Rant: pretty? sexy? no F OFF!

It was probably somewhere between seeing the six-thousandth bikini shoot posted online, the 10 thousand ads for ‘weightloss’ that look strangely like porn ads, and the millionth ad for ‘best’ plastic surgeons… And I suddenly thought – fuck this shit. Fuck it all. Fuck off the makeup, fuck off with the stupid hair styles that are impossible and a waste of time, fuck off with the ridiculous painful shoes, fuck off with waxing every follicle of fucking hair off my body, fuck off with the false notion that looking like a Barbie is going to achieve anything except unwanted attention. Fuck off with selling this image to little girls, which will one day be my little girl who will be told over and over again how she would be happy, how she would be loved, how she would be worthy, if only she would LOOK a certain way. And if she does look that way, she will be treated like a piece of meat anyway. Fuck off with the girls’ constantly condescending each other- only ever complimenting their image and nothing else. Fuck off with pretty, perfect, bikini bodies and glamour. Does anyone truly believe that if you push your tits up three inches higher and pack on three inches thicker makeup that suddenly your self-esteem and value will skyrocket? No.  Surely. This sadistic bullshit ties a woman down to obsessing over mirrors, weight scales and plastic surgeons offices, ensuring she can never use her mental capacity fully nor be taken seriously. Whether she is a professional in business, sports, politics or media – all of these places have been secured for men’s voices with women as stand-in props who smile, look pretty and keep quiet. Either you’re a woman who cannot be taken seriously because you look too pretty, or you’re a woman who has no place because you look too ugly. Pre-second-wave feminism women’s roles were restricted to housework and raising children, post-feminism women’s roles have been relegated even more so. We are now merely eye-candy, bodies as public property for ogling and critiquing, bodies plastered on every magazine, shop window, bus shelter and billboard, breasts NOT suitable for breastfeeding, vaginas that need to be reshaped post-partum, stomachs that need to be flatter. Bodies no longer our own, but the property of a variety of industries selling us our own commoditisation. Essentially women are told over and over that they ought to look pre-pubescent with tits the size of their own heads. And if you do have this image, then chances you're probably expected to put your body on show, selling your sexuality to titillate narrow-minded men. Relegating the power of your own sexuality into the hands of the sex industry. Women might have gained legal rights post-second-wave feminism but in the last few decades we’ve lost the right to own our body and mind for our own purposes.