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We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
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Just another example of how beauty standards and body hate are (and always have been) fabricated.
[Image: Typographic message depicted in pastel purple and peach: “I am forever working against a culture of shame.”]
It’s been a while. Here’s a thing I made for you!
And what’s fucked up is I like Lady GaGa’s music. I usually like her ideas and style, but it’s evident that she appropriates culture a lot(Chola look, now Burqa). What also gets me is that the designer is trying to use the burqa to make a statement, but isn’t using muslim women to do it. What is falls right into is the idea that fashion choices can only be beautiful, only powerful and political on the white body. Or that white people have the power to take things out of it’s cultural context and re-invent them under the guise of being edgy and original. I guess white people really do have an awesome system going on to preserve their culture. Invite nothing for people to take and take everything from other people.
My hair is thinner. Why is it suddenly such a big deal to me? Its been thin for about five years now, ever since I began to destroy my hair with products and constant pulling and tweaking in order to achieve what I THOUGHT was beautiful. I destroyed it with my eating disorder, my low self esteem, and my obsession to embody a girl who never existed. I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to achieve perfection so that no one else could bother me about my faults anymore. I wouldn’t have to go though days being prodded at by my mother and her friends about how chubby I was, or how I didn’t look beautiful because I wanted to wear black and mold myself in to a darker subculture. I wouldn’t have to go through fucking lectures about how I didn’t look pretty because of what I wore, and how I wasn’t pleasant to look at because I wasn’t Nancy-fucking-Ajram. So I slowly embarked a self-destructive route, because I felt like that was all I knew. Only now, do I realize that I was beautiful. I was so fucking beautiful. But, I suppose sometimes, beauty lies where others may not be able to find it. And now, I have to go to countless doctor appointments, take blood tests, put myself on medication, just so that I can be closer to being beautiful - the very thing that was used as a weapon against me to begin with.
It never stops. I finally grow out of my “neo-goth” phase, but I’m still subjected to what I’m supposed to look like.
I can’t pity myself over this anymore, I’m a fucking international development studies student. I study what poor people have to go through in third world countries - I live with my cousins, who have suffered so much while living in Iraq - and I still cry over the possibility of losing all of my hair.
At least I have good comfort:
Me: “Will you marry me if I lose most of my hair?”
Boy: “Only if I get to rub your bald head.”
That right there is why everything will be okay.
Sending my love in your direction. <3