Does anyone else ever get kinda depressed by the “all women are beautiful” rhetoric? Not that I’m saying people aren’t, but it’s kind of fucked up to me that as a society we have to feel we’re beautiful in order to feel valid in any way. Like if we aren’t pretty it doesn’t matter if we save the world from exploding while curing cancer while riding around on a rocket surfboard, we’re still not good enough.

I remember reading an article where women talked about times they felt beautiful and they were listing times like “when I gave birth to my child” or “when I got my doctorate” or “when I climbed mt. kilimanjaro” and it’s like “why is ‘beautiful’ the only word we have to describe feeling good about ourselves? Why is the feeling of value so innately linked to our physical appearance? Why isn’t okay for a woman to be ugly ever? Like men can joke about being ‘ugly fucks’ or whatever, and like no one reassures them because when they say that they’re not saying ‘I’m inherently worthless’ they’re saying something equivalent to ‘I sure am bad at knitting, lol’ and why is that?”