with all due respect, you're misunderstanding a bid for reassurance as a confrontation. this is blaming the individual instead of taking action against the system. this is blaming a victim of the system for having behaviors that have been taught by the system.
i understand and sympathize with a lot of this. we all know someone who is just, like, the worst. but at the end of the day, as a feminist: this paragraph is not going to convince anyone to challenge their internalized beauty standards. instead this attitude might have the reverse effect of harming someone who was seeking your care. i agree it can be overwhelming. but we sometimes owe emotional labor to the people we love. these are people who are being vulnerable with you.
people aren't robots. we all have insecurities. you cannot just "shut off" the insecurity. many of us have spent years in therapy and still feel insecure. there is a reason bullying is such a big deal: it can influence how you feel about yourself for a long time. it's not as easy as just saying "oh the bullies don't matter :) i love myself!" although i wish it were. many of us struggle additionally with the institutional powers that influence how we see ourselves. i am treated better, valued more, and rewarded more often when i am appropriately following certain beauty standards.
as someone who was bullied relentlessly about her appearance, i fucking wish i could "just live" and forget about it. i was not allowed to forget about it, because it was constantly a problem for me. and when i tried to get help for the bullying, i was consistently given the same dismissive answer: just stop caring about it! ... it made me feel isolated and discarded, and contributed to a significant decline in my mental health. it made me feel like a burden.
like, beauty is actual power. it is agency. there is a reason that so many people try to talk about fatphobia. about how if you're "pretty", you are more likely to be hired or trusted. about how many characterizations of "evil" characters perpetuate bigotry by implying that certain physical traits are "ugly". these are real things that have real and permanent influence. they are not just tiktok. your mom did not learn to hate signs of aging because of tiktok, i promise. she learned to hate it because she was taught to hate it.
those of us with depression are very familiar with the laundry list of "suggestions" that get flung our way - "drink more water! work out more! be more grateful!" ... and this attitude has the same dismissive ring to it. as if we enjoy having insecurities. as if all of us like feeling this way. you don't know what internal work a person has or has-not done. you don't know what they've endured and what they've already overcome. you don't know what your friend has tried - or how far she has already come. maybe she has existential dread attached to her fear of aging, or maybe she feels a loss of control, or maybe it doesn't feel like her body anymore. you assumed she only cares about being pretty.
unfortunately, much of your paragraph is misogyny, not feminism: the undertone is that women are just vapid and vain, rather than forced into internalizing self-hatred. that they should be "smarter" than to fall victim to literal generations of indoctrination. constant self-vigilance is a prison, and you should feel empathetic rather than judgmental. they're not being "stupid." they need help.
this is a post that radiates shame onto people who already feel shame. you make the mistake of assuming people are obsessed with themselves, because that takes the brunt of the emotional labor off you. most people do want to feel good about themselves, but don't know how. that doesn't mean they don't want to do the work. and you want to know something? people who have done years of work still sometimes just have human moments of insecurity!
yes, there are toxic exceptions to everything. but in general? needing human connection and reassurance is perfectly normal. from what it sounds like, these are people who love and trust you. you are someone else's community. that means sometimes being fucking bored with the same conversation. that means sometimes being empathetic and taking a second to control your own frustration and actually talk to this person. ask them what's really up. don't make assumptions about what's going on for them.
the thing that makes me the saddest in this post is that you lumped your sister in here with other smaller problems. please talk to her. i'm not one to armchair diagnose, but it is not normal to lose sleep over anxious thoughts. it's a huge warning sign she's developing a serious eating disorder - which is a mental illness, not a choice. if she trusts you enough to tell you things like this, don't shut her down. please help her. i can't imagine what would have happened if i had confided my darkest ED thoughts to a family member and they'd told me to just "stop looking in the mirror." that would have been very painful.
everyone talks about community and how we need communities and how it takes a village but nobody wants to be the village. we beg people with mental illness to reach out, but nobody wants to take on the burdens. instead, we get this overly-independent framing of things where someone just has to get over it. yes, of fucking course people should help themselves. but this is specifically about how you feel bored of helping others. and i feel really disappointed by the number of uncritical notes you've gained.
being there and supporting others rather than judging or dismissing them works. i know this because i've seen it in the real life. when friends have been struggling and i go out of my way to compliment and uplift them, i can often see a slow increase in their confidence and self-image over time. more than once i've delivered a sincere compliment to someone who has visibly sagged with relief and said i really needed to hear that. when my mom was struggling with signs of her aging, i found new activities to do with her so she would feel less anxious and more appreciated. when someone needs a hype squad, i'm gonna fucking hype them. there is a reason having a drunk conversation with women in the bathroom feels so good: they're helping you feel good.
unfortunately this is a serious conversation with real-life stakes. mental illness can be a huge fucking part of why people have negative self-talk. you cannot apply a generic statement to it, because you don't know if it's coming from a place of concealed self-hatred. you and i are both frustrated with how society treats women and beauty standards as a whole. however, the individual might be expressing real, very dangerous internal pain. please pay attention to how someone speaks about themselves. it matters. sometimes people only reach out once or twice before giving up all hope of being understood. you might end up missing a chance to help that person. so what if you waste your time complimenting someone who doesn't take it well - so what if you're bored. the alternative is that you miss a sign of serious depression.
there are so many fucking forces working against women to make them feel ugly - and to therefore make them feel powerless. do not be one of those forces. do not shun or shame someone who is expressing an insecurity. it is so easy to instead take a moment and be vulnerable with them. please.
jbbartram-illu
stormborns
kianamaiart
titsay
dededos
2087
theartofmadeline
andulkaphoto
