At Ludus Love, we believe pleasure, confidence, and self-trust are deeply connected. We also believe that stories told honestly, without softening or shrinking, have the power to change how we see ourselves and each other. This piece is not light reading, and it is not meant to be. It is a raw, courageous reflection on what it means to find your voice in a world that often benefits from your silence. Bella Narain’s words invite us to sit with discomfort, recognise the cages we were taught to accept, and consider what becomes possible when a woman chooses herself. We’re honoured to share her story here, exactly as she tells it.
For a woman to be her most authentic self, we constantly hear the same buzzwords — bravery, confidence, authenticity.
Yet no one ever seems to put them together or truly explore what they mean.
So I put forth the following: the formula for authenticity.
The Formula for Authenticity
Authenticity is the discovery of bravery, which evolves into confidence — and from confidence, authenticity is born.
Bravery
Bravery is the ability to figure out who you truly are.
It’s how you respond to the world — using your intuition to discover what you’re drawn to in this life and having the courage to act on it.
Confidence
Confidence is the practice of bravery. It’s the muscle.
It develops when you keep showing up as yourself, even when the circumstances of your existence say you shouldn’t.
Confidence is the muscle memory of bravery. The repetition of courage until being yourself becomes a natural and present instinct.
You are probably reading this right and thinking this person is absolutely nuts. They are missing the point of cultural nuances, who do they even think they are. So if you continue reading I would like to introduce myself. If not, feel free to click this link and buy some vibrators and use code HOTANDFUNNY for an extra little discount at checkout.
Introducing Myself
Anyways,
Hi, I’m Manoella Narain, but please, call me Bella.
I’m a woman of many contradictions, but socially I’m known for my confidence.
By day, I run an estate agency called Chutzpah Property Connect (soon to be Chutzpah Properties).
By night, I’m a professional stand-up comedian and the founder of Hot Girl Comic Incorporated, a comedy club that features professional female comedians and raises money for different charities such as charities that support women and children.
Two Careers, One System
I’m often told that the fields I’ve chosen to pursue are very different from each other.
But when I explain that, actually, they’re not — they’re both male-dominated fields— the men don’t seem to like that answer. Male dominated fields no matter the sector always play by the same social rules. I like to call it Bro-rodery.
But I don’t pay my thoughts to it. It’s rare that the man’s listening anyway.
I recognize that, for most of us, we live in a patriarchal society.
So the true and difficult question becomes:
How do we access this seemingly simple formula — to be brave, confident, and authentic — when we live in a world where we are servants, expected to cater to the guest?
When I was getting my first degree at UCLA, I had a philosophy professor who refused to teach vague overviews of great thinkers.
He understood something deeper that the words that construct a single sentence can hold more power than an entire series of books.
So, let’s examine this one:
How do we access this seemingly simple formula: to be brave, confident, and authentic — when we live in a world where we are servants, expected to cater to the guest?
Here, I’m addressing a social obstacle: for a woman to become her most authentic self, she must not only break through the social conditioning embedded in her mind, but also overcome the external barriers intentionally placed in her way, barriers designed to prevent her authenticity from ever emerging into our shared reality.
The Cage
I moved to the United Kingdom in 2019, and one of the first cultural terms I learned was that women are referred to as birds, while men are called lads, blokes, or geezers.
Language, Dehumanisation, and Control
A bird is something that can be caged. Its value is determined not by itself, but by its observer.
Your life is then lived on someone else’s terms, and you’re expected to feel grateful for the confinement.
While you remain in the cage, you can never truly claim your life as your own.
And this is why a woman embracing her sexuality on her own terms is so dangerous to the patriarchal system, because in that moment, a man can no longer define her, touch her on demand, or control her narrative.
Her sexuality is for her pleasure, for herself. She is her first priority.
That is dangerous in patriarchy,
because her submission is his security…
and you have taken the key.
For men, there is no equivalent language of dehumanisation.
They retain their humanity and with it, the autonomy to define their place in the world.
And this is where the awakening begins.
If you are the bird, the next question becomes: where are you in relation to the cage?
To quote the Genie from the Disney cartoon Aladdin:
“Are you in… or are you out?”
There is no permanent divide between the inside and outside of the cage.
It is entirely possible to slip between both states of existence — where freedom lives outside, and submission waits inside the cage.
You only realize how deep you are inside the cage when you feel yourself begin to decay.
That decay appears every time you prioritize everyone who is not you.
In the act of deprioritizing yourself, you lose your sense of self.
Every time you apologize when no apology is owed — for being interrupted, for taking up space, for simply existing.
Every time you over-explain.
Every time you shrink yourself to fit expectations that were never designed with your freedom in mind.
Every time you don’t advocate for yourself for fear of being seen, heard, or truly listened to — you reinforce the cage by tightening the bars around your own voice.
The Moment I Became the Bitch
I often refer to the moment I awakened as the moment I became the bitch.
I was twenty-one years old when it happened.
I felt a sudden, spreading pain low in my stomach, radiating into my hip. I became light-headed, like I might faint,so I went to Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
I told the nurses exactly what I was feeling.
I waited for hours without any pain relief before I was finally given a bed beside other patients.
When a doctor arrived, a male doctor, he ordered a CT scan.
More hours passed. Still no pain management.
I didn’t say a word.
I stayed polite.
I stayed small.
I stayed inside the cage.
Then a nurse came to take my blood.
She did it incorrectly.
She left the needle inside my arm as blood exploded on my skin.
When I cried out in pain, she told me she would only remove the needle if I stopped crying.
I didn’t stop, and she walked away, leaving me bleeding until I passed out.
When I awoke hours later, the doctor returned and told me the pain had simply been “period pain” and that I should go home and take Midol.
Something inside me snapped.
For the first time in my life, I raised my voice:
“You think I came to the emergency room for period pain?”
He interrupted me — “I went to Harvard. We did a CT. It’s just your period.”
And that was the moment I became the bitch.
“I have been having periods since I was twelve.
This is NOT period pain — and you’re fired.”
The woman in the bed next to me heard me — and she stood up and fired him too.
Hours later, a female doctor arrived.
She reviewed my scans and said:
“I don’t know how he missed this — you have a fifteen-centimeter ruptured ovarian cyst. The pain you have been feeling are contraction like the one’s women in labour experience"
She then examined the woman beside me — who was suffering from kidney failure.
Two women.
Two medical emergencies.
Both dismissed — until we stopped being quiet.
It was my bravery — my decision to advocate for myself — that gave the other woman the courage to speak too.
In both of our cases, a doctor had been willing to let us remain in pain, to endure dismissal and gaslighting, rather than provide even the most basic medical care — like actually reading a CT scan.
I’m not a fan of Gandhi — but I do believe we have to become the example we want to see in the world.
And my bravery was born the moment I realized the system was willing to gaslight me and let me suffer simply because it was convenient for them.
In that moment, I was no longer just the bird outside the cage — I became the bitch.
When Advocacy Becomes Contagious
In that moment I described above, I tasted freedom.
Looking back, it wasn’t just the first time I spoke. It was the first time my advocacy created a positive impact instead of backlash.
By standing up for myself, I inspired another woman to speak too. In doing so, possibly helped save her life.
More often than not, when a woman begins to prioritize herself, the patriarchy is designed to shove her back into the cage and watch as her sense of self slowly decays.
As a result, you never fully get to know who you truly are because you are pressured into a mold that was never made for you.
Men will talk over you.
Humble you.
Deny you access to basic needs or desires.
Women conditioned by the same system may participate in the harm, acting from fear of what happens when one woman speaks out, because when one woman breaks free, it threatens the silence required to keep us all contained and “safe” from the backlash.
From Bravery to Confidence
That first act of bravery became something more, it became confidence.
Each time I chose to speak again, the courage of that single moment evolved into a steady belief in my own voice.
I learned that my identity is my voice and what I choose to do with that voice has the power to change lives.
I spent years decaying inside the cage, but every time I found the confidence to prioritize myself, I discovered new layers of who I was becoming.
Bravery awakened me but confidence is what began to reveal who I truly am.
The woman I have always been was there all along, she simply had to shatter the glass that wrapped around her in order to grow into herself.
The greatest act of rebellion a woman can make in her life is to prioritize herself.
When she stops sacrificing herself, the patriarchy no longer profits from her suffering. Whether she was ever conscious of it or not.
Comedy as Liberation
As a female comedian, I am given a stage, a spotlight, and a microphone.
And I do not take that lightly.
Comedy is one of the last art forms that requires an audience to actively listen,
to connect through shared experience,
to hear the words spoken aloud that they may not yet have had the courage to say themselves.
Comedy is not only a female experience, it is a human one.
But the industry remains overwhelmingly male-dominated, which means women’s stories have too often been edited, softened, or silenced before they’re ever allowed to reach the stage.
I am my most authentic self when I am on stage.
My voice dances with creativity and intelligence and humor becomes my language of authenticity.
When I am on stage, I transform into my highest self because I am literally elevated on a platform, and suddenly, without warning, I am no longer confined by the social order of the cage. I am free from the cage that locked me.
When I am on stage and I am using my voice, the magic happens — where I am being listened to and acknowledged through laughter. My existence is being acknowledged in its highest form of authenticity.
I created Hot Girl Comic Incorporated because I want to inspire other women to channel their confidence and break free from their cage. Just as the patriarchy has a ripple effect on men, women, and the social system as a whole, Hot Girl Comic Incorporated is making waves too. When I book female comics who are brave, confident, and authentic, they show the audience who they could be — if they dared to be brave, even for a moment.
I wanted to create a platform where women are celebrated for their confidence and are given space where others can appreciate them existing in their highest state of authenticity.
✨Written with love by Bella Narain and published in collaboration with Ludus Love.
This post is part of our ongoing collaboration to bring education and pleasure-positive resources to more people.
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