Why (most) Men Don't Have to Hear "You're Enough"

So I just recently saw the video of the interactive mirror promoted by the band The Mrs.  here's the link . I cried, of course, and was very touched because I, like most women, have not felt like I was enough in the past because of something about my physical experience. Then I got to thinking, why are there not links all over the internet where men describe themselves to a portrait artist and then a total stranger describes them, showing their true beauty, or where they go to an interactive mirror and get a little boost of empowerment? And then I realized, most men don't need that. Men aren't told their whole lives that they are worth less than the next guy if their waist band is bigger or their face not perfectly symmetrical or anything else from the laundry list of physical attributes women are graded on in society. Men are judged by career and life successes first, physicality being an afterthought. Of course men have body issues of their own and society has stigmas and expectations for men as well, but they just are not as damaging as those forced onto women. Men's self worth rarely comes from how their hair looked that day or how many compliments they received on their new top. But I know girls who come home after a successful day at work or school and are bummed out because they had a prominent pimple or a stain on their shirt, I've been that girl. To use Marilyn Frye's bird cage metaphor, this devaluation of women solely based on their outward appearance is simply one bar in the cage of the oppression of women, but it is also intertwined in almost every other bar of the cage. Career and life accomplishments are belittled based on appearance; if a woman is attractive, she slept her way to the top and it not fully respected, if a woman is ugly, that is more of a focus when people discuss her than her actual accomplishments. Outward appearance also plays a role in another bar in the cage. Violence, and particularly sexual violence, towards women is defined and dismissed by her looks; if she's attractive, she was asking for it, if not, she should feel flattered that someone would actually want to have sex with her. I could go on and on about how physical appearance is used to define women in all different aspects of life, giving countless examples from the media to my personal life, but then this post would turn into a book. The point is, few men would relate to a video telling them "you're enough", while almost all women watching that video would feel some sort of connection and familiarity with the feelings those women are experiencing. Until women are judged on who they are more than on how they look on a grand, societal scale, these videos will still be necessary.

Future Facebook Statuses

So this is a silly little idea I just came up with. I want to compile a list of Facebook statuses that I will be able to write one day. I want this list to reflect my dreams and what I hope to accomplish with my life. It could be argued that success shouldn't have to be shared with 450 acquaintances, but shush, this is fun and I want to do it.

-Spanish minor: check

-SASW don't forget to vote (for me) for officers! The deadline is fast approaching :D

-Just found out where I'll be interning for my final semester as an undergrad. Cannot wait to join the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center in all the good work they do!

-Just got my acceptance letter into the MSW program at Boston University! Massachusetts here I come :D

-And just like that, I have a bachelor's degree.

-Searching for apartments in Boston with Carlos and my parents [enter ridiculously cute/goofy quote from my mother here]

-Who knew deciding between a Human Behavior or a Clinical concentration would be so damn difficult? #help

-Officially a member of the NASW :]

-I said yes! (attached with a picture of an engagement ring from C)

-So I'm a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with an MSW who's fluent in spanish. The world is my oyster!! Or something less expensive. The world is my vintage jewelry box you found at a garage sale.

-Some ridiculous post about moving across country while also planning a wedding and attempting to find a job post graduate school. This one I'm a little scared of.

-Just got my first job doing something helpful somewhere wonderful!!

-Who knew writing a book about wealth disparity in America would be such a downer?

-I am beyond humbled and grateful to announce that I will be speaking at a TEDtalk in Palo Alto. I'll be debunking whether or not bananas really give you tummy fat, or is it the feminization of poverty? I forget. (this is the one I thought of while drifting off to sleep that made me open up my computer at 2:30 in the morning).

-Annoying post about being pregnant

-Something about Carlos being a rocket scientist

-So I'll be on The Daily Show tonight promoting my book and just generally fawning over Jon Stewart, no big deal.

-Something about my children being perfect

-Bragging about that one time I was on the Daily Show

-video of my children and pets

-cheesy anniversary post about Carlos


Okay that's all I have for now. I'm just extremely excited about what my future holds and hope that a variation of at least some of these actually come to fruition. Good night lovelies, stay golden!

xxo taylor

Falling in Love Again

So I visited Carlos this past weekend and holy moly do I love this kid. We had an amazing time together and he explained how confused and stressed he had been but that now he knew all he wanted was to be with me (aw shucks). So yes this is just an update in case anyone who loves me happens upon my previous very sad post and wonders how I'm doing. I have fallen in love with him all over again and I've never been more sure that he was what I wanted. Long distance is really hard without the change and stress of your first year of college. And I'm sure we haven't worked out all the kinks yet, but we both know this is the real deal and we both want to make it work. So we will :] I just love him you guys. I hope everyone is having a marvelous Tuesday!

xxo taylor

Rebuilding

Honesty hour. September has fucking sucked. I guess I need to kinda of update everyone. My boyfriend C and I had the best summer ever before he went off to MIT for his first year of college. Everything was fine for a while until he got busy with school and his new frat and crew and just overall adjusting to his new life in Boston. Anyway we've been fighting a lot because he hasn't had much time for me and I didn't exactly play the 100% supportive girlfriend. We're currently on our second break, which delayed my first scheduled trip to see him two days before my I was supposed to go. Our first break was cut short when he called me drunk at 2 in the morning and left me a voicemail professing his love for me and telling me what a dipshit he had been. Well, needless to say the following few days nothing changed and once he was sober there were more complicated feelings at play than drunken loneliness. So we're scheduled to talk again on Wednesday and I have no idea what's going to happen. All I know is that I'm at risk of losing the love of my life but instead of melting into a puddle of self-loathing and depression, I've started thinking of ways to rebuild myself and my life without him, in case things don't work out. I've basically thrown myself into my school work and am exceedingly grateful of the fact that I am living with my two best friends who would literally do anything for me, including staying up until one in the morning when they have work and school at 8 in order to keep me sane. I've also been listening to a lot of Regina Spektor, taking lots of bubble baths, drinking lots of tea, and spending many hours on the phone with my sisters. And I've started running again, something I've found incredibly cathartic and relaxing, when it isn't 90 degrees outside. I guess what I'm trying to say with this post is that people lose everything all the time. I feel like my world has been turned up-side-down and there are times when I just get a wave of realizing that the man I thought I was going to marry could potentially cease to be a part of it. But then I get a tissue, take a sip of water, and continue reading for my sociology class. And if things don't work out, it'll be worse. For a long time. But I know I'll be okay. And one day in the very far future, a day I can't even begin to imagine yet, I'll find someone who makes me feel the way C once did. So when I get really down, I remind myself that it's either that, or we both decide that we want to make it work. So I'm going to be okay. And I just wanted to tell everyone that.

xxo taylor

Validation

There's a song call Got it From My Mamma by will.i.am. Curvy girls sing about what physical attributes were passed down to them from the mothers over an unoriginal hip-hop beat. Pretty generic. Anyway. Along with many other good qualities, what I inherited from my mother is a need for validation. It's been a running theme in all of my relationships that usually always ends with the guy, understandably, not being able to handle my constant need for affirmation of his declarations of love. Add to that one of the people who knows you best totally and completely betraying you after ten years and you've got a lovely concoction of trust issues and an unhealthy self-image. I am currently in the longest relationship I've ever been in, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. No one has ever stuck around this long and it feels like every fiber of my being is electrified with terror. I know it sounds really dramatic, but it's midnight, and it's true. So. I have this amazing, kind, patient guy putting up with all of this crazy for over a year. What's the catch? And that's the problem. I'm constantly looking for the catch. I test him and question him and make him feel like I don't trust him even though I completely do all because of my own fucked up shit. I can't believe that someone can truly 100% care about me, romantically that is. And it's total bull shit. Because I'm awesome! Honestly. I feel pretty great about myself as a person. But for some reason I don't feel great as myself as a person in a relationship. It's hard to articulate. I don't even know what else to say about this and it's late and i'm being dramatic and i probably shouldn't even post this but i'm going to

xxo taylor

Diva

So. I am feeling extremely awesome. I have had pretty much the best day ever. I woke early and went on a run, got to take my time getting ready, therefore looking extra-fabulous, went to class, had lunch with A, did some homework, took a nap, dinner with G, and now I am freaking out on tumblr with all of my lady crushes/hot body inspirations. So of course I decided to write a blog post, as I always do during my random internet sprees. This post is the beginnings of an idea that just popped into my head while tumbling, pinteresting, and watching the Colbert Report. This idea is to create a board and use The Secret to make my life more awesome than it already is :] I want to have sexy, independent, and successful women that I admire plastered all over it, to help motivate me to stay active and fabulous. I also am going to put quotes that I love representing how I want to live my life, and then whatever else I ever decide needs to be there. I have had a new revelation that I don't have to hate myself to be "humble" and just because I feel confident and sexy doesn't mean I'm being vain or think I'm better than other people because of it. Also, feeling sexy doesn't mean that's the only part about myself that I love. I think attractive women get a bad rap and their intelligence gets dismissed because they dress sexy and know about what foundation is best for their skin type. I wish society could see that women are able to be sexy and smart and funny and oh wait that's Tina Fey... Anyway. I'm basically just rambling now, letting my brain kind of just shoot at the screen so I'm going to end this before I proceed to tell you how sexy women can save the world which is exactly what I want to do in Africa I HAVE TO STOP MYSELF NOW. Okay. So! I am going to start collecting pictures, and this post is going to be devoted to all the sexy and fabulous ladies that inspire me. Enjoy :]

So, of course, the Goddess herself. My boyfriend put up with a very dramatic breakdown of mine over winter break, one of the many reasons he's the bomb dot com. This breakdown had to do with the seven-ten pound gain I experienced and other pretty girls etc. and he told me "You can't expect to look like super models, look to Beyoncé and Scarlet Johansen, because y'all have the same body type." So yeah, he's perfect. Anyway, this is one of the reasons I'm using Bey as one of my inspirations. And, she's a fuckin diva.

The afore mentioned Tina Fey is, of course, sexy, funny, and smart. The trifecta. My friend A says I am Liz Lemon because I'm secretly really disgusting. Deal bitches.

So basically this is how I see E and myself in forty years. Fabulous, sexy, successful, and takin selfies.

It makes me really sad that JLaw is mostly known for Hunger Games because she is genuinely a superb and diverse actress. And she won't lose ridiculous amounts of weight for roles, which I really really really respect.

Katy Perry is just gorgeous and boobs.

Another phenomenal actress :] and she's super sexy, duh.

Of course, Bey again because god just look at her she is perfection.

And to finish off, these two perfect ladies owning the label of bitch. Cause bitches get shit done.

Stay sassy, my fellow divas.

xxo taylor

Tumblr Culture

Whenever I would try to explain tumblr to my non-tumbling friends, I would always describe it as having multiple cultures. There's the adorable fandoms, that, admittedly, do get a little dramatic. And the hipster culture, the fitness culture, the fashion culture, pretty much anything you can think of. But one that I "tumbled" into was a sort of meshing of thinspo and angst. If you don't know what thinspo is, it stands for "thinsperation" and was created to help girls stick to "diet" plans in order to stay skinny. It basically turned into pictures of sickly girls that make other, healthier girls feel horrible about themselves. I happened upon one of these pictures just now;

which I feel epitomizes my point. It doesn't have any words saying that this is right or what you should be doing or how you should look; but it glorifies despair and loneliness and makes them beautiful and glamourous. This girl is contorted and twisted in on herself, she's extremely thin, and seemingly depressed. I understand that people aren't happy all the time and we are allowed to feel our feelings, but the angst of a situation is constantly perpetuated through this tumblr culture. So when girls and boys come home from their bad days at high school, they get on the computer and the outside world tells them to keep being sad, because being sad and broken and tormented is a goal to be obtained and it makes you interesting and glamorous and different. This same culture is obsessed with people like Kurt Cobain and Marilyn Monroe; people who lived to the extreme, especially when it came to drugs and depression, and died young and tragically. Society has immortalized them and made them into figures to look up to. I find this side of tumblr to be very troubling and destructive. I try to fill my life with things that lift me up and inspire me; not things that give me an excuse to wallow in self-pity when in reality I'm a white upper-middle class college coed who has a loving boyfriend and parents who are paying for college. I understand that I'm lucky, but I wish the side of tumblr that promoted gratefulness and positivity was more popular than it's depression and cliché-quote ridden counterpart. For now, I'm going to unfollow the negative blogs and follow more positive ones. 

Wishing you positivity and a productive, love-filled year!

xxo taylor