Harnidh Kaur on naming invisible labour in The Girls Are Not Fine

The modern woman is an expert in the art of being “fine,” but that outward composure often masks a much heavier internal reality. In The Girls Are Not Fine, Harnidh Kaur explores the invisible labour and emotional math that women perform daily just to fit into rooms that weren’t built for them. She is clear that this isn’t a traditional guide to fixing one’s life. Instead, she describes the book as a “vocabulary” and a “transfer of language for the things women carry but rarely get to name.”

The impetus for the book came from her own time in the corporate world, where she was often dismissed despite her seniority. “I started the WTF fund with Nikhil Kamat when I was 28,” she recalls. “It took me so long to be taken seriously. There were rooms I would enter where people thought I was an analyst… It used to amuse me to a level, but I started collating these funny experiences.” This sense of displacement sparked a deeper inquiry into the female experience. “I thought that someone will call me a fraud,” she admits. “I was trying to understand why I feel like that and I had the feeling that maybe other women feel this way too.” She realised that even for those at the top, the feeling of being an outsider was universal: “How is it possible that every ‘high achieving’ woman feels like an imposter?”

Read more at: https://www.grazia.co.in/lifestyle/the-girls-are-not-fine-and-harnidh-kaur-is-finally-saying-it-out-loud-15644.html