Whut up.
First of all, I know I said I wasn't going to update for another two weeks, until my exams were over. But second of all, I'm a big fat liar. Third of all, something has come to my attention.
Alrighty.
I'm a teenager. I'm also a girl. I love red lipstick, pencil the arches into my eyebrows, and wear copious amounts of eyeliner. I wear foundation to cover my red cheeks, and throw a bitchfit when it does nothing but cover my freckles. And you know what? If I feel cute, I'm gonna take a God-Damn selfie.
(This is probably a let's get angry about but whatever.)
(This is also gonna get kinda deep on a personal level which I've done like maybe four times before in my life so bare with me.)
I've struggled with cripplingly low self-esteem for... Oooh... Let's say since I learned what "pretty" was. Which was when I was like... Four. I've never felt particularly pretty, or conventionally attractive in any way. Which is probably because I'm not conventionally attractive. (For a point of reference on the impossibly high standards I set myself to, I'd put the totally fantastic (both inside and out) Jessica Alba up there.) I've got wonky teeth, I'm pale, short and have ludicrously red cheeks all the time. I've grown up feeling awkward, overweight and unattractive. My self esteem and self confidence have only started picking up (mildly) in the past couple of months. (You can actually track it - it's gone from like 1 selfie every three months to 7 in a month.)
I'm not unique. I'm growing up in a generation where girls are told that being attractive means being skinny and fit and going to the gym every day and eating kale and greens. I'll admit, this is a hell of a lot better than the heroin chic aesthetic of the 90's, as this is actually healthy, but when you're someone with self-esteem three feet lower than rock bottom, and 'healthy' is automatically associated with skinny, the perspective of going to a gym with twenty Hemsworth-esque types is overly daunting.
I'm in a society of teenage girls where we're plagued with not being good enough. Not living up to the photoshopped, makeup-ed expectations of the best and the most beautiful of Hollywood.
But that's not the worst part of this. The worst part is that the expectation is never absolute. Society wants us to be pretty, but calls us shallow when we obsess over our eyebrows, and feel sick after seeing the scale tick up one more notch. Society wants us to be smart, but mocks us when we turn up to class yawning, with dark, sleepless circles under our eyes and our hair unbrushed from a night of studying. Society wants us to be party girls, sexy and promiscuous, but when we get drunk they tut and turn away quietly. They want us to be meek and modest, but when we stay virgins they laugh and call us prude. And all of this is contributing to a damaging psyche. A psyche that says "whatever you do it's not going to be right, so don't do anything at all."
One of the more disgusting and ludicrous ideas that are expected of girls, is that they've got to be modest. We've got to deny compliments and say "Oh no, I'm really not, but thank you." We've got to stop taking pictures of ourselves, because that's obviously a deep, dark sin for which we're going to burn in the depths of Hell for.
Cus apparently, accepting compliments, and going "Thanks!" And feeling good about yourself is basically akin to crawling into bed with Satan himself. It's the mentality that keeps girls from feeling good about themselves. It's the mentality that prompts the response, "Oh, I'm really not." It's the mentality that still stops me from accepting a compliment, whether it be on my hair, my makeup, my face or even my clothes without twisting awkwardly and wanting to crawl into a hole.
And then there's selfies.
You know who says selfies are bad? Crusty old men who hit their prime in 1854 and are just looking for someone to bitch at and inflict pain on. Just because you're old and miserable, doesn't mean you have to suck the fun out of my life too.
Of course, the argument against selfies is "it's making girls too vain!" "they just care about their appearance!" "they'll stop paying attention in school!"
Because obviously a person's intelligence is directly linked to how attractive/unattractive they are.
I'm gonna share a little thing with y'all. I've got two things that I want to do with my life. I either want to be an actress, or a political consultant. And lemme tell you something, if you tell me that a person who looks like this:
Cannot also be interested in the deep, intrinsic workings of politics and the next five years of her country, you are fucking wrong. Because that is a solid A grade photo of me. And you know what I've spent the past week of my life doing? I've spent it poring over My Nazi Germany and Crusades work, revising St Thomas Aquinas' fifth way in Summa Theologica and staying up to check exit polls as they come in. There is literally no correlation between being attractive and being intelligent. You can do both. And you know what? I took that selfie cus I felt cute. Six months ago, would I have done that? No. But watching the likes go up on this photo (and any photo I post of myself) makes me feel a little better. It makes me think "Hey, shit, these people actually think I'm not hideous." So take your puritan, selfie-hating ass away from me. Because I might be a shallow, over confident, egotistical bitch for thinking I look good. But I'd rather pick that, any day, than go back to being the self loathing girl who reduced herself to one meal a day and spent hours looking at weight loss pills, and diet pills, and pulling and pushing at her face to try and look more like a Hollywood A-lister.
So yeah. I don't hate selfies. And I don't think the girls who take them are doing anything other than appreciating themselves.
And there is nothing wrong with that.
As always, stay safe, and remember,
I'm with you till the end of the line, folks ♥
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Woman Crush of the Week: Allison Janney
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Movie of the Week: Valentine's Day
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