echoing across time. Just as Eve is said to have brought shame upon herself and Adam when she tempted him with the apple—shame for their nakedness—I, too, felt its presence when I first became aware of my body. Not through my own discovery, but through the teachings of others.
It’s strange how, as women, we grow and move through life, and shame follows us like a faint drumbeat that grows louder and louder as we march through adolescence and into womanhood. Shame: a societal construct, a tool of control.
But like so many things in my life—words and experiences intended to make me fearful and obedient—shame has had the opposite effect. I lean into its discomfort and, within its confines, I find power. My perseverance through the adversity that shame has brought me, has shaped the work I create today.
On one hand, I feel anger at how vividly it has been wielded throughout my life. On the other, I feel gratitude for the opportunities & influence within my work. Knowing myself, I’ve come to embrace the challenge of pushing against the grain, finding purpose—and perhaps even freedom—within rebellion. So perhaps this emotion—one I initially dismissed as one of the most useless—has some merit after all. Many artists find their greatest works in pain, in the ugly, in the contrast of life. Maybe shame, too, holds a purpose.
Perhaps this isn’t just a piece about the futility of the word, but rather an observation—and even an ode—to shame.
Growing up in a traditional ethnic family, I was not exempt from the patriarchal views of womanhood. I remember the first time I felt the sting of shame—I was seven years old. My Nonna, (grandmother) made me acutely aware that my naked body was something to be ashamed of, something to be hidden. “For your husband,” she would say.
That sense of shame didn’t stop there. It carried through into other parts of my childhood and deepened as I became a teenager. During puberty, I was taught that periods were not to be spoken about—especially around men. This natural part of myself was framed as something wrong, something dirty, something to be concealed.
Then came the body changes—breasts, hips. I remember feeling excited about what these changes meant: to be sexy, or maybe simply to be seen (a loaded topic for another time). But every time I tried to explore this new body and sense of self, I was met with rules on concealment. I was faced with words like slut, even from other girls.
On one hand, I was weighed down by traditional expectations of womanhood—to be demure, pious, a “good girl.” On the other, mainstream media pushed its own agenda of what a woman should look like. Self-confidence in the '90s and early 2000s came with impossible standards: being scarily thin. The shame of being “too big” was explosive. It was everywhere—our music, our films, our magazines. And then came social media, broadcasting this message at a very loud and inescapable frequency. If you didn’t fit into the confines of what society expected a woman to be, you were met with shame.
In my 20s, shame followed me into the workplace. Even now, it feels surreal to think I ended up in environments where I was shamed for not being perfect, or for being too loud, advocating for myself. The fear of failure—of being seen as anything less than perfect—was paralysing.
Boys and men are often championed for being bold, loud, and for making mistakes. Girls and women, on the other hand, are met with unattainable standards that hold them back, keeping them small and suffocating their success. There came a time during covid that I truly had enough.
The balancing act of trying to be a “good woman”—attractive in the eyes of mainstream media, perfect yet quiet—was an exhausting uphill battle that I realised never served me. I was done with shame being used as a tool to control me—by the media, family, partners, and workplaces.
Instead, I chose to lean into the word, to face it head-on, and forge it into my armour.
The world of sexuality was fraught with stigma. A challenge I wanted, needed to take on. I chose to marry design—an institution respected by society and the patriarchy—with sex.
Sex, when spoken of by a woman, was deemed “not respectable”—which made it the perfect starting point for my journey of rewriting my own beliefs around shame.
Today, I am so grateful for the lessons and direction this emotion has offered me. Shame has stood the test of time and will undoubtedly morph into the fears of its future predecessors. Yet, I hope that whomever feels its weight can learn to harness it—finding their own power, even inspiration within the discomfort, within the shame itself.