"GIRLS AREN'T BORN HATING THEMSELVES, WE TEACH THEM"

So a few weeks ago I got into an unexpected argument on fb, which lead to a few things. First this really long response that I wrote below, and felt I should turn into a blog post to share with everyone, and it also made me re-evaluate having a fb page. For almost the last year I've gone through this conflict as to if I should just delete my page, because I feel like fb can be very fake and showy and I'm not really interested in that. I also am at such a different point now in my life than say I was when I was younger, that I don't really know how any of the people I know fit in, and I don't want to have to pretend to be someone I'm not. Right now, I'm interested in women's rights and posting stories about that, and I shouldn't be attacked because of it, and I feel like you're only suppose to post things that aren't controversial like weddings, babies, puppies or show off your life.

So I posted this story that was all over the media, and it was about this 14 year-old girl who was being bullied so badly about the way she looks that she ended up getting plastic surgery. The media was praising her decision, instead of being horrified that we've created a culture that encourages women and girls to change themselves. On top of that, the plastic surgeons kept referring to her features as "deformities" that "needed to be fixed", when there was in fact nothing wrong with her. I posted this story from another women's rights site called "stop the worldwide war against girls" that I had liked on fb, and the woman running that site put the headline "Girls aren't born hating themselves, We teach them" and when I re-posted it I kept the same headline. This guy decided to comment that he didn't believe this was a gender issue, because apparently there were some guys in high school that were teased for their looks and probably developed psychological issues as well. Of course since he's a man, he knows everything about everything, and this set me off and caused me to write this long response, and than publicly declare that my fb page is now going to be used to post stories about women and all the amazing things we are doing, seeing that the internet has given us a space as women in which the male population cannot silence us!

"Since a man commented that he doesn't personally believe this is a gender issue here we go. Women and girls throughout the patriarchy have been subjected to be nothing more than property. Our looks and youth have been our only source of worth and value, because it has been the determining factor as far as what type of man we would be able to attract, and therefore is tied in with our very survival under a system, in which we've had zero rights and have been forced to be 100 percent dependent on men for our very survival. If you are more beautiful you will be able to get a more successful man, which means you will have enough food to eat and a nice house to live in. This has also led to us as women being forced to compete with each other and tear each other down so that we could be the most desirable and therefore obtain the wealthiest man. The thought that a woman or girl might not adhere to this, and genuinely believes she has the right to not just look the way the male population has decided she should look, threatens this very system of control and oppression that they've created for us. Look at the Olympics for example and the massive amount of abusive misogynistic comments directed towards the female athletes and their bodies. The Saudi female athletes have been called the "prostitutes of the olympics" for wanting to play sports and the women of this country and of the UK have been subjected to being called "fat" and that they aren't women for being athletic (amongst many other comments). When was the last time a male athlete was called the "prostitute of the olympics"? While I could write an entire book on the subject and many books have been written about it, maybe it's time for the male population to educate themselves. In summary I'm going to say that women and girls are expected to be nothing more than these play things for the male population, and the easiest way for men to continue to abuse and oppress us is to attack a woman based on her looks or by calling her one of the following either that she is "ugly" "fat" or to make degrading comments about her sexuality that she is a "slut" etc. It's not like only attractive men have equality and unattractive men do not. All men are given male privilege and lots of very unattractive men have been very successful and become world leaders. Whereas all the women who try to obtain the same are destroyed in the media for the way they look, which is completely irrelevant to their qualifications for the jobs they are trying for and is simply used as a tactic to try to discourage them from going after their dreams and fighting for equality, as well as to send a message to the rest of the female population that if you step out of line this is what will happen to you.
****With that being said I'm not looking to get into any more discussions with this or any pointless arguments. If you as a man do not understand that you have been drenched in male privilege and male entitlement at this point, and that we have had very different experiences as a result of this, than I'm not sure what to say to you. However, if any women want to add anything about this subject and their experiences with it I will allow those comments, but I don't want to hear anything else from the male population, after listening to you guys speak for 28 years and having to live under this patriarchal hell, I'm done with it. "

Then a few days later I decided to add more to my "discussion".

"In addition to everything above, there isn't any woman on this planet who actually hates her body or hates the way she looks, we hate what it represents. Being born as a girl means that you will spend your life being treated as being somewhere between being an indentured servant, a slave, property, and cattle and it's legal to do so. It also means living under constant fear, intimidation, violence, harassment and discrimination at the hands of the male population. Approximately 90 percent of the people who suffer from anorexia and bulimia are women & girls, and I personally don't know any woman who hasn't suffered from an eating disorder at some point. This has nothing to do with a desire to be skinny, but has to do with wanting power and control over something, meaning our bodies, that we haven't had power or control over under the patriarchy. The only other thing that has determined our value as women in addition to youth and beauty has been our virginity. If a woman or girl isn't a virgin until her wedding night she is basically considered worthless and trash, and is either ostracized or even killed because of it depending on the culture. And you won't find any woman in this country who hasn't seriously considered plastic surgery at some point, if she hasn't already gotten it. I was positive as a teenage girl that someday I would get my nose done, because I wanted it to look more like Barbie. Now, that I'm older I couldn't be more thankful that I never did anything like that. I love my nose, it's actually one of my favorite features because it makes me super unique, and I feel that if I had gotten it done, it's probably likely that I wouldn't look "ethnic" anymore, and that would be super heartbreaking to throw away my racially mixed background, something that I'm super proud of.

Overall, there's a lot of reasons for girls to hate their bodies, and very few reasons to love their bodies, and this NEEDS To change!!!! Changing our bodies, won't actually address the underlying issues or change the reasons why we feel this way in the first place. Instead we need to change our culture. "