External Validation as a Woman of Color

By Carrington Cline

Positionality Statement:

This post is written by Carrington Cline, a junior and student staff intern at the Women’s Center. This blog post articulates my encounters with the media’s portrayals of Black women, as it relates to the internal and external pressures that pushed me towards an unwavering focus on academic and career success. It also explores the epiphanies that were crucial for feeling more complete in life without relying on external validation. I’m sharing this blog for all the over-achieving women of color, aiming to encourage them to realize that their existence is inherently good enough.

If you grow up believing you’re nothing, you have to prove that you’re everything.

I’ve started to realize there is an aspect of my life that I’ve failed to recognize, something that has grown just as I have throughout college, a need for external validation. Though this need is something I have recently recognized, is it not a foreign feeling. I feel as though this need for validation comes from the fact that women of color aren’t allowed to feel confident about or secure in themselves. There is something to be said about the way perceptions of Black women, and all women of color, impact their confidence in academic or professional spaces. From as young as first grade I vividly remember the representations of Black women and girls in the media fundamentally altering my perception of self-worth. Mainstream media paints a narrow and limited picture of Black women, communicating to Black girls that their options are limited, and that success is reserved for others who don’t look like us. This distorted narrative evolved into my reality and as a result, I became an overachiever. Stretching myself thin by taking every opportunity that came my way, fostering a belief that my value relied solely on my ability to exceed expectations and challenge stereotypes. But I still found myself anxious, self-conscious, and unhappy with the way I viewed myself.

I am valuable, even when inactive.

My turning point was when I started to value myself in other ways. Fashion and music, among other things, became unprecedented avenues of self-love that started to impact my confidence more than my achievements. Above all else though, I realized that my intrinsic worth wasn’t dictated by any external factor. I needed to learn that I am valuable even when I’m not productive, that my pride shouldn’t come from my achievements, but from simply embracing myself as I am. Notions of ‘exceeding expectations’ are man-made concepts used to keep those in subordinate positions working, in the hopes that they may one day rise through the ranks and find themselves in the dominant position. Existing beyond the lens of expectations, whether it be personal or societal, is integral to embracing the human experience. 

Most importantly, enjoying the smaller things in life, the ones that are easy to disregard, helped me exist fully most of all. My identity as a Black woman is fluid and ever-expanding, and the fundamental multifacetedness of the Black experience operates far beyond any confine or limitation.

This blog is dedicated to all the hard workers, all the women of color who feel they need to take on every opportunity that comes their way, as though their existence alone isn’t enough. For those who relate, I implore you to take a step back and look at where you are now from the perspective of your younger self. 

You do not need to be productive to be proud, just existing is more than good enough!

If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is grass in the beginning.

– Vincent Van Gogh

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