"She has a Great Personality"
One of today's daily Spark videos is this:
www.sparkpeople.com/resource/dailyspark-videos-detail.asp?video=54
(This is a gender normative post because I'm straight and these are my experiences. I understand that people in other situations have other or similar experiences, but I'm using 'men' and 'women' to reflect my own experiences only. ) I never played with Barbie when I was growing up, but I was surrounded, as we all are, with impossible beauty standards. Television shows mocked the women and girls who looked like me and glorified the strikingly beautiful. The men and boys around me were taught by their dads to try for a woman 'out of their league' (translation: physically beautiful) because they could get lucky. They weren't taught to look at the women and girls who weren't getting all the attention because their knowledge and kindness and abilities and skills were interesting and fun to be around. Instead they were taught to value certain physical characteristics, some impossibly difficult to obtain, above any other traits. The girls and women who were beautiful sometimes had those other fantastic traits, but sometimes they didn't. It didn't matter. They had all the boys and all the men interested in them just because they were beautiful.
To this day, after years and years of trying to tell myself I'm beautiful because that's what we're supposed to aspire to, I know I'm not. Before you all jump in to say, "oh, no, you're beautiful! Everyone is beautiful!" let me explain that I disagree that everyone is beautiful. Everyone has something beautiful to share with the world, but we are all different. Some are beautiful, some are talented, some are kind, some are intelligent. . . I wish I lived in a world where beauty was valued, but only as one of many traits that we find valuable. Why must I be beautiful if I am not? Can't I be charming? Graceful? Giving and loving? and have those traits be praised?
There is a child, Adalia Rose, who has progeria. It is a disorder that makes her look very strange. Google her. People post on her FaceBook page that she's beautiful. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I don't think she's beautiful. I think she's charming, clever, interesting, funny, and when she dances on a video for us it makes my soul warm just watching her. I think all of that far outweighs what she looks like. She is simply wonderful.
That's what I want to aspire to -- I want to be wonderful. I want to be fun and funny and up for adventure. I want to be fit and healthy and a great mom.
I wish for a day to come when 'She has a great personality' isn't a euphemism for 'she's ugly.'
(Cross posted from my SparkPeople blog)
www.sparkpeople.com/resource/dailyspark-videos-detail.asp?video=54
(This is a gender normative post because I'm straight and these are my experiences. I understand that people in other situations have other or similar experiences, but I'm using 'men' and 'women' to reflect my own experiences only. ) I never played with Barbie when I was growing up, but I was surrounded, as we all are, with impossible beauty standards. Television shows mocked the women and girls who looked like me and glorified the strikingly beautiful. The men and boys around me were taught by their dads to try for a woman 'out of their league' (translation: physically beautiful) because they could get lucky. They weren't taught to look at the women and girls who weren't getting all the attention because their knowledge and kindness and abilities and skills were interesting and fun to be around. Instead they were taught to value certain physical characteristics, some impossibly difficult to obtain, above any other traits. The girls and women who were beautiful sometimes had those other fantastic traits, but sometimes they didn't. It didn't matter. They had all the boys and all the men interested in them just because they were beautiful.
To this day, after years and years of trying to tell myself I'm beautiful because that's what we're supposed to aspire to, I know I'm not. Before you all jump in to say, "oh, no, you're beautiful! Everyone is beautiful!" let me explain that I disagree that everyone is beautiful. Everyone has something beautiful to share with the world, but we are all different. Some are beautiful, some are talented, some are kind, some are intelligent. . . I wish I lived in a world where beauty was valued, but only as one of many traits that we find valuable. Why must I be beautiful if I am not? Can't I be charming? Graceful? Giving and loving? and have those traits be praised?
There is a child, Adalia Rose, who has progeria. It is a disorder that makes her look very strange. Google her. People post on her FaceBook page that she's beautiful. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I don't think she's beautiful. I think she's charming, clever, interesting, funny, and when she dances on a video for us it makes my soul warm just watching her. I think all of that far outweighs what she looks like. She is simply wonderful.
That's what I want to aspire to -- I want to be wonderful. I want to be fun and funny and up for adventure. I want to be fit and healthy and a great mom.
I wish for a day to come when 'She has a great personality' isn't a euphemism for 'she's ugly.'
(Cross posted from my SparkPeople blog)