Another Girl’s Paradise

Does it all come down to
the thing one girl fears
in the night
is another girl’s paradise
- Tori Amos

We’re so mad at men for treating us wrong, we’re being completely blind to how terribly WOMEN treat other WOMEN!!


Whatever happened to girl power!

Everyone is acting like women are these powerless and helpless creatures that need to be sheltered and ‘taken care of’. Balls to them all, I say. We can help ourselves. We can support each other. We don’t need to be sheltered.

Before you think this is some crazy-ass feministic rant, let me tell you where this is all coming from.

I was watching TV the other day and you know how nowadays the commercial breaks are just getting longer and longer, well it seems that day was my lucky day ‘cause I got to see two brilliantly ridiculous ads one after the other. 2!! Ridiculous. Like laugh-out-loud ridiculous. And they kept getting better. (Thank god, the remote control was out of reach and I was too lazy to get out of bed for it!)

The first was this ad for AXE Body Spray. The one where this girl is standing in front of a mirror, wearing a sleeveless, black dress. She isn’t satisfied with what she sees. Then she picks up a pair of scissors and cuts off the lower half of the dress, up to her thighs.

And then the voiceover – Because guys like less, AXE now costs less.

The other one was this ad in which this young girl just got a modeling contract, but she’s all upset about it. “Why!” Her friend asks, “You look lovely in these pictures!” And she replies that the face in those pictures was her ‘summer’ face, and it’s winter now and her ‘winter’ face is not that pretty. You guessed it. It was an ad for Fair and Lovely’s Winter Fairness Cream. Because regular cold creams, apparently, steal your skin’s natural glow.

And I got so mad after watching these. I thought – How misogynistic! How sexist! How superficial!!!! How dare they make ads like these! What a terrible effect this will have on young girls watching them! Making them feel all pressured into looking and dressing and acting a certain way in order to attract men or find jobs!

And I did what I always do before I write, I googled. You Tube is wonderful dhw? I found the videos for these ads. And this time when I watched them, I just could not stop laughing.

Seriously. Rather than these ads being offensive to women, what I find offensive is the suggestion that these ads will influence how young girls and women feel and think about themselves. No one is complaining how the AXE ad is offensive to men because it shows how one-track-minded men are. But there are loads of articles being written about how the ad is demeaning to women. Such a big deal is being made about all the fairness cream ads and how they make dark women feel bad about themselves.

I ask you, who the hell are these women that need beauty products and television commercials to tell them how to think, feel, dress or look!?? Why can’t you know your own worth without waiting for a guy or the idiot box to tell you how wonderful you are or aren’t.

Body image is only an issue if you turn it into one. We can’t all look like Angelina Jolie or Penelope Cruz. So what if you have braces, or too many freckles, or if you’re flat-chested or have super-thick glasses, or if you’re too short or too tall, if you’re really fat or so skinny your friends call you lolly pop, or if you are asian and so dark your friends call you a negro. Other than you, who cares.

Sure it’ll be heart breaking when some guy doesn’t want to take you out because you’re too fat or too dark. But really?? Is that going to define who you are forever? And do you really believe that THAT guy was your one and only, last chance?

If you don’t like how you look you only have two choices. A – Do something about it. Exercise if you’re fat, eat better if you’re too skinny. Some might suggest surgery of the plastic kind, but not me. B – If  there’s nothing you can do about the way you look, then find a way to make your peace with it. Guys are not going to dump you because of how ‘bad’ you look. (Some of the shallow guys will, but then you don’t really want those ones around do you?) They will, most likely, dump you because you don’t like yourself.
I was listening to Tori Amos’ Raspberry Swirl.  And it got me thinking.

Have you noticed how mean women are to other women? Really nasty. It’s simple things even. We’re out at some party and the guys look over at some chick that’s just walked in and comment on how hot she looks.
The women all huddle together and discuss how slutty she looks.

Men sleep around and get called studs. Women sleep around and they get called sluts. Not just by guys. But by other women!! I find that horrifying.

I recently met a young girl who said she was planning to go for a shopping, and I said great, my girlfriends and I will go with you too! And then she said, oh no thanks, women don’t like me. I get along better with guys. I was offended at first. And then I thought. It’s not her fault. What she said is just a reaction to how women treat other women. I have some of the most amazing girlfriends a girl could ever ask for. But since most of my friends got married and got busy with their lives, I have to say, I’ve found it easier to make friends with or at least have social conversations with guys. You know why? Because as women get older they tend to get more insecure and more suspicious of other women. And it happens to the best of us. I know I’ve been guilty of many unnecessarily catty comments about other women. I’m warier now.

Women need to love themselves so they can love each other.

This is something Tori Amos said about her girlfriends and it might sound a bit extreme but I think you’ll see why I think she’s so cool.
“I’m in love with my women friends, but I just don’t eat pussy. But I’m in love with them. If I had a different sensibility, then you know I think I could, you know, really fulfill someone down there, where a lot of men in their lives don’t. And eating pussy is a metaphor, too – it’s about crawling in there, being with their juices, really being with them.”