• Desi Girl Struggles

    “Is It Confidence or Comparison?” – Dissecting Where Our Value Truly Comes From

    There’s a fine line — sometimes invisible — between confidence and comparison. One lifts you up from within.The other needs someone else to be beneath you. And for so many South Asian women, we’ve been taught that “feeling good about yourself” often means being better than someone else — prettier, smarter, more successful, more desirable. But here’s the hard truth:If your self-worth relies on someone else’s lack, is it really confidence?Or is it just comparison wearing a prettier outfit? How We Learn to Measure Ourselves Against Others From childhood, we were quietly trained to link our value to someone else’s. “Look at how well she’s doing.”“Why can’t you be more…

  • Desi Girl Struggles

    “Breaking the Mirror: Challenging the Need to Outshine Others to Feel Valuable”

    If we’re being real, so many of us have grown up believing that we’re only as good as the reflection we see — not just in the literal mirror, but in the way others see us. And for South Asian women, that reflection is often polished, compared, and scrutinized.Not just by society, but by family, community, and — sometimes — ourselves. We learn early that our value is tied to achievement, appearance, or how we “stack up” next to another woman. It becomes less about being enough… and more about being better.And that cycle? It’s silently exhausting. Where Does This Pressure Come From? It’s not that we want to compete…