it's her life and her life is worth living

So, I've decided to start a blog to keep track of, well, my life. I want to look back in ten years time (if the internet's still around in ten years, I don't know) and remember what I was interested in and what music I listened to and what clothes I wore. If no one even reads it, okay (I guess, haha), it will be somewhat.. cathartic, I suppose? So I think I'll be mainly going on about articles I've read that I found interesting and music and clothes and shoes I want and wear. Hopefully it'll be fun!

This piece from Feministe really struck a chord with me. I don't have kids or anything but I think for a lot of women - including myself, for sure - there are these tensions between conforming to societal standards of beauty and, I guess, understanding and recognising these standards and societal pressures.

Sometimes I feel like I should know better, you know, I've read the Beauty Myth, I'm generally pretty good with recognising beauty standards, but at the same time..? I wear makeup and dresses and heels and I do my hair and love to shop and worry that people will KNOW if I haven't shaved my legs or whatever.

And what happens when I have kids? Do I tell them that they don't need to adhere to these beauty standards, that they're just a patriarchal social construct to keep women subjugated and they are beautiful for who they are, not how well they perform femininity, all while wearing makeup and heels? I find it really hard to reconcile with myself sometimes.

But, I guess, doesn't Naomi Wolf make the point in the Beauty Myth that we shouldn't look down on women for conforming to these beauty standards? And women can and do get pleasure from these things - but then is that because society tells them that when they look a certain way, they're ~doing it right~? Tricky.

Photo by Dina Goldstein as part of her Fallen Princesses series.