Stupid Girl

My father and my brother are both artists.
My father turned it into a hobby and my brother is turning it into a career.

I used to draw and paint as well, until I decided I enjoyed science and music a lot more.
A good deal of my stuff is pretty fucking terrible and at this point, any attempt at proportionality or shading fail miserably. Still, I like to entertain notions of a discerning eye, the ability to pick apart visual cues and distinguish which elements make the aesthetic. I can’t reproduce beauty but I damn well know it when I see it.

The problem is that this inevitably leads to the suspicion that perhaps, not all beauty is subjective. And this leads to a harsh (and assumed objective) critique of ones own personal beauty and to comparing ones, unfavorably, with others.

Certainly, I could blame the conditions of the society in which I became aware. I do not doubt that some of my judgment is colored with every produced message about beauty, subtle and not so subtle, that I have assimilated in the past twenty years. But I’m not so sure that announcing that: “I’m not going to let some anorexic starlet affect how I feel about my body because I am a beautiful individual God damn it!” Is really addressing my concerns. Because, well, it’s just fucking insulting.

Am I that bovine that I can be led to such simplistic self-hatred by some glossy social input? Am I so stupid that I immediately accept that my body is ugly because it’s not thin enough, my hair isn’t full enough, my teeth aren’t straight enough? I like to think not, and humor me for just a little bit longer.

Yes, Paris Hilton is ugly. No, I don’t want to look like Paris Hilton. But I understand that she is trying to emulate some constants of beauty. And she fails miserably for the most part. But I don’t believe that failure is proof that those constants of beauty don’t exist. It just means that Paris Hilton looks tacky.

To tell me that I don’t feel comfortable with how I look because of Paris Fucking Hilton and her ilk is demeaning, a gross oversimplification, completely ignoring any higher cognitive function or agency I might possess.

And then of course, I’m supposed to feel better because people with a keen appreciation for non-conventional beauty think I’m pretty.

And I'm afraid this is where I break down and loose it completely.

Because I say fuck how you feel about my body.
Because this is how I feel about my body.

Up until my mid-teens I was taller than almost everybody of my age I knew. My shoulders are too broad for a lot of girl shirts and my boobs mean I don’t look all that great in button up shirts unless they’re too baggy to look good in and I feel like my ass looks hootchy as fuck in most pants. I wish I was smaller, with finer features.

And you may blame it on society brainwashing me into thinking Paris Fucking Hilton is Teh Hawt. But then, you too are taking something from me. You are telling me that I am not able to appreciate or distinguish beauty. And that is a big Fuck You to the value of my opinions and to my abilities to evaluate the world around me.

So I'm reclaiming my right to feel uncomfortable in my physical form for my own damn reasons and not because I think Paris Fucking Hilton is Teh Hawt ('cause for the record, I don't.)