'Beauty'

Let me tell you about something I saw just the other day, a group of 6/7 twenty-somethings sat in a bar sneering at a girl who walked in.  Yes, I know what you're thinking, surely they're old enough to know better, I thought the same.  Regardless of this they didn't stop and were relentless in their sniggering.  For what reason, I have no idea, there was nothing that stood out, not that it would be a valid excuse.  It really started to grate on me, the desperation and cruelness that was entwined within this situation.  I've observed many women like this - I fear its perhaps a Western phenomenon, but doubt it - emaciated, their faces hardened masks, as if permanently set against the straining of vigorous exercise.  Often rude, crass, wearing their slim bodies like some passport for poor behaviour.  But for me, despite the deprivation, the starvation, the overexertion, they are still unattractive to the point of being somewhat repellent, with their nasty sneers and cutting comments.  Surely a sign that they are lonely, unhappy, unsatisfied - and hence the bitter and mean.

Strangely, I don't really blame them, I mean, true, they have a right to stand up and be counted.
To say NO I will not be a slave to the media industry, but that's difficult when so many people around you won't.  It's a powerful industry that effectively attempts to shape who we are, inform us of normality and 'helps us' to be that person we aspire to be, we are weak in it's prescence.

We, as a women, have been sold a concept that fails us miserably. 
Spend every moment of your free time fretting about your body, the media urges, exercise frequently, buy diet books, beautify, pluck, wax, and a man will find you attractive and love you forever.  Don't ever for one second worry about being loving or loveable, about kindness, comraderie with your fellow females or finding fulfillment on some deeper spiritual, emotional level.  Instead just try to take up as little space as possible, be as small as possible, or you will be reviled by every industry poised to make money from you - the fitness, diet and even 'medical' industry.  Warning: they'll steal your money and your self-esteem.  You'll give it all in the hope of achieving this greater being and you will still be unhappy.  In spite of all evidence to the contrary, you'll buy into these ideas, believe wholeheartedly, build lives and lifestyles around them.

Now, I know, I can't exactly sit here on my high horse and pretend that I don't care about the way I look.
Of course I do, that's natural.  But do I care whether I'm a size zero, whether I have this seasons latest fashions, if I'm up to date on what celebrity is sleeping with what other celebrity this week? - NO. 
And why?
Because I'm too wrapped up in my own world, developing my mind and soul for no-one other than me, how empowering is that.  And when it comes to attracting a man, I'm afraid he will just have to take what he sees, or leave it, either way I'm not fussed, because the kind of man that wants the media's image of a woman is not the kind of man I want.