Beauty, and why I no longer give a fuck.
First of all - Sorry I haven't posted. I have a bit more material, honest, but I've also been flooded with things to do and I'll be posting on and off until the summer because of exams, revision and all sorts of less-than-fun stuff.
I came to a bit of a realisation today - a realisation that came 16 years too late, but at least it dawned on me.
I have never been a lover of make-up. I wear dresses (I have a particular weakness for summer dresses), but that's about it in terms of my femininity. High-heeled shoes look good, but I like not falling over. For a while, when I was younger, I had this bound up with notions of purity and virtue - I was also hellishly insecure about not having sex, about my looks, about my worth as a person...pretty much everything. It's not something that I particularly like about myself - not something I could easily or ever forgive myself for - but it's probably more worth my while to change for the better and focus on fixing things in the present than it is to build a time machine and tell my teenage self what's what.
I am also fuckugly, as I've said numerous times. I get called out on this quite a lot, particularly by boys and men (interestingly enough, it doesn't stop the sexual harassment, rape threats and misogynist power games I have to put up with even as a cis white girl), particularly boys and men who like to announce this to my face as though I haven't already looked in a mirror. One decided to jump out at me and say this.
I walked on and pondered how a woman's sense of worth is bound up with her physical appearance; to the kyriarchy, we are objects, not people, to be judged on aesthetic appeal.
I came to the conclusion that I couldn't give a flying fuck. I still live under a kyriarchy. As a woman, I'm still objectified and oppressed. Doesn't mean I have to go along with that or fall for its mental traps.
There is more to me than my looks - a lot more to me than my looks. There are my words, there are my deeds; there are my thoughts, there are my emotions; there are my attitudes to life, my interests, the people I care about and who care about me. All those mean so much more to me, now that I have them, than my outward appearance - it ranks very low down on any list of things I care about.
I'm not perfect. Having my appearance insulted still stings a little - but I can overpower that with cold, hard logic and two fingers stuck up at the kyriarchy.
I came to a bit of a realisation today - a realisation that came 16 years too late, but at least it dawned on me.
I have never been a lover of make-up. I wear dresses (I have a particular weakness for summer dresses), but that's about it in terms of my femininity. High-heeled shoes look good, but I like not falling over. For a while, when I was younger, I had this bound up with notions of purity and virtue - I was also hellishly insecure about not having sex, about my looks, about my worth as a person...pretty much everything. It's not something that I particularly like about myself - not something I could easily or ever forgive myself for - but it's probably more worth my while to change for the better and focus on fixing things in the present than it is to build a time machine and tell my teenage self what's what.
I am also fuckugly, as I've said numerous times. I get called out on this quite a lot, particularly by boys and men (interestingly enough, it doesn't stop the sexual harassment, rape threats and misogynist power games I have to put up with even as a cis white girl), particularly boys and men who like to announce this to my face as though I haven't already looked in a mirror. One decided to jump out at me and say this.
I walked on and pondered how a woman's sense of worth is bound up with her physical appearance; to the kyriarchy, we are objects, not people, to be judged on aesthetic appeal.
I came to the conclusion that I couldn't give a flying fuck. I still live under a kyriarchy. As a woman, I'm still objectified and oppressed. Doesn't mean I have to go along with that or fall for its mental traps.
There is more to me than my looks - a lot more to me than my looks. There are my words, there are my deeds; there are my thoughts, there are my emotions; there are my attitudes to life, my interests, the people I care about and who care about me. All those mean so much more to me, now that I have them, than my outward appearance - it ranks very low down on any list of things I care about.
I'm not perfect. Having my appearance insulted still stings a little - but I can overpower that with cold, hard logic and two fingers stuck up at the kyriarchy.
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