Real Talk: Imperfections of a Perfect Person

Ladies: you wakeup in the morning and hop in the shower. You rub in your Olay stress-free acne cleanser, special shampoo and conditioner that makes your hair smell fruity, and a couple other top of the line quality products that make you fresh and dainty as a flower. After the shower, you stand in front of your closet with a towel wrapped around your hair tapping your foot while searching for the perfect outfit. Although you know the outfits in your closet aren't from the Vogue closet, you want to be able to walk out of our house and stop traffic with your perfect style. After at least 30 minutes of finding your almost perfect outfit, you start to blow dry and straighten your hair, applying 10 different hair products along the way. The final step is perfecting the money maker: the face. You apply your base cream, cover up, blush, eye shadow, eye liner, and mascara until its perfect. Just throw on your shoes and you are ready to go! 

Why is this hour and a half process so necessary for women to do just to go to CVS and back? The truth of it is scary. We want to be seen as the perfect woman at all times. We want to be the ultimate feminine woman that can change the oil in a car and not get any grime or dirt on our flowy, white sundresses. What do we say when people tell us, "Wow you look so beautiful today!"? "Really? Thanks I just rolled out of bed.", we say cutely as we sell the superwoman act to everyone. 

Women get this urge to look and be the perfect and ideal feminine woman from things that we think are harmless and fun like watching the latest fashion shows or reading magazines like Cosmopolitan. 

We obsess and surround our way of living based on these "guidelines to being the best you". The secret behind the perfect feminine woman is that she doesn't exist! It's hard to accept and I haven't yet completely myself, but there is no way to always have your hair, makeup, body and even personality traits perfect all the time. How do you think the models get to look they way they look? There is an entire special ops force behind the curtain prepping those girls like they are science experiments. Those models don't even really look like the cover photos they are on! Even hearing this though, women are pressured to look and act in the pleasing manner that will give them a gold star by their peers. It's tragic that the word "feminine" has become a seemingly unreachable thing that we girls strive for everyday. 

Both men and women force this impossible perfection challenge upon ourselves everyday though. Men have the challenge of being confident, successful, intelligent, athletic, handsome and charismatic. Women have the challenge of being confident but not too confident, successful but not overbearing, intelligent but not nerdy, athletic but not too muscular, beautiful and innocently sexy. 

Our peers even enforce this crazy perfection ideal. When with our friends, we want to show that we have it all put together, and when we don't we feel embarrassed. Of course there are those friends that will accept you for who you are, flaws and all, but we always have the need to fulfill the checklist ourselves based on other people's pressures. This perfection drives us to spend obscene amounts of money of products we don't need just to impress virtually no one. America is all about being the best at everything and dominating the world, but at what cost? We have lost sight of reality and that everyone is beautiful in their own way. It sounds corny, but we are our own perfect just by being our true selves. Why can't we all see that and stop feeding the obsession? 

My Kind of Masculine

My friends always tell me I have the weirdest taste in men. None of them are similar in anyway possible. I've dated the "popular" guy, the outgoing jock, the class jokester, the introverted artist, the book worm, the best friend, etc. My friends always joke about how I don't have a type and have dated every type of guy there is possibly out there (always a confidence booster). They always ask me if I just say yes to a guy to be nice or if I actually am attracted to the guys I date. "Of course I was attracted to all of them! I wouldn't have dated them if I didn't find something special about them!," I would scream. Once I said this it got me thinking, what is special about all of them that I said yes? 

When the concept of masculinity entered my English class discussion and what we thought masculinity was, the first character I thought of was Tony Stark from Iron Man. He is just the type of guy I would fall for and drool over if I met him in real life. The funny thing is, the reason I find him so attractive and masculine is not because of his hegemonic traits such as his wealth, fit body, young age, and strong persona. I am attracted to him because he "owns what he's got". I love that Tony Stark knows how smart he is and uses his potential to try and better the world. I love that he knows what he wants and goes for it because that is just the type of person he is: a go getter. I love how he embraces his fears and fights them head on as the superhero Iron Man and as the mortal man Tony Stark. I realized that all the guys I have dated have been a Tony Stark. They all knew who they were and were true to the best version of themselves. My kind of masculine is a man that knows who he is and sticks to that no matter who pressures him. Of course I am not attracted to a pot smoker that says, "I am being true to myself and smoking 10 times a day!". I am talking about the personality traits that make us who we are as individual, unique people. I could never date a poser or a follower because I would not find that truly masculine and attractive. I've learned this past week that society has a certain way of categorizing masculine. Ideally the hegemonic man is who everyone leans toward because he is "perfect". This idea differs in racial and ethnic cultures also and transforms into the marginalized man or the man that belongs to different sub groups. My kind of masculine though is not "perfect". My kind of masculine is not a superhero but just a guy who embraces his faults and talents and "owns what he's got". In other words, he is his own man, not a "man's man".

The Real Feminist

"I am a bad feminist.", was always my response when I would sit down with my family and watch ESPN. I would say this random side bar because whenever the announcers were discussing the recent game or the players stats, there was always that one woman announcer that annoyed me. She would speak in an upbeat, girly accent that seemed like a different language compared to the buff, sports experienced, male announcers. Her laugh seemed fake and pageant like, which is not what I preferred to hear when there was a discussion about Lebron James and the 2012 NBA Championship basketball game. Honestly, she seemed like a ditz that was just put into that position to shut the feminists up. Whenever I screamed, "Get that blonde off the screen!" at the TV, my family would all turn toward me and give that same look that basically said, "Your telling a girl to shut up about sports when you yourself are, in fact, a girl...hypocrite." 

This week opened my eyes to what feminism actually means and why my views on female sports announcers is completely impartial and unfair. "Feminism" surprisingly is the belief that all MEN and WOMEN should be given equal political, social and economic rights. When I learned this, my mind made this face...

I had been wrong this entire time about what feminism actually meant and how it is applied towards our society. Once I understood the real definition of feminism, I delved more into the the reasons why I felt this strong vexation and annoyance with a female sports announcer. I have come to the conclusion that it is the media's fault! (Not me, yay!) The media has brainwashed people into associating slender, pretty woman with "girly sports" such as ballet, dance and volleyball. When a female is placed in a "man sport" they are viewed automatically as a lesbian. How unfair is this circumstance? The reason for this stigma is the idea of the hegemonic male and hegemonic female. We ideally view men as strong and powerful, therefore when a man joins the cheerleading team or decides to pursue his lifelong dream of being a ballet dancer, we mock him. The same is regarded toward females and dainty, graceful sports. The "norms" of the female and male are not just and correct to me, and this small lesson has changed my view of the female sports reporter. Next time I see the curvaceous blond woman sports announcer on ESPN, I won't roll my eyes and tune out what she has to say. Her opinion matters no matter her appearance and sex. Take that media! (By the way, I am now an official feminist. Snaps for Ashley!)