cleft, the girl chin wonder

there’s this moment of awareness for a girl when she realizes her legs (and/or arms, armpits, upper lip…) are unacceptable.

she’s just minding her own business, bopping along, when maybe a classmate starts mocking her for having visible body hair. or she goes to a sleepover and someone points out that her legs look different from all the other girls’. or she walks in on her mom shaving and asks why, and the answer is “because a woman’s body looks nicer this way.” or maybe her mother or sister actually approaches her and says, “looks like it’s time you learned to shave that jungle.”

the point is, the day before that realization, however it happened, the girl didn’t give a shit about her hair. she put on shorts and tank tops without a second thought. she didn’t feel unclean. she didn’t feel like a monster when she looked in the mirror (at least not because of body hair). her hair didn’t stop her from riding a bike or climbing a tree.

only after someone draws her attention to it does she start feeling self-conscious and wanting to remove it. removal, in this culture, is never a choice made free of coercion. it’s never born of a girl’s own naturally occurring desires. the seed of shame was planted in her by someone else (family, friends, bullies, magazines, razor commercials) and chances are that seed will stay with her forever- a sinking realization that her body can be wrong, that she can look ugly or dirty even when clean, that a thing she never even noticed about herself before should be a source of retroactive humiliation.

that feeling is like a scar. every time we look at it, the humiliation and judgment we experienced as kids comes rushing back and the little nasty patriarchal voice in our heads (the same one that says shit like “jesus you’re getting fat,” “ugh why did you think you could pull off this outfit,” “god who would ever want to touch THOSE boobs,” etc) says “ugh, looks like it’s time I shaved that jungle.” and it’s just parroting back what we’ve already been told.

Thank you so much for this post.

I never shaved my legs because it made me feel more masculine and “why should girls shave their legs if boys don’t have to?”

I was in a musical where I was going to be in a dressing room with other girls, and my mom tried to get me to shave my legs so I wouldn’t be made fun of (this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get me to shave my legs against my will) We had an argument that ended in her deciding to “let me learn the hard way” (by not shaving and having others make fun of me.)

When I changed in the dressing room? Literally no one said anything about my legs. The first time in there I offhandedly mentioned i was feeling self-conscious about my legs because my mom tried to tell me people would make fun of me, but they all said they wouldn’t do that, and they also hated shaving their legs. Most of them agreed with my reasons for not wanting to shave, and I felt pretty welcomed by the group.

That encounter went well, but then I started to get really self-conscious of my legs, I used to be able to wear shorts, but now I feel self consciousness because of my mom’s words, and I feel like I have to wear knee-high socks with any shorts I wear so all of my legs are covered. I used to think it was because I’m a modest person by nature, but my mom’s words really affected me.

So please, spread this post everywhere. I want as many people to read this as possible so maybe not as many people will have to go through what I went through.

a man of many talents 🎺🔨🏆

A splash of hues for thee.

vaan + faceless

freya…

❤ Blippo.com ❤ Kawaii Shop ❤

gym, or as i like to call it, Baranormal Activity,

you’re under arrest

back when i was suicidal in high school the tiniest things would make me want to kill myself but also the most trivial things would stop me

i remember looking at a bottle of sleeping pills and going “i’m going to kill myself. i’m not going to get out of this town. i’m not going to be able to get into a good college” and then i would go “but wait! if you die tonight, you won’t be there when they invent time travel. what if you die tonight and aliens land tomorrow and you miss it. the entire world would change and you would miss it.” “ah, yes. good point. i’ll wait until next week to die. once i’m dead i’m dead, so i can wait a little longer to see if something cool happens before then.”

it never did but it brought me back from killing myself until i started seeing a psychologist and got on antidepressants 

people are re-blogging this and i dont mind b/c they’re relating to it so that’s nice if it’s helping ppl understand

the whole “you have so much to live for!” idea was nice and well intentioned, but i felt like people were just spouting bullshit at me because i didn’t. i didnt have any friends or dates or talents.  i had nothing to really live for.

but things like “oh, well if you die now you won’t be able to find out who jon snow’s mother is” did help. because i went “oh, well i’ll finish this book to figure out if my theory is right first.” because i was going to die anyway so a few more hours wouldn’t hurt and by the end of the book i felt less suicidal. 

also years later i found out i was right about my theory. 

This exact thing has helped me so much. Things like, “Well you can’t now because it’s Thanksgiving and you’ll ruin it, wait until after” “well now it’s almost Christmas so do it next year” “Well you can’t before you see how Game of Thrones ends” “Think of all the cats you haven’t pet yet” the trivial things have always helped me more than the whole, “people will miss you, you have so much to live for”

Find something to make you hold on a little longer, even if you take it hour by hour or day by day. Even if it’s just something like, “Well if I die tonight I won’t get to eat my leftover Chinese food tomorrow” it helps.

this post needs more notes and attention!

This👏is👏fucking👏important👏

u kno when u hav many thing to do so u lay on the floor for long time

you know how sometimes a long time is just 3 years