In 1981 Actress Lily Tomlin portrayed a 1970/80s housewife in The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Her character, Pat, lives in the hyper-marketed suburb of Tasty Meadows with over saturation and where over consumption is king with diet drinks and harsh heavy household cleaners the focus. Pat shrinks because her body reacts adversely to an overlapping cocktail of everyday commercial items, from cleaning fluids to her husband’s experimental advertising perfume. She is like an inch tall in my memory of the film.
Pat embodies the 1950s/1960s “American Dream” housewife idea. Staying home in a station wagon while her husband works in advertising, which the film reveals as suffocating. She also was largely overlooked. Minimized, and pandered to. So, she shrunk. Literally.
“I’m tired of living in a world built for giants!”
Pat Kramer (Lily Tomlin)
As a metaphor, Pat’s physical shrinking mirrors how women in a patriarchal society are socially minimized, silenced, and expected to take up less space. Her journey in this movie tracks a gradual pushback against being treated as a domestic accessory or a “doll”, culminating in her reclaiming agency despite her size.
I was 15 in 1981. I loved this movie. Now, I see the entire film differently. I see it the way it was meant to be seen and “get” the message loud and clear.
There comes a moment when you realize you have been making yourself smaller
just to make other people comfortable.
You quiet your voice. You hide the parts of yourself that feel too different, too sensitive, too passionate, too magical. You question your dreams because someone else doesn’t understand them. You bend and adjust and compromise until you barely recognize the person looking back at you.
But you were never meant to live that way.
You were not placed on this earth to fit perfectly into someone else’s expectations of who you should be.
There is a kind of freedom that comes when you stop asking, “Will they understand me?” and begin asking, “Am I being true to myself?”
Not everyone will understand your path. Some people may only be comfortable with the version of you that asks for less, dreams smaller, or stays within the boundaries they have created for you. That doesn’t mean you need to change. Sometimes their discomfort is simply a reflection of what they are not ready to see.
Growth can be uncomfortable. Not only for us, but for the people watching us grow.
So let yourself take up space.
Let yourself be curious. Let yourself be passionate. Let yourself be a little strange, a little wild, a little witchy, a little whimsical. Follow the things that make your spirit feel alive.
You don’t have to become less bright so someone else doesn’t feel blinded by your light.
You don’t have to shrink who you are to make someone else comfortable with their own shadows.
Your life is yours to live. And perhaps the most beautiful form of self-love is realizing that you don’t have to abandon yourself just to be accepted by someone else.
Stay soft. Stay grounded. Stay true.
And let yourself become everything you were always meant to be. ✨🌙
Reflection:
Check in now with where you are at. Ask yourself where you may have been making yourself smaller for the comfort of others. What part of you has been waiting to be seen, heard, or welcomed?
You don’t have to change everything at once. Sometimes reclaiming yourself begins with one small permission:
