The birth of the internet and social media has given life to the mindset that endless, unfiltered, unsolicited transparency is a requirement at all times. As women, when combined with balancing a career and home life while constantly inventing ways to preserve our evading sanity on a weekly basis, this can be a bit much.
Fortunately, things are not always as they seem.
Contrary to popular Twitter opinion, no matter who you are or what level of success you have attained, letting people into every aspect of your life at their leisure is no more of a necessity to succeed than it was 20 years ago when the internet was synonymous with “the rapture” and AOL chat rooms were a thing.
Lauryn Hill felt the pressures of fame beginning to rear its’ ugly head so she made the choice to do the opposite of transparency for the sake of her children and her sanity and faced hell. Rihanna lives her life out loud with no apologies but still gets criticized for not being enough of a good role model for her audience. Whitney Houston shared her ups and downs with the world, only to be ridiculed and judged up until her untimely passing. Nicki Minaj kept her previous relationship excessively private, faced an onslaught of backlash for it and still faces an equal amount of criticism now that she’s more open with her personal life. Beyonce just poured her soul into her album and people are questioning the validity of her “truth” on the basis that it’s too truthful. And the list goes on.
In this fascinating age of promoting over-sharing and underwhelming to the unfortunate satisfaction of many, you are still allowed to have some things for yourself. Moreover, no matter what the masses may want you to think, their opinion of what you share or keep private is much more a reflection of them than it is of you. Mystery does not have to be a thing of the past unless you want it to become that. Keeping some things sacred is actually a vital part of maintaining as you go through life and when you get into the habit of thinking otherwise, it can prove detrimental if your supposedly transparent nature isn’t one born of a genuine desire to share your life on such an all-inclusive level.
In other words, being the woman that you are and sharing what you can handle is more than enough….whether the world thinks so or not.
