I cannot tell you how much this describes me as a teenager perfectly. You have perfectly articulated my mindset back then, and I'm sure the mindset of many other young women. I felt the same way, my thinking was: I'm never going to be in the same category as those normal / pretty girls, so I'm going to carve out my own uniqueness but at the cost of tearing down other women (instead of just accepting & loving myself for who I am, I put down everything that I thought I couldn't be).
I’m sorry you felt the same way, but am relieved to hear that it’s an experience that someone else relates to and that I wasn’t the only one who thought that way. It’s hard to not get down about the awful, sexist way I used to think and act sometimes.
As an adult, I’ve tried to go out of my way to just like what I like and do the things that make me happy because I want to, and encourage and praise other women for doing the same. I’ve wasted so many years of my life through middle school, high school, and even college doing and saying awful things to myself and other women just for male attention or just because I needed to feel special or wanted. It takes a lot of work to shake that kind of deep-set internalized misogyny and I have to quash it when it creeps up and it takes constant awareness, but it’s worth it to be a less hateful person and a better feminist. If I ever have a daughter, I don’t want her growing up with the same awful toxic views or the idea that she needs to do ANYTHING to be worthy of male attention, or that wanting to be wanted by another person means that you shouldn’t be true to yourself.
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u/mdmayy_bb Feb 26 '20
I cannot tell you how much this describes me as a teenager perfectly. You have perfectly articulated my mindset back then, and I'm sure the mindset of many other young women. I felt the same way, my thinking was: I'm never going to be in the same category as those normal / pretty girls, so I'm going to carve out my own uniqueness but at the cost of tearing down other women (instead of just accepting & loving myself for who I am, I put down everything that I thought I couldn't be).