Visibility Isn’t Just About Your Business

People often talk about what their visibility goals are, or how they want to get more visible, especially at the beginning of a year or in the first quarter.

But oftentimes we don’t discuss what we don’t want our visibility to be, what doesn’t feel aligned with how we show up. And that’s important too.

By leading us to ask different questions, it may inform what we do want and lead us to different goals, different results, and even different understandings of our identity and where and how we want to be included and witnessed by others.

Erica Courdae joins India to discuss feeling invisible, how we judge people for wanting to be witnessed, and why visibility is about so much more than how you show up in your business.

Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:

• How the male gaze, and the judgment behind “pick me” and “thirsty” impact how we view visibility

• How difficult experiences and transitional periods impact our sense of self and contribute to feeling invisible

• How leaning into who you are and who you want to be can you feel truly witnessed

How You Do and Don’t Want to Show Up

On the Flaunt Your Fire® podcast, India Jackson (she/her) says that visibility strategies have been coming up a lot recently, particularly as people have been thinking about strategies in their businesses for a new year.

“And also, you are a whole human and not just a representative of the business that you own, and so I think that there’s an opportunity to discuss what underlying things might be playing into some identity pieces.”

Erica Courdae (she/her) says that she often gets clarity by “being able to check off the list,” and while she does try to focus on what she does want, “there are experiences that I’ve had that have very vividly shaped what I don’t want and my visibility is definitely one of those areas of my life.”

She recalls being in a relationship that was detrimental to her sense of self, and realizing that she felt invisible, and when she voiced that to someone, it “immediately got tied to the male gaze. And that was very challenging for me because that really wasn’t the thing that I felt solely invisible from. I felt invisible from myself.”

She mentions reading a story about Ayesha Curry, who is the wife of basketball player Steph Curry, in which she discussed feeling invisible in comparison to her husband, not in the sense of wanting male attention, but as “a human, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a partner–all these things just felt like, apparently, I don’t matter here. I’m not showing up here at all.”

She says when those feelings are acknowledged, it too quickly devolves into being accused of being a“pick me” or beingthirsty.

Defining Terms

India pauses briefly to ask Erica to elaborate on what the male gaze is from her point of view.

Erica says that the male gaze isn’t just about men, but is a male-focused or male-centric gaze energetically. “It could also be quantified as someone that is simply seeking the sexual or otherwise some type of attention from the people that they are sexually or intimately attracted by or to.”

India adds, if you’re not familiar with the concept of the male gaze, that there is “a lot out there about…the way that video in movies or music videos or social media content, even clothes; that a lot of it is structured around and created in a sense to give the illusion that it is 100% for the male gaze.”

Erica also explains that a “pick me” is someone who wants to be prioritized because of some value that puts them above others in the same category. She says that it’s present in the class “she can’t love you like I love you,” song lyrics, or “don’t pick her, pick me,” stereotypical love songs.

India gives a portion of an Urban Dictionary definition that a pick me is a woman who goes out of their way to impress men and make themselves seem “not like other girls.”

Erica recalls a character from the TV series A Different World, who would wake up before her partner to make sure that he never saw her without a full face of makeup. India says she knows someone in real life who did that with their husband for over a year after they were married.

Erica says, “it feels like a gender version of American exceptionalism.”

Breaking Down “Pick Me”

India says that for her, she recalls an article from the Berkeley Beacon about how so many people leave “pick me” comments as a pejorative on others’ social media posts, and that “the phrase itself has really kind of sparked an internalized misogyny.”

Erica recalls a YouTube video by Fab Socialism breaking down “pick me” lyrics in Beyoncé songs. She says one of the things she appreciated that the creator brought up was that there isn’t anything inherently wrong with putting effort into your home, your appearance, etc, the problem is when those actions are used to put yourself above others.

It appears in songs written and performed by men as well, but in either case, Erica says, “it’s used to creating separation and it’s something that is basically creating and maintaining the competition. And that's not helpful.”

India adds that in a lot of these pop cultural settings, “pick me” also comes with tying your self-worth to whether or not someone else is attracted to or stays in a relationship with you.

“Attracting someone, getting them to be interested in you and keeping them interested in you through the things that you do…is like your entire life’s purpose and worth.”

And she says that can be part of the other side of “pick me,” that you’re not confident that you’re enough and need others’ approval, and that gets linked to being “thirsty.”

What Impacts Our Sense of Self

Bringing it back to Ayesha Curry’s comments about feeling invisible, Erica explains that Curry has been with her husband since they were in high school, and has had to navigate his explosive fame as an athlete while also navigating growing into adulthood.

“She’s thrust into something that she didn’t really ask for and then had to get everybody’s judgments about her…To have a moment of just being honest or transparent and then having it weaponized against you when you are simply trying to acknowledge where you are in a moment.”

In her own experience, Erica remembers the feeling of getting out of her car and going to work, walking down the street, and feeling “utterly invisible.”

The experience was “so disheartening and I felt so detached. It was challenging to be able to process, where do I fit? Where do I belong? How do I interact with the things around me? How do I feel?”

She continues, “it could be so easy to assume that it was about something intimate or sexual or about me needing to be validated by the group that I am attracted to. No, it wasn’t about that. I didn’t wanna be invisible to anyone. I didn’t wanna be invisible to myself.”

And she says there are points in time, like becoming a parent, where you do have to restructure your sense of self, and “you have to give people [going through that] the grace to understand that they are trying to figure out how to not be the balloon that floats away in this life.”

And when you don’t feel visible in your life, she says, “how is it that this is gonna be the time that I market business…How can I be visible there when I can’t figure out visibility day-to-day?”

India agrees that many people, when they’ve gone through major life changes–body transformations, difficult relationships, grief, loss, abuse–“these things can lead to periods of feeling invisible, period of feeling like we’re not even clear on our own identity for ourselves, let alone are able to have other people be clear on what that is.”

Erica adds that as important as it is to have your own sense of self, you can’t ignore how other people process you. “We are not siloed off from others in a way that that way that others process you just doesn’t matter at all.”

How others perceive you doesn’t have to dictate your sense of self, but it can’t be ignored and it can create a lot of noise when you’re considering your sense of self.

Becoming More Ourselves

India asks Erica what helped her transition from feeling invisible to acknowledging that she didn’t have to be that to herself, even before she concerned herself with how others perceived her.

Erica says that she first had to acknowledge that she was in a damaging situation and to figure out how to remove herself from it and then begin the journey of healing from it.

“I still have healing that I’m doing…This is a life journey…I’ve come a long way but it’s been a conscious effort to really be able to figure out how it is that I want to be for me, and it not to be focused on what anybody else wants or needs for me.”

She’s been more able to question whether she needs or wants to do things like wearing makeup, or dressing a certain way, or having her hair be a certain length or texture, etc. When those shoulds show up, she’s able to throw them out when they don’t apply to her or choose to participate on her own terms.

How she shows up in every aspect of her life has been impacted by doing that healing work and making those choices about how she wants to be visible.

“I am constantly deciding that I want to be more and more of who and how I am right now and I am not willing to quantify or minimize that for anyone else.”

India adds the reminder that visibility is a two-way street. As much as we need to be witnessed and supported, we have to offer that to others as well. 

“Everyone deserves to be witnessed. Everyone deserves to be visible. That is part of honoring your humanity.”

And needing to be witnessed and be visible doesn’t make you thirsty or desperate, and it’s not about attraction or sex, it “is a basic human need. Period.”

As a final call to action, India says to “ask yourself, how can I further witness the other people around me? And…where can I create some space to further witness myself and how awesome I am?”

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