This is what liberation looks like

[firecat]

In one form, anyway.

http://www.dressaday.com/2006/10/you-dont-have-to-be-pretty.html

(via various people on my friends list)

Comments

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

This is interesting. I have a short friends list, so that I won't spend all day reading live journal, but two of you have posted this link.

As a teenager I felt very strong ambivalence about "pretty". I was not pretty, but I didn't feel like lifting a finger to learn about makeup and clothes -- maybe I wanted "natural" beauty and felt that the kind you work for isn't worth anything? At the same time, I felt a great deal of anger at society/peers/THEM for insisting that I be pretty.

Anyway, it turned out that sex was the cure for all that fretting. It also helped to go away to college in a part of the country where I was "exotic" rather than "ugly". I almost never think about it now, although I am vain about my appearance in my own fashion.