I still can’t quite escape the shit that makes me feel so bad about myself. The Beauty Myth. The biggest annoyance is that it wants me , and every woman, to be something we’re not. It’s not about what we have it’s about faking what we don’t and hiding what we do.
If you had to sum up the fashion of this city (and I suppose the western world in general) it would be ‘fake’ and I suppose fashion and beauty as a whole are all geared towards the fake; fake hair, fake nails, fake breasts, fake tan.
Even fashion shows about learning to accept yourself and ‘loving your curves’ like ‘How to Look Good Naked’ are full of control pants and all sorts of scary underwear designed to hide things.
I’m inclined to think that now blatant, obvious misogyny is (mostly) frowned upon we are being lead into a more subtle culture of self hatred. If the world can’t openly hate women it can try it’s best to make us hate ourselves. I KNOW it’s all bullshit and I try to ignore it as much as I can, but I’m weak. I have days where I hate myself and I feel never good enough, I feel like an outcast, a reject for not fitting into this bullshit unobtainable ideal that we’ve been fed. It’s all very well to chastise women for getting upset over some crap in a fashion magazine; but this is everywhere. If you own a tv, you get the adverts beamed at you, if you walk along the street the billbaords are throwing it in your face. It’s hard to ignore.
In a culture where something like 90% of women hate thier bodies and that this is seen as NORMAL, it’s seen as normal that we’re expected to watch what we eat lest we get too fat for that dress, NORMAL that we wax pluck and shave every inch, NORMAL that we adorn ourselves with fakery. The only thing that isn’t considered normal is that we be ourselves, that we learn to love those bits that don’t fit in. That we just accept ourselves as we are and that we aren’t constalty striving to ‘better’ ourselves by buying into a whole host of scary creams, needles, scalples and diets.
Ever since I read ‘The Beauty Myth’ as a teenager I decided to opt out of this as much as I can. I’ve been happier since I stopped trying to be something I’m not and started to love what I already am. Yes sometimes I wear make up, sometimes I shave my legs. I can’t be brave enough to forgo these things entirely, but when I do it I don’t think it makes me ‘more’ beautiful or that I am abhorrent without it. Yes make up can be bad, but it can also just be fun. I don’t NEED it, yet I am aware that as much as I try I still have many self esteem issues and I am not brave enough to let go of everything yet.
That’s my incoherent rant of the day done.
