Pretty Little Feminist Lies
Or at least the one’s I’ve been told
Last night I got dressed up in a little pink satin top and a mini skirt, blasted Taylor Swift while doing my hair and drinking canned Moscow Mules with my girls, and talked about the guys they were hooking up with. They call this feminism, but that’s BS. If that’s feminism, men invented it to get easier access to women.
I can confirm this because 2 hours later I was trashed off my ass in some bar throwing myself at a man who was so obviously flirting with me to stroke his own ego. When he wandered off to prey on 18-year-old girls my drunk brain simultaneously thought of the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You”, meaning I should either regain what was left of my dignity and ignore him or follow him around the bar like a drunken idiot… I unsurprisingly did the latter and he unsurprisingly ignored me.
This morning’s hangover, like many before it, was mostly painful for emotional reasons. Damaged ego, sit-in-a-hole-and-die level embarrassment, etc. I realized as I lay in agony, texting my ex, and snapping the guy that I really wanted as my boyfriend (only he “couldn’t” commit) that enough is enough. I am in my mid-twenties, a successful and independent female whose entire purpose for some reason revolves around impressing men.
My younger anti-societal, angst-ridden, teenage self would have been appalled, enraged, “How could it possibly have come to this? How have I sunk down so low?” I wondered in a mind fog-hungover daze. “Who even am I anymore?”
Despite our best efforts to be “independent women” we are extremely dependent on men. We do almost everything for them, including sleeping with them. Whether we want to admit it, or not. And please don’t hit me with the “But I wear this for other girls” b.s. If I didn’t give a shit about men, I’d be wearing a baggy shirt and gym shorts everywhere, every day. I would have my hair in a ponytail, wash it maybe once a week, and would never ever touch a razor. And to the girls who do this already, good for you, I’m very jealous.
Throughout my life, 99% of my worst and most humiliating, wakes-me-up-at-1-am moments have been because of men. I developed an eating disorder when I was 9 to be pretty which lasted all the way through high school. I wrote embarrassing essays about a subject I knew a boy in one of my classes would like and read them out loud to him. I’ve gone to frat parties BY MYSELF for them. I’ve agreed to “casual” relationships while being a very much not casual dater — for them. I have adopted their hobbies, gone to their sporting events that I hated, changed my entire political opinions, and now I have chased them through bars when they so obviously did not want anything to do with me, and it is pathetic.
Now maybe you are thinking “Yeah you have problems” and while you aren’t wrong, I know from talking to all of my female friends, that they have gone through the same. This is only exacerbated by social media and technology which make it virtually impossible to just be you. To be alone. To be at peace. To think with your own thoughts in your own brain, uninfluenced.
So it’s time to reclaim that. Peace. To relearn who I actually am. I don’t actually like wearing revealing clothes. I don’t even actually like drinking or going out. I once liked to read. I like to write. I liked to knit, paint, and create. I like plants. I like to bake. I like to wander and explore and appreciate the beauty in the world.
I like to wear big warm sweatshirts and baseball caps and have short hair. I don’t like makeup or shaving. I like feeling clean. I like running. I like lifting. I like feeling healthy. I like accomplishing tasks. I like doing nice things for people. I like to listen to ’60s acoustic like Simon and Garfunkle. I like to sit in silence and think.
I forgot about all these things. I’ve been so focused on finding and keeping a man that I, in turn, forgot who I am.
So, while I think that the self-love/self-care industry is mostly a money-making scam, I think that there is some truth to it. I think it starts with the whole “dating yourself” idea. I think that now more than ever, that’s exactly what people should do. Fall in love, with you. Cause you’re stuck with yourself for eternity.
