Tag: body image

Beauty

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?”

Cosmetic Procedures Wishlist

bimbotoysforprettyboys:

  • Another breast augmentation (800ccs)
  • Fat transfer to ass (from arms and stomach)
  • laser on my chest and back for anti-aging.
  • Laser on my hands for anti-aging
  • Laser on face for anti-aging
  • laser everywhere to even skin tone but especially legs.
  • Hair extensions (tape in)
  • Lash extensions
  • Brow lift
  • Mini lift for nasolabial lines
  • Cool sculpting on my ankles to remove a tiny bit of fat that bothers me there
  • Foot prettying up surgery
  • Laser hair removal (legs, underarms, genitals)
  • Latisse
  • Surgery around my eyes to remove the tiny little wrinkles on the lower lid and make them look bigger.
  • More lip fillers
  • Tiny adjustment to my jawline to make it less round.
  • Whatever would give me a more hourglass figure

Seriously Though

The fact that women are told to feel “proud” of their bodies is actually creepy (just like telling them to feel ashamed of their bodies is creepy) because it goes back to that whole “beauty = goodness” thing and like making women morally responsible for their appearances innate or otherwise.

Your looks just sort of are, they’re not something to be ashamed of or proud of, you can like them, you can be pleased with them, but pride implies responsibility and implying women are responsible for how they happen to look is gross.

Maybe my attitude of neutrality towards my unmade up/unplastic surgeried face is weird

But like I’m not ashamed of it, I don’t hate it.  From what I understand I got pretty lucky as faces go, but like also I’m not proud of it because I didn’t do it.  Like regardless of how nice my unmodified face is, I still didn’t do it.  Like if I’d inherited a Da Vinci painting or whatever I wouldn’t be proud of that painting cause it’s not a painting I did.  Like I mean I’d feel pretty damn lucky to have inherited a treasure like that, but there wouldn’t be pride involved.

My face is something that happened without my involvement and the way women are made to feel responsible for their appearances is weird and fucked up.

Here’s The Thing That I Think Is Really Disingenuous and Fucked About “everyone is beautiful” stuff

Is that it attempts to resolve a problem by denying a problem, if that makes sense?  Like “everyone is beautiful” is a nice sentiment but at the same time, we all know, that no, there’s a social standard and no not everyone fits it, there is a standard of what beauty is and that’s undeniable.  There is “more beautiful” and “less beautiful” according to the shitty standard imposed by society.

And so while I can see beauty in everyone, I still know the standard is there, pretending that “no everyone does fit the standard” doesn’t help or pretending that the standard isn’t there doesn’t deconstruct the standard.

It’s still there, looming over everything and I think honestly it will be until we abolish the idea that beautiful is something you have to be in order to be good or valuable.

Admittedly a lot of my body issues are control ones, I don’t necessarily want to be beautiful, but there is a specific look I want, a look that’s exaggerated, extreme and over the top and the idea of not being in control of my appearance freaks me mightily the fuck out.

However also I currently know that I fit the standard of beauty rather well, and that there have been times in my life (significant portions of my formative years) where I did not fit the standard, and I know how differently people treated me.

Sometimes it feels like beauty is all I have because when I wasn’t beautiful no one heard me or paid me any attention whatsoever and now?  people do.  I’m still fundamentally the same person and yet?  I get treated with so much more patience, compassion, respect and general kindness than I did when I wasn’t pretty and that’s fucked up

You Know I Don’t Like Discourse Like “The media distorts our image of beauty” or “gives us impossible standards”

because it implies that women are supposed to be beautiful regardless and that it is reasonable to demand that all women conform to a standard of attractiveness so long as that standard is deemed “reasonable”

Like what’s important is that women are considered worthless when they don’t live up to certain standards of physical attractiveness, not how “reasonable” or “attainable” those standards are.  Having the standards at all is the problem

I’d really like to see a feminist-y lady artist draw someone with my body type

Like I know my body type (fake boobs, tiny waist, skinny) is really privileged, but it’s usually only drawn by comics dudes who are drawing one handed and kind of hyper sexualizing it.

Like I’m not complaining about artists choosing to primarily draw women of other shapes cause like those shapes don’t get drawn enough or presented as good or appealing enough at all, but I’d still like to commission a piece of art from like a body positive artist to draw my over the top porn barbie body and just like see my body represented in a non-hypersexualized way