Self-Loathing

I stumbled upon this while perusing FB. I highly recommend reading it. Both men and women.

Women are ugly.

Women are fat.

Women are bad mothers. Women are bad wives. Women are bad daughters.

Women are lousy cooks. Women don't keep their houses clean enough.

Women have too much cellulite in their thighs. Their abdomens are too flabby. Their under-arms are too Jell-oesque.

Women are terrible singers. They are terrible dancers. They are terrible public speakers.

Women are stupid. Women are scatter-brained.

Women are weak. They are powerless. They are defenseless.

Women don't dress well enough. They don't have clear enough complexions. They have too many freckles.

Women don't have full enough lips. They don't have skin that is soft enough.

Women are too dominant. Women are too passive.

Women are too mean. Women are too nice. Women are nothing but doormats.

Women aren't good enough. Women will never be good enough.

Women are, simply put, worthless.

Yes, they are all these things. If, that is, I am to believe the very words that are constantly being spoken by women themselves (which I don't). These are their words. And I've heard them declared again. And again. And again. To me, to other men, to other women, and for all I know to their pets and their plants.

Worthless. What a concept. To hold no value. To be less desirable than a can of dirt. Are you freaking kidding me? Every single statement on this list, including the worthless comment, was a declaration that at least one woman has made to me, for whatever reason. I bet there isn't a statement above that we all haven't heard at least once; most likely hundreds or thousands of times. Why would any of these horrible, degrading beliefs spill across the lips of any woman?

What hurts me the most is that most of these things have been said to me by more women than I would care to count.

Read the rest here: Worthless Women and the Men Who Make Them

Now I'm going to do something scary. This is a picture of me on my wedding day:


Now I'm going to tell you something. Every time I look at my wedding pictures*, all I see is how fat I look, how big my arms are, my double chin, my beak nose, my crazy height, etc.

How sad is it that I can't even look at the pictures of what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life without thinking awful things about myself? When did it become okay for me to think these things about myself? When I voice my self-loathing to my husband he says, "If someone said the things about you that you're saying about yourself, I'd knock them out." Or "Don't talk about my wife that way." While he's incredibly sweet, he's also incredibly right. It's not okay for me to think these things about myself. And it's not okay for any of you to think self-loathing thoughts about your selves either.

So here goes. My challenge for all of you is to post one picture of yourself in which you believe you look too fat, too scrawny, too flat chested, etc. on your own blog and instead of looking at all of the things you hate, look at the things you love and list at least 5. Send me the link in a comment and I'll post it right up here with mine.

I can't challenge you all to do list 5 things you love about yourself in a not so flattering picture without doing it myself.

In the picture above I love:
1. My complexion. It was 100 degrees and I still look gorgeous.
2. My perfect hair and the hand sewn and beaded veil my mom made for me.
3. My boobs. They're pretty great. Let's be honest.
4. My weird look that I'm giving Karl. I can't even keep my weird expressions out of my wedding pictures. Haha.
5. I'm glowing from the inside out.

Now it's your turn. Just remember, you're lovely. Always.




*My wedding pictures are amazing. I never in any way am unhappy with my photographer or how the pictures turned out.