What's wrong, honey?

(Pre-Script: The natural beauty of this post is enhanced when the song, " Closer To Love," #54 on the playlist, is playing in the background while it is being read. So please go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (...still waiting...)

Who has the strength to be a woman anymore?

I am not strong enough.

The short story is that I have decided to stop reading magazines. They are not for the faint of heart. My heart is not strong enough to withstand the grief with which they bombard me. They make me feel bad about myself, and discontent when I realise that I want a whole bunch of stuff I cannot afford...on way more than financial terms. Why would I want to subject myself to that type of torture daily, weekly, monthly, when I was not feeling discontented or bad about myself before I opened the magazine? I dream of a world where make up and products are FUN, where experimenting with hair color and outfits is FUN, an expression of whim or whimsy, of how I am feeling that day, not something that affects my value as a human being from one day to the next.

One problem with the magazines is that the girls pictured therein are either 15 or airbrushed, or most likely, both, with every possible flaw edited out, and this is to what real world women are comparing themselves, even as each year they are growing another year past 15, another life experience past airbrushed.

...but wait, there is Botox, honey.

...but wait, there are things you can inject into your lips, darling.

...but wait, you can be cut open and have anything you don't like removed, anything you wish for added, my little love dove.

My hackles start to stand on end when purely cosmetic procedures for cosmetic sake are becoming more and more clinical and medically stale. When what was once fun and artistic starts to become standard and medical, it is no longer seen as a fun and artistic option, but is now seen as a necessity. The more women who have medical procedures done to them for cosmetic reasons, the more it becomes unacceptable if you are a woman who has not had a procedure. It does not always matter what the procedure is, but you surely have to have SOMETHING done, even a chin implant or SOMEthing, because no one is born with perfect everything, and perfection is becoming more and more not just a lofty ideal, but a necessity, the only acceptable way the world can stand to look at you. Oh, and This Makes Me Angry! (Said she, with a frown line marring her otherwise unruffled brow.)

It makes me angry when I see a commercial for eyelash growth, in case my eye lashes are "inadequate." (I believe this is the word they use) A commercial is telling me that yet another thing might be wrong with me that I had not yet considered.

...BUT, dear, it's okay, because we have this product here, and yes, it is medical, so see your doctor about it, YOUR DOCTOR ABOUT YOUR INADEQUATE EYELASHES, DO YOU HEAR ME, PEOPLE??? And then get this procedure done, oh, even though it may cause blindness. It's a small price to pay on your own personal road to perfection. WHERE DOES IT END??? IT doesn't ever end.

I dare you to find one woman who is content with herself, comfortable in her skin, not striving, striving, striving, not feeling inadequate in at least a lot of ways, when nothing is really wrong with her. All of her parts are working just fine. All of her eyelashes are the length they have always been. Her body type is the type it has always been. Her bone structure is the same one that has supported her frame for her entire life.

Here is what I think: I think that having yourself cut open and having unnatural things placed inside your self is not a good thing. Silicone does not grow naturally in or on a human body. Having your bones shaved down to fit a certain size ideal in a certain society or time period is not a good thing.

Botox injections are actually a form of a toxin that can kill you. My baby daughter was infected with Infant Botulism and hospitalized in the Intensive Care unit at the hospital for 8 days. When we brought her home, she had to be fed through a tube in her nose for a month. She was 2 months old. It's the same stuff that is in Botox injections. It's a muscle relaxant. But guess what, people, your muscles were meant to move. Even the muscles in your face. It is the purpose for which they were created.
It's one thing to brush on make up that you wash off at the end of the day. Elective cosmetic surgeries and injections are self mutilation in one of it's most highly applauded and socially acceptable forms.

With these standards getting higher and tighter the closer you get to perfect, each woman is an island on her own, against each and every other woman in the world. It's lonely. You can never rest, you can never rest because you must stay on this formula, this plan, to spend more and more and more money and time on being less and less and less okay.
So let's all keep trying to look more and more like each other, let's all keep correcting the things that were never wrong with God's design for your face or body, let's keep getting these things done to us, and let's see what it does to the next generations, how it weakens them. What messages do they receive when their noses do not grow to match the perfect noses that their mothers have had surgically fitted, but are instead the noses that their DNA said she was supposed to have? How can you love on your daughter what you determined was not okay on yourself? Better set up the fund now, the Forever For Every Generation Paying Through The Nose For The Nose Jobs Of All Of Your Descendants fund. (or, FFEGPTTNFTNJOAOYD.)That's what life's all about, right? RIGHT?

The perfect ideal of looking exactly completely just like everyone else?*

-XOXO,

*Have you noticed that in the financially wealthiest circles, the women tend to look the most exactly alike? Doesn't it ever get boring?