One of my Facebook friends linked this article by Lisa Bloom on her page and it really got my blood boiling.
I need to look at the actual survey and methodology and blah blah blah but what Ms. Bloom mentions blew my little mind.
Twenty-five percent of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Twenty-three percent would rather lose their ability to read than their figures.
I stole these fact directly from her thus the indent.
Seriously. What the hell is wrong with women and society in general that almost one quarter of our women would rather not be able to read than be fat? What did we do to ourselves?
Let get this out of the way, I know it is dangerous and costly to be overweight. I know it is a serious national health problem and I know I need to fix myself. I got that, okay. Don’t be that douche that points it out. First, we all know that it bad for you to be fat. It is like telling a smoker that smoking is bad for them. Saying something does not inform people, it just makes you seem like a self-righteous, pretentious ass. The women who would rather be illiterate than fat are not concerned about their health, in fact they probably tan, they are being shallow.
I am ashamed for us women. What are we allowing? What are we teaching our daughters? What are we teaching our sons? I think women all over the country should be outraged that so many of us consider our only real asset is our looks. How can anyone be okay with that?
Its okay that you are dumb sweetie as long as you stay hot as long as you can and make sure that when you start to “lose your looks” your husband is willing to pay you good alimony.
Are you freaking kidding me?
When I think of all of the women that have struggled in the generations before us so we could be more then just beings made for our reproductive organs and the ego boost our owners get from having us. This article makes me so sad for those women’s rights crusaders who have to see it.
This is no longer the man keeping us down. This is us. We are allowing ourselves to be judged purely on our looks and we are refusing to stand up for ourselves. We buy into the mindset that a women cannot do well in corporate America unless she looks a certain way. (It is just the way of the world…. BULLSHIT! Stand up and rage against it.) Feminist has become a dirty word. We think it means some crazy woman who hates men and wants to destroy our femininity. I felt the same way. This article changed this for me.
Screw it.
My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I believe I have the right to breed as much or as little as I want. I have the right to be paid as much as an equal male counterpart. I believe that I am not the weaker sex, I believe I just have different strengths than men. I believe that my value is not in my looks but in my brains and my heart. I believe women have a responsibility to their world to make it judge them on their actual value. I believe we have a responsibility to think. I believe we have to stand up in big and small ways and shake our fists at injustices. I believe we should stop shunning and judging and start caring and supporting. I believe we need to love ourselves for ourselves and surround ourselves with people that love us for who we are and not what our jacked up society thinks we should be.
Stand up. Get mad. Tell your daughters, nieces, younger female friends to have self-respect and to demand respect in return.
My name is Selina Scott and I am a feminist. I am fat. I am smart and funny and caring and loyal and hopeful and when I smile the world smiles back at me. I believe my value has nothing to do with my looks. If you cannot get past the outside, then I cannot help you.
3 comments
I read that article after you posted it and am tempted to get the book. It’s really frustrating, as a teacher, to know this stuff, and to know that it goes all the way into elementary school. I regularly hear kids who are perfectly healthy-looking complain to their friends that they’re fat. We’ve got 6th graders dressing up as naughty nurses for Halloween (that ended dressing up for the holiday at our school – not blatantly, but they haven’t been allowed since). We’ve got teenagers actively trying to have babies. And the best thing I can do is a teacher is tell them that they’re smart and funny and I’m proud of them. That’s never enough. It’s what we see on TV, on the internet, from people like Jessica Simpson, who is a very smart woman and purposefully acts like an idiot because it sells, and from their parents. Some parents may not be actively supporting this mindset, but they are still watching the effects of it on their daughters and doing nothing. I had a conversation with a student the other day about something political. This person expressed an opinion that differed from mine, and it frustrated me, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. So I asked them to explain their position. They couldn’t. I encouraged them to look at a couple of short websites that explained my position better than I could and then see if they still held the same opinion. They replied that they didn’t feel like reading anything. People across the country are forming opinions that make them look like idiots because they’re too lazy to do any research and think for themselves. It’s the reason we’re so divided. This problem of vanity versus intelligence is not just limited to females, although they are what makes it more frustrating because of all the hard work women have done for generations to give us the freedom to do what we choose. It’s just one big giant face-palm.
Hi. My name is Amanda and I am a Feminist:)
Thanks for directing me to that book, it sounds infuriatingly awesome. To play my ‘ol Women’s historian card, I too think there have been too many back slides in the advances for and of women. And much of that has come from the mindset that, “well, I can do what I want because I am a woman” (just to paraphrase some of the craptastic excuses for idiotic behavior that I’ve heard women at the universities and in the world say). While that IS partially true, I would like those who disagree with my version of feminism to at the VERY LEAST have an original thought in their head and something to back up their beliefs.
Okay, I’m gonna go watch keeping up with the kardashians…
brinkka2011 says: thank your for your post and the rest. you know..