beautifuldreamer

A SYTYCB entry

As much as I want feminism to bring women together, there are definitely some women who still use catty, covert methods to bring other women down because of their own insecurities and flaws. Add the patriarchal bullshit girls are fed from day one and you’re living in a society entrenched in stereotypes about women that, well, to be frank, manifest in startlingly hideous ways, and where many of the perpetrators are women themselves.  Rachel Simmons’ Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls speaks to this phenomena of bullying among girls who channel their aggression through gossip and exclusion, waging psychological warfare against their own sex.  I’ve been forced to explore that deep down within my own feminist soul, I too have been guilty of being competitive, driven and aggressive, and the very qualities that have served to make me a “good feminist” (although I am against promoting such a such label) have also been used counter productively to make me a “bad” one.

Don’t get me wrong. I try my hardest to practice what I preach. When I see a beautiful woman, my automatic thoughts are, “she’s beautiful,” and I try to leave it at that and not enter the vicious cycle of  I try not to feel threatened or insecure. I smile and go about my business as I should (and always would I had never ever been fed by rampant media garbage about ideal notions of beauty).  However, I won’t deny that at times something stops me and makes me play the comparison ...