betterbemeta:

sometimes I feel bad because while as a bisexual woman who likes her own gender, I totally feel “why are all girls so beautiful?!?!” posts very hard

but at the same time I cannot help but despair because

• as a society we are trained to not even see girls who aren’t “beautiful” as people (and ‘beauty’ has tons of intersectional fucked up elements to it)
• a lot of positivity posts for girls that don’t fit certain beauty standards are disingenuous when we know you don’t even notice those girls on the street
• it’s really tiresome having people’s ability to be sexually attracted to me be a presumed focus of my life and existence
• not all people have pronounced or ‘dramatic’ experiences of attraction and performative models of attraction and romantic behavior are exhausting and often in place to codify a supremacy of certain demographics
• feeling unbeautiful cannot always be rectified by ‘positivity’ when it’s a greater societal problem rather than the constant anxiety women in general have blown down on them as a control strategy by a male gaze
• There are girls that the OP does not find beautiful and many people who aren’t ‘beautiful’ or have experiences where they couldn’t conform to beauty standards have already internalized that people who tell them so are lying or telling them things they think they want to hear.
• Telling girls they are beautiful when the entire world makes that a charged topic is a memorable part of many women’s experiences with abuse– women with low-self esteem are singled out as ‘targets’ by pick up artists, for example.
• we are sold almost exclusively images of made-up, photoshopped ‘beautiful’ girls that weight our perception of what a girl even looks like from a young age.
• sometimes I don’t want others to think I am beautiful, or should be judged on the basis of beauty, especially when beauty (or ‘ugliness’) is used as a way to discredit women or not take them seriously.
• sometimes I’m not going somewhere where I want people to be attracted to me, of any gender.
• whole industries perpetuate themselves specifically on women’s needs to be and remain beautiful. (psychologically, also economically in terms of employment and respectability in public)
• Beauty is often framed as access in terms of femininity and there are almost no ways other than trying to avoid being ‘beautiful’ some can restrict others access or interest in them. (think: “she was so beautiful, she was asking for it,” “how could someone pretty not be for me/not want me to be interested in her?”)
• many girls are so beautiful because they feel they have to be, and many men are not beautiful because they don’t feel they have to be to succeed
• some women are conditioned to do anything to be called beautiful and valid, or obey those who call them beautiful, and be punished by being called ugly
• girls and women face consequences as those who can adhere to beauty standards find themselves aging.
• beauty can have racial and colorist baggage riding with it.
• its a mess and my feelings are complex even though these forces don’t mean any woman is hurting any other woman merely for finding them beautiful, stopping short of unpacking all of this I feel can be harmful

even so

• all women and girls who want to feel beautiful should be able to feel beautiful at any time they like, and stop feeling that way whenever they want.
• not feeling ‘beautiful’ should no longer be a negative experience for women and girls.
• all women and girls of every demographic should be in control of when they want to feel or not feel a certain way– it should not be a social consequence wrapped up in their inherent worth