Beauty?

I am very white. It is actually kind of amazing. I want to tell you how liberating it is to be in a place where I can go into three stores that don't even go up to my size and still be considered beautiful. I want to tell you how liberating it is to not have a scale, and even though you know you have lost a little weight, it is because you feel better and your clothes don't fit the same and not because numbers staring up at you relentlessly. I want to tell you how nice it is to be looking out the window and have everyone smile at you. 

I want to tell you how hard it is to see women who are not allowed to show their faces. I want to tell you how difficult it is to see women ashamed of being dark. I want to tell you how sad I am when I see women who will do and buy anything to anything to be considered beautiful...and I want to tell you that the pressure of physical perfection in the States is in fact oppression. 

If we saw a woman who had her feet bound as a child so that they were only three inches long we would be astounded. If we saw a woman who had put rings around her neck all of her life in order to stretch it out so that it was over 3feet long we would be ashamed, and yet, we do not realize that half of the teen age girls in America have eating disorders. We spend billions of dollars trying to look right, thousands of hours in front of the mirror.

I am not saying that we should not be concerned with our health...we need to eat right (not nothing) and exercise, just like we need to brush our teeth to keep our mouth healthy, and go to school to keep our brain healthy. What I am saying is that if women want to be liberated they should not try and act like men, they should not try and be perfect at everything. It is like they said "Ya I'm liberated, so now instead of doing what I can do and like to do I am going to do everything the same except I am going to do the mans job too." 

I like being beautiful, I like feeling beautiful, I am beautiful, but there were times when I thought that for anyone to be interested in me would be ridiculous unless I lost 30lbs.  This is not right. 

There are many things that I could be telling you about my trip, about how I am doing and what I am doing. About the people that I am with, but this issue has been on my heart and in my mind, and I just thought I would put it out there for you to think about, I don't know, perhaps it will inspire you to change the world, or perhaps it will inspire you to smile at yourself in the mirror instead of scowl, because I know you, and you are amazing!