“Most of being a woman is secret,” journalist and author Caitlin Moran explained at the Creative Equals RISE conference. 

Moran shared that  s a consequence of this “female bodies are still not seen as normal.” In a wide-ranging conversation with Caitlin Ryan, regional creative director at Facebook, Moran touched on why only now we’re seeing more awareness around experiences like miscarriages and periods when it comes to women in and out of the workplace. Saying how “[these are seen as] things that women should keep secret and not discuss.”

Beyond imposter syndrome 

This has inevitably led to an overwhelming sense of imposter syndrome. Something Moran says she still experiences: “Every day I think I’m going to get fired.” But she urges women to shrug this off and define what normal looks like themselves, and not have it decided for them by men. 

She talked about the changing perception of how women are seen and what it means to be a woman now, pointing to recent shows like Fleabag, I May Destroy You and Killing Eve. “We’re seeing more different kinds of women all the time.” 

Moran also pointed to the 2019 Oscars when Frances McDormand collected the award for Best Actress in Birkenstocks, whilst this year her Nomadland director Chloé Zhao wore pigtails when accepting the Oscar for Best Director. She said how our idea of female beauty is starting to “loosen up” from the days when people lost it over Julia Roberts’s underarm hair. 

But this conversation; this opening up, needs to go further. Asked by interviewer Caitlin Ryan whether she was ever scared, Caitlin Moran said that of course she was. But in 1986 she “started pretending to be Judy Garland in a musical and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Moran said this was because she’s always believed that as a woman you get to build yourself and how you should choose to do this fearlessly. Even in the face of fear. She explained: “You’re always going to be scared as a teenager or in your twenties. As you get older, you lose skin elasticity but you also lose the amount of fucks you give.”

The role of allyship

Allyship is something she pointed to as crucial for being seen and heard as you want to be. That in the past, there’s been damaging rhetoric around weathering toxic behaviour. Moran said how this encourages us to believe that only snowflakes are the ones that leave when in fact it’s more about those who remain; the “selfish survivors” who refuse to help others suffering the same.

For Moran, it’s about getting more women (or flamingos) to stand with you. About not wanting to be the only flamingo in a pen of penguins. “Get as many flamingos in the penguin enclosure as possible,” she encouraged. 

That’s not to say we should confuse allyship for something placid; something with its edges sanded away. “Sisterhood and feminism isn’t all about being lovely to each other all the time. That’s buddhism.” 

Nor should it be exclusively about women. Moran joked how: “My advice to men always is stand by and applaud us.” But she is serious when it comes to the support they could offer and is too often sorely lacking. “We’ve stood by men for so long,” she explains. “It would be an amazing skill set for them to have.” Before adding, “You don’t need to wear our shoes, but you could learn to listen like us.”

The secrets women have to keep about themselves are thankfully growing fewer in number. Moran pointed to social media as somewhere women can talk unmediated about themselves to one another. And she applauded organisations like Channel 4 who are making leaps in offering paid leave to those who have experienced miscarriage or had an abortion.

She explained how incorporating women’s partners in this is crucial too: “It stops it from being a female thing,” she explained, adding “women’s wombs are pretty important in the scheme of things.”

“We need to redefine what is normal,” said Moran. Whilst the conversations might be opening up, and the perceptions changing, there is still work to do in both an understanding and freedom of expression in what it means to be a woman today.