How do I fit into my womanly shoes?

I can’t handle my level of importance at work. It stresses me out more than the work itself.

I’m 23 and I just want to make sarcastic liberal jokes, drink beer instead of wine, and wear tight skinny jeans and a t-shirt that says “Che.” I want to be that carefree girl with a pretty skirt and long hair, opinionated and cute. But my attempts always fail, especially at work.

Instead, I am surrounded by married people and couples in serious relationships; I hangout with men whose wives stay at home and girlfriends either dance or teach. I would be less of a weirdo if I just lie that I have a fiance; maybe he could work in banking.

I wear wrinkle-free dress shirts even though I look horrible in collared shirts. I am a mac user, but I carry my company PC in tumi laptop cases and seriously, when a tiny girl like me carries that “awe-inspiring” bag through the airport, no arist/hot frequent-flier guy wants to flirt with me. I try to read Obama’s autobiography to get their attention, it does not work.

“Older” people assume I have years of experience in their “industry” when really, I just started two months ago and am scared to death they are going to discover I know nothing. Oftentimes I allow this fear to overwhelm me.

I am quiet during meetings, it delivers a horrible message for me as a woman, especially an Asian woman. Silence is practically career suicide anyways. Everybody from the billionaires to the crooks (these days they are really the same thing) talk their way to success. But how do you talk about a topic you have no confidence in?

I feel out of place all the time; part of me thinks I don’t belong here and the other part thinks I should get over this and find my place. And the last part fears that when I do find my place, it will kill my passion in social change.

Sometimes, I think I don’t know how to be a woman in business because I don’t know how to be a woman period. But what woman knows how to be a woman?

I fail in feminism because I can’t help but feel that my co-worker’s girlfriends and wives really know how to be “women” and my mere presence in a place filled with men suggests that somehow I am not being women, enough.

The bottom line: I am uncomfortable in my own gender.

I have struggled for years to come to terms with my race and nationality. But gender is something I only started to notice within the past two years. How do you become a woman and what should a woman be? These are questions feminists have struggled for decades to answer and un-answer. It’s going to take me some time.

Occasionally I see an “older” business woman carrying her laptop case in the hotel or at the airport. She is almost always white, with short hair. She usually looks like she is in a hurry, sturtting away in her stilettos while talking on the phone. She is polished and her mannerism suggests a certain level of command and power. I want to talk to her and ask her if she was just as insecure as me starting out in this business. I want to ask if she is happily married. Or happy, period. But right now, I just can’t see myself in her shoes 10 years down the road.