They Taught Us to Disappear

On visibility, inherited shame, and the courage of taking up space

It is scary to be seen. And somehow, it is harder still to go unnoticed.

I asked at least three people I trust. All of them said yes. I mustered the courage, put on the red lipstick, walked out the door — and right before I met my first client, I wiped it off.

I don’t entirely know why. But I have been thinking about it ever since.

The Belief Beneath the Behavior

Somewhere in me lives this belief, quiet and stubborn and old, that compassion and boldness cannot exist in the same body at the same time. That to be soft, I must also be small. These kinds of beliefs rarely announce themselves. They don’t show up as thoughts you can argue with. They show up as impulses— like the lipstick you wipe off before anyone can comment on it, the opinion you swallow mid-sentence, the way you rearrange yourself to fit into whatever space you’ve been given.

They were written into us long before we had the words to question them.

Mine said: Visibility is dangerous. Stay small. Be convenient. And so I wiped off the lipstick.

The Voice That Wasn’t Only Hers

I can still hear a voice from my past. “Oh my God, she is wearing such DARK lipstick.” Said like it was a transgression. Like wanting to be seen was something to be ashamed of. That voice doesn’t belong to one woman alone. It belongs to a long line of women who were taught the same thing —shrink, blend in, be convenient, fit the box. Do not dare take up more space than you are given.

This is not something one woman decided. It is something passed down, generation after generation, like a piece of inherited furniture no one questions because it has always been there. The women who taught us to disappear were themselves taught to disappear. They were not trying to harm us. They were handing us the only map they had.

The women who taught us to disappear were themselves taught to disappear.

Why Visibility Feels Like a Threat

My clients tell me they wear black because they don't want to be noticed. I understand them completely, because I am them.

I have sat across from women who are brilliant, generous, funny — women who take up exactly the right amount of space in a room .. and watched them fold themselves smaller the moment someone looked at them too long. Not because they chose to. Because something in them moved faster than thought.

That something is old. If you grew up in a home where being noticed meant being corrected — where wanting more, saying more, being more drew the wrong kind of attention — your body made a decision without consulting you. It decided that visibility was the problem. That the solution was to get small and stay there.

Stay small. It's safer.

The hard thing is that decision doesn't expire. The strategy that kept you safe at eight years old doesn't check the calendar. It just keeps running , in the colors you don't wear, the opinions you don't finish, the desires you talk yourself out of before anyone else gets the chance to.

The impulse to shrink isn't weakness. It's intelligence that outlived its original purpose.

What Red Lipstick Actually Says

Red lipstick says: Look at me. It says: I am here, and I am not apologizing for it. It says: I am comfortable enough in my own skin to take up this small, bright space.Of course that is terrifying when your whole life has taught you that the safest thing you can do is disappear a little.

And yet..this is the work. Not the dramatic transformation. Not the sudden fearless leap into full visibility. Just the small, daily acts of not erasing yourself.

Wearing the color you actually like.

Saying the thing you actually think.

Wanting what you actually want, and letting that be enough.

Learning that you are allowed to exist fully.. not despite your softness, not in spite of your care for other people, but as all of it, at once.

A Question Worth Sitting With

Why are so many women still so uncomfortable in their own skin? I can think of a thousand reasons. All of them begin somewhere in childhood. All of them end in a mirror, second-guessing. What would it be to adorn yourself the way you want to? Not for approval. Not to be palatable. Simply because you want to. Because you are allowed. Because you are enough .. bright and bold and full of color, exactly as you are.

Wear the red lipstick. You never know which young person is watching, and learning, for the first time, that they are allowed to be seen.

Have you lived some form of this?