Earlier today, I was thinking about the situation that my fiance and I are currently in. We are stuck living with his mom because we, like many people today, are struggling to find affordable housing anywhere near where we live.
Sadly, much like the cost of food, transportation, and other every day necessities, housing costs have skyrocketed in the last 20 years. According to the US Census website (https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/grossrents.html), in the 1980's the average cost of a one bedroom apartment in my home state of Washington was about $503, about $12 over the national average for the time. Now, with the average one bedroom apartment costing $900, you'd be hard pressed to find an apartment that you could afford, with most people in the lower earning bracket bringing in less than $30,000 a year.
I and many others think it's plain wrong that companies often do not pay enough for their employees to purchase the products that they sell. I myself have worked places where I could not afford to shop; the best example would be the short time I worked as a Housekeeper for Wyndham. They paid me minimum wage starting out, and if I could clean a room in less than two hours, then I would get about $14.75 an hour, which is called earning a "peace rate" in the hotel business. But because of the fact that it was a timeshare resort, the rooms had full kitchens, two bathrooms, and they expected a VERY high standard of cleaning; I was lucky if I could do more than two rooms a day. I would never have been able to be a timeshare holder, even if I cleaned four rooms a day at peace rate.
My fiance said that it was unfair this morning, and it kind of just sparked an idea in my head. A lot of people argue over the minimum wage and what should be considered a living wage, saying that it could vary depending on what the person does. I had an idea that might work, and I kind of want to see what others think.
Obviously, there are some companies who really don't need to pay their employees higher wages; the minimum wage should be kept in place for lower tier foodservice and retail, such as dollar stores and fast food. However, I do not believe that someone working in an Apple Store should be paid the same amount as someone working at, say Dollar Tree. An Apple Store associate is selling expensive technology, and as a result brings in more for the company than most other retail associates do.
Here's what I propose. I think that we as American citizens need to agree upon an ideal method of budgeting that can be applied to any amount of income to teach in schools, so that kids grow up learning how to budget in a smart way in case their parents won't or can't teach them. This budget would not only take into consideration household necessities, rent, transportation of some sort, food and otherwise, but will also take into consideration extras as well. Then, using this budget as a basis for wages, the law should state that you should pay your employee enough so that they can afford to purchase your product(s) on a regular basis (which could be different depending on the type of product(s)) after all bills are paid.
Not only that, but I believe that we should approve a budget system for companies as well. So many refuse to take care of the important stuff first (like their employees). The law should require that a company must use monies as follows:
1.)Production costs should be first, as they are the foundation for the company; if you can't keep up production, no one gets paid.
2.)EMPLOYEES COME BEFORE EXECUTIVES. I cannot stress this enough; most companies will pay their highest grossing board members before taking care of lower tier employees.
3.) Any money left over from covering production costs and hourly and low tier salaried employee (Managers and General managers) paychecks should go to high tier and executive level employees (Executives, board members and the CEO). There should be a limit as to how low your yearly salary can go; for example, I do believe CEO's deserve good compensation as they are running a company; their salary should not drop lower than $300,000 a year, for example. If it does, then the company has grounds for laying off low performance employees, including board members and lower tier employees alike in order to compensate.
It's not a complete idea, but I figured that it could be a draft of a more well thought out financial plan. Obviously after everyone has been paid, companies can still use any excess profit as they choose, just as they do now. However, I believe that companies should be legally obligated to stop abusing the welfare system and start realizing that, without people like me working with the public and actually selling the product, then NONE of them would ever see a paycheck. We earned that money, and we deserve a good slice of the pie so that we can afford healthcare and rent and transportation and other basic necessities.
Thoughts? Ideas? Additions?
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Sunday, December 27, 2015
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Why I Am Fed Up With The American Way of Business
Oh, politics.
A lot of people don't care about them, but they should. As of late I have been wishing that the general American populace actually researched politics instead of being casually interested in them, as I am growing more and more wary of the state of the US after the 2016 election. Why? Oh, I'll tell you why: Donald Trump.
See, I was raised by a mother who was VERY interested in politics. She always told me, "Don't believe everything a candidate says on TV. Research what they have voted for in the past, what they have said on issues that you are concerned about in the past. Always listen for their plans as to how they are going to execute it; don't just assume they have a plan just because they say they do." I have always taken that to heart, and have always researched candidates before deciding who I support.
As a result, I have flip flopped between candidates this year. At the beginning, I was leaning more toward Rand Paul. I had supported his father Ron Paul in the previous election, which was the first election; however, I was noticing that's Rand's policies were far more right winged than his father's. The one thing I liked about Ron Paul was that he wasn't interested in taking anyone's rights away, regardless as to what his personal beliefs were. Rand, however, has no issue making abortion, cannabis (marijuana for you lesser enlightened folks) and gay marriage illegal. And then, lo and behold, I came upon Bernie Sanders.
The first thing I noticed about him was that he uses the word "we" when talking about his campaign. When WE win. When WE take back this country. WE will not stand for injustice. His speeches were lit up with a fiery passion that I have never seen in a presidential candidate. So, I got to work. I researched his voting history, his background and his beliefs.
What I found was astonishing: he has ALWAYS been for the people. There are speeches dating back to the 1970's of him speaking on the shrinking middle class, income inequality, corporate subsidies and human rights. The biggest difference between him and the other candidates is that he actually has a very well thought out plan that you can find on his official website and elsewhere. (https://berniesanders.com/issues/).
Trump, unlike Sanders, really doesn't have much of a plan for "making America great again", as he loves to say. When asked as to how he manages to do so, he gives vague, poorly thought out descriptions of his plans, in between mentions of how Mexicans and Muslims are the root of all of our problems. The plans he does speak of are really nothing special; they are the same drivel that pretty much every other GOP candidate has been spouting for the past fifteen years. Except, he spikes it with "hip" language and current events to get people listening and get them thinking that his ideas are fresh and forward thinking.
Now, I don't know what Trump's true intentions are. He could very well be thinking that he can fix this country. However, there are a few things about him besides his racist attitude that bothers me. Firstly, his method of speech. A lot of people who support him say they like him because he "tells it like it is". I find this laughable at the very best; just because you know how to appeal to people's emotions and get them fired up and angry just by using your 4th Grade level English skills doesn't mean you're telling it like it is.
If anyone is telling it like it is, it's Bernie. While Trump focuses mainly on closing the boarders, Bernie has stated multiple times that he wants to make our government work for us once again. He says that the main reason for the rapid shrinking of the middle class is the fact that businessmen like Trump do not believe that it is their duty to take care of the people that they employ to earn their wealth for them. He also has noted that candidates like Trump and Clinton accept hefty donations from Wall Street, the Koch brothers, and other very wealthy elitists that are quite content to keep things the way they are. They pay these candidates to parrot rhetoric that they believe will get the public on board the bandwagon and then, if they are elected, they thumb their nose at the public and basically do the same thing every President after Reagan has done: nothing. However, Bernie refuses to accept donations from those people, and all of his campaign is funded by normal, working class Americans.
I think Bernie makes people uncomfortable because he is challenging everything we are taught as Americans from birth. We are taught that money and being successful financially is more important than anything else, that you have a right to earn more and more and that you shouldn't have to share if you don't want to. Your company or corporation? Your money. Good business always equals more profit. Ethical business is bad business because it doesn't always correlate with more profits. People who are poor are poor because they are lazy and do not contribute to society, ect. He states that ignoring individual plights and circumstances and allowing greed to run rampant in the corporate world is what is killing us.
For example. Trump is, first and foremost, a businessman. Not only that, but he is a really bad businessman. His companies have not gone defunct once, nor twice, but FOUR times. When a large corporation or company goes bankrupt, they are given a large sum of money from the government, called a bailout. That money comes out of YOUR pocket, and out of mine in the form of taxes that we pay, taxes that need to be going to our public transit systems, our increasingly hazardous roads and bridges, public schools and welfare programs.
Now, with most Trump supporters, I have lost them at the mention of welfare programs. It seems to be GOP kryptonite when someone mentions welfare, and is usually followed by whining about the "welfare state" and how people who are on welfare are chronic welfare abusers. While this is statistically true, it does not take into consideration what might be the root of the problem, which circles us back to businessmen like Trump.
Remember how I said that Trump and others like him don't want to take care of their employees? See, when you become so wealthy that you can afford to hire people to do the work for you, you are no longer earning your own money because you have paid someone to do it for you. You don't see the CEO of JC Penney standing at a register selling people curtains and clothes. The CEO of Taco Bell doesn't get up at five AM so they can open the restaurant at 8. They sit behind a desk and basically supervise. It is people like you and me who go to work and earn the CEO's paycheck for them.
However, we have the greedy attitude that says that unless you have your own business or you are willing to go deep into debt to get a higher education, you don't deserve to earn a good wage. Minimum wage jobs are just for teenagers looking for extra pocket money, right? Wrong. Statistically, a majority of minimum wage earners are over the age of 21, a lot of which are retirees that don't make enough on SSI to be able to afford to support themselves, so they are forced to take on a minimum wage job to supplement it. Others are in my age range (21-30) that cannot afford the time to attend college because they have to work in order to support themselves.
Corporations run by people like Trump pay as little as they legally can, because if they paid more it would cut into the CEO's gross amount of profits. Because of this, many people working minimum wage jobs are forced to be on food stamps or welfare in order to be able to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. That falls directly onto the taxpayer's shoulders, and it basically means that we are subsidizing these companies. This phenomenon is known as corporate welfare.
The problem with these companies not paying their employees well stems deeper though. When you aren't making a lot of money, you don't spend it, you save it. What do you suppose happens when a lot of people don't spend money? The economy stagnates. When I go into work, I know that if we didn't make a lot of sales that week, my hours for next week will be cut. That means less money for me to spend. And that means businesses that would have otherwise gotten my money for whatever reason are also taking a hit. The less money that circulates, the more our economy begins to crash and prices start to go up. When people have more money, they think more carefully about their purchases. When they go in to Sears to buy a new dishwasher, odds are that the one they have isn't on the brink of being retired for good because they didn't have to wait until last minute to replace it, and they have the time to go from store to store looking for the best deal. Companies know this, and when the economy is strong and lots of people have plenty of money to spend, you will notice that prices for most anything are lower than they would be if the economy were bad; obviously, if half as many people are buying a burger at McDonald's for $3, then McDonald's has to raise the price of a burger to $6 so their profits don't plummet. Of course, these price raises are not life or death decisions; the wellbeing of the company does not depend on these price hikes; the only thing that is affected is profits. As I said, the corporate goal is to raise them every year. They want you to think that these price hikes are necessary, that if they pay their employees better that prices are going to go up. And go up they do; notice how every time a company starts paying employees better, the prices go up? That's not because the company will go bankrupt if they don't; that's a CEO panicking about making up for lost profits.
Oh, but it goes even deeper than that. The corporate world views it's workers as disposable commodities. They are not people, they are merely commodities. Commodities that can be collected from much cheaper sources. Over the last 30 years, corporate fat cats have figured out that they can take their means of production to other countries so that they can pay ten Chinese, Vietnamese or Indian people the same amount of money as one American and get ten times the profit due to cheap labor and means of production to satisfy the need for ever increasing profits. As a result, a lot of factory, warehouse and other higher paying production jobs have been outsourced or heavily condensed, leaving a demand for jobs that these same companies are more than happy to satisfy in the form of a minimum wage job. Oh, your local Costco distribution center shut down? Never fear, we'll open up three new locations near you and you can work as a cashier making ten dollars less than you would have in the distribution center! Oh, you want a promotion? Well, you're going to have to work far outside of your job description and do the work of three people to show us just how much you deserve it, and then maybe after five years you will have proven yourself enough for a two dollar raise.
The sick, twisted part of this is that they are trying to convince the American people that it MUST be this way. It's YOUR fault for being so greedy and wanting a way to support yourself. Corporations had to outsource work because of greedy poor Americans. What a shame, right?
And that is exactly what Donald Trump parrots every time he speaks on the job situation in this country. He has stated outright that he thinks that the minimum wage should be lowered, and that these businesses have no choice to outsource because it "costs too much" to do business here, which is a bold faced lie. As I said earlier, they want you to believe it costs too much so that you'll continue to vote their friends into office so that they can keep doing business the way they are, so they can keep exploiting their workers and make a profit off of their suffering.
What a lot of people don't understand is, because of our consumerist society, we are all interconnected. We all have to do our part and take care of each other in a sense if we want our economy to stay healthy and strong. However, these corporations are not legally obligated to do their part. Bernie Sanders wants to change that profit driven way of thinking. He is talking full government reform; he wants small, efficient government that will serve the people. That is something I believe people have a hard time grasping; he isn't talking about little changes here and there, he is talking about completely starting from scratch, which is why you have to look at his plans a little differently than you would Clinton's or Trump's. He wants to educate the population on government and how our voting system works so that the people are educated enough to keep voting in people who will honor the new system.
I have said for years that it is time for revolution. I have said that if a revolution showed itself, that I would join in arms and fight to take my country back. Well, the revolution is here. Bernie Sanders is going to pave the way to a brighter, kinder and more efficient future for Americans in ALL walks of life. I urge every one of my readers to really look at his plans and see that his plans really are what is best for us. Change is needed, and change is coming.
A lot of people don't care about them, but they should. As of late I have been wishing that the general American populace actually researched politics instead of being casually interested in them, as I am growing more and more wary of the state of the US after the 2016 election. Why? Oh, I'll tell you why: Donald Trump.
See, I was raised by a mother who was VERY interested in politics. She always told me, "Don't believe everything a candidate says on TV. Research what they have voted for in the past, what they have said on issues that you are concerned about in the past. Always listen for their plans as to how they are going to execute it; don't just assume they have a plan just because they say they do." I have always taken that to heart, and have always researched candidates before deciding who I support.
As a result, I have flip flopped between candidates this year. At the beginning, I was leaning more toward Rand Paul. I had supported his father Ron Paul in the previous election, which was the first election; however, I was noticing that's Rand's policies were far more right winged than his father's. The one thing I liked about Ron Paul was that he wasn't interested in taking anyone's rights away, regardless as to what his personal beliefs were. Rand, however, has no issue making abortion, cannabis (marijuana for you lesser enlightened folks) and gay marriage illegal. And then, lo and behold, I came upon Bernie Sanders.
The first thing I noticed about him was that he uses the word "we" when talking about his campaign. When WE win. When WE take back this country. WE will not stand for injustice. His speeches were lit up with a fiery passion that I have never seen in a presidential candidate. So, I got to work. I researched his voting history, his background and his beliefs.
What I found was astonishing: he has ALWAYS been for the people. There are speeches dating back to the 1970's of him speaking on the shrinking middle class, income inequality, corporate subsidies and human rights. The biggest difference between him and the other candidates is that he actually has a very well thought out plan that you can find on his official website and elsewhere. (https://berniesanders.com/issues/).
Trump, unlike Sanders, really doesn't have much of a plan for "making America great again", as he loves to say. When asked as to how he manages to do so, he gives vague, poorly thought out descriptions of his plans, in between mentions of how Mexicans and Muslims are the root of all of our problems. The plans he does speak of are really nothing special; they are the same drivel that pretty much every other GOP candidate has been spouting for the past fifteen years. Except, he spikes it with "hip" language and current events to get people listening and get them thinking that his ideas are fresh and forward thinking.
Now, I don't know what Trump's true intentions are. He could very well be thinking that he can fix this country. However, there are a few things about him besides his racist attitude that bothers me. Firstly, his method of speech. A lot of people who support him say they like him because he "tells it like it is". I find this laughable at the very best; just because you know how to appeal to people's emotions and get them fired up and angry just by using your 4th Grade level English skills doesn't mean you're telling it like it is.
If anyone is telling it like it is, it's Bernie. While Trump focuses mainly on closing the boarders, Bernie has stated multiple times that he wants to make our government work for us once again. He says that the main reason for the rapid shrinking of the middle class is the fact that businessmen like Trump do not believe that it is their duty to take care of the people that they employ to earn their wealth for them. He also has noted that candidates like Trump and Clinton accept hefty donations from Wall Street, the Koch brothers, and other very wealthy elitists that are quite content to keep things the way they are. They pay these candidates to parrot rhetoric that they believe will get the public on board the bandwagon and then, if they are elected, they thumb their nose at the public and basically do the same thing every President after Reagan has done: nothing. However, Bernie refuses to accept donations from those people, and all of his campaign is funded by normal, working class Americans.
I think Bernie makes people uncomfortable because he is challenging everything we are taught as Americans from birth. We are taught that money and being successful financially is more important than anything else, that you have a right to earn more and more and that you shouldn't have to share if you don't want to. Your company or corporation? Your money. Good business always equals more profit. Ethical business is bad business because it doesn't always correlate with more profits. People who are poor are poor because they are lazy and do not contribute to society, ect. He states that ignoring individual plights and circumstances and allowing greed to run rampant in the corporate world is what is killing us.
For example. Trump is, first and foremost, a businessman. Not only that, but he is a really bad businessman. His companies have not gone defunct once, nor twice, but FOUR times. When a large corporation or company goes bankrupt, they are given a large sum of money from the government, called a bailout. That money comes out of YOUR pocket, and out of mine in the form of taxes that we pay, taxes that need to be going to our public transit systems, our increasingly hazardous roads and bridges, public schools and welfare programs.
Now, with most Trump supporters, I have lost them at the mention of welfare programs. It seems to be GOP kryptonite when someone mentions welfare, and is usually followed by whining about the "welfare state" and how people who are on welfare are chronic welfare abusers. While this is statistically true, it does not take into consideration what might be the root of the problem, which circles us back to businessmen like Trump.
Remember how I said that Trump and others like him don't want to take care of their employees? See, when you become so wealthy that you can afford to hire people to do the work for you, you are no longer earning your own money because you have paid someone to do it for you. You don't see the CEO of JC Penney standing at a register selling people curtains and clothes. The CEO of Taco Bell doesn't get up at five AM so they can open the restaurant at 8. They sit behind a desk and basically supervise. It is people like you and me who go to work and earn the CEO's paycheck for them.
However, we have the greedy attitude that says that unless you have your own business or you are willing to go deep into debt to get a higher education, you don't deserve to earn a good wage. Minimum wage jobs are just for teenagers looking for extra pocket money, right? Wrong. Statistically, a majority of minimum wage earners are over the age of 21, a lot of which are retirees that don't make enough on SSI to be able to afford to support themselves, so they are forced to take on a minimum wage job to supplement it. Others are in my age range (21-30) that cannot afford the time to attend college because they have to work in order to support themselves.
Corporations run by people like Trump pay as little as they legally can, because if they paid more it would cut into the CEO's gross amount of profits. Because of this, many people working minimum wage jobs are forced to be on food stamps or welfare in order to be able to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. That falls directly onto the taxpayer's shoulders, and it basically means that we are subsidizing these companies. This phenomenon is known as corporate welfare.
The problem with these companies not paying their employees well stems deeper though. When you aren't making a lot of money, you don't spend it, you save it. What do you suppose happens when a lot of people don't spend money? The economy stagnates. When I go into work, I know that if we didn't make a lot of sales that week, my hours for next week will be cut. That means less money for me to spend. And that means businesses that would have otherwise gotten my money for whatever reason are also taking a hit. The less money that circulates, the more our economy begins to crash and prices start to go up. When people have more money, they think more carefully about their purchases. When they go in to Sears to buy a new dishwasher, odds are that the one they have isn't on the brink of being retired for good because they didn't have to wait until last minute to replace it, and they have the time to go from store to store looking for the best deal. Companies know this, and when the economy is strong and lots of people have plenty of money to spend, you will notice that prices for most anything are lower than they would be if the economy were bad; obviously, if half as many people are buying a burger at McDonald's for $3, then McDonald's has to raise the price of a burger to $6 so their profits don't plummet. Of course, these price raises are not life or death decisions; the wellbeing of the company does not depend on these price hikes; the only thing that is affected is profits. As I said, the corporate goal is to raise them every year. They want you to think that these price hikes are necessary, that if they pay their employees better that prices are going to go up. And go up they do; notice how every time a company starts paying employees better, the prices go up? That's not because the company will go bankrupt if they don't; that's a CEO panicking about making up for lost profits.
Oh, but it goes even deeper than that. The corporate world views it's workers as disposable commodities. They are not people, they are merely commodities. Commodities that can be collected from much cheaper sources. Over the last 30 years, corporate fat cats have figured out that they can take their means of production to other countries so that they can pay ten Chinese, Vietnamese or Indian people the same amount of money as one American and get ten times the profit due to cheap labor and means of production to satisfy the need for ever increasing profits. As a result, a lot of factory, warehouse and other higher paying production jobs have been outsourced or heavily condensed, leaving a demand for jobs that these same companies are more than happy to satisfy in the form of a minimum wage job. Oh, your local Costco distribution center shut down? Never fear, we'll open up three new locations near you and you can work as a cashier making ten dollars less than you would have in the distribution center! Oh, you want a promotion? Well, you're going to have to work far outside of your job description and do the work of three people to show us just how much you deserve it, and then maybe after five years you will have proven yourself enough for a two dollar raise.
The sick, twisted part of this is that they are trying to convince the American people that it MUST be this way. It's YOUR fault for being so greedy and wanting a way to support yourself. Corporations had to outsource work because of greedy poor Americans. What a shame, right?
And that is exactly what Donald Trump parrots every time he speaks on the job situation in this country. He has stated outright that he thinks that the minimum wage should be lowered, and that these businesses have no choice to outsource because it "costs too much" to do business here, which is a bold faced lie. As I said earlier, they want you to believe it costs too much so that you'll continue to vote their friends into office so that they can keep doing business the way they are, so they can keep exploiting their workers and make a profit off of their suffering.
What a lot of people don't understand is, because of our consumerist society, we are all interconnected. We all have to do our part and take care of each other in a sense if we want our economy to stay healthy and strong. However, these corporations are not legally obligated to do their part. Bernie Sanders wants to change that profit driven way of thinking. He is talking full government reform; he wants small, efficient government that will serve the people. That is something I believe people have a hard time grasping; he isn't talking about little changes here and there, he is talking about completely starting from scratch, which is why you have to look at his plans a little differently than you would Clinton's or Trump's. He wants to educate the population on government and how our voting system works so that the people are educated enough to keep voting in people who will honor the new system.
I have said for years that it is time for revolution. I have said that if a revolution showed itself, that I would join in arms and fight to take my country back. Well, the revolution is here. Bernie Sanders is going to pave the way to a brighter, kinder and more efficient future for Americans in ALL walks of life. I urge every one of my readers to really look at his plans and see that his plans really are what is best for us. Change is needed, and change is coming.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Beauty Vs. Health
This is a battle I often find myself fighting in my own head. See, I'm not exactly skinny. Who am I kidding? I am not skinny at all. That whole Big Beautiful Woman category? I definitely fit it.
Which, in my opinion, is not okay. Yeah, yeah, I know, I am gonna get a bunch of shit for this, but bear with me. I'm not some skinny girl sitting at a computer talking smack about bigger people. Just bear with me. I have my reasons for feeling this way as a bigger person.
Ever since the whole "anti fat shaming" movement started in the nineties, American obesity has skyrocketed. Granted, it has a lot to do with the crap in our food and the amount of fast and junk food people consume and a couple of other factors, but I think the biggest thing is the core obsession with looks in society.
We now tell our daughters that they are beautiful just the way they are, and as a result, girls are no longer really taking care of themselves. That is not to say that men are not just as guilty of this, but I am using this as an example simply because it is easiest. I see so many overweight girls like myself, and they really see nothing wrong with how their bodies are. They think "I'm beautiful just the way I am and haters gonna hate."
The problem with this is, because they feel like there is nothing wrong with them, nothing changes. They continue to allow themselves to go downhill health wise because so little importance is placed on health in our society. Yeah, we've got looks covered. But regardless of what we might think, looks are still superficial as can be. We place so much importance on beauty over health, it's getting ridiculous.
I remember when I was a Junior in high school, an organization by the name of Healthy Is The New Skinny came to speak to us at a mandatory assembly. Before then, I had searched the web for information on this group, because at the time I had just gotten into the whole "health first, beauty second" thing, and I wanted to see what this group's stance was on the subject.
What I saw was no different than what I had seen. They were placing looks over health, trying to make it seem like their focus was health. The reason why I knew it was a facade was because I saw zero health focused articles, no tips for eating healthy or exercising, no interviews with doctors or health specialists or nutritionists. All I saw was pictures of full figured, very pretty models, clothes for a full figured body, Oprah- esue "You're beautiful" pep talk articles, and Healthy Is The New Skinny beauty contests. All of it was superficial and none of it was any different than was already present in society, they just went up a few dress sizes.
The best part? I literally saw them poking fun at skinnier people, saying that they were victims of society's view on beauty and blah blah blah. Which infuriated me. I personally know three skinny girls who literally cannot gain weight and are perpetually underweight as a result. It isn't their fault that they are the way they are. And yet these people who claim to promote a positive self image for girls hate on a full group of girls who are not "the new skinny". "The new skinny" just sounds like a fashion fad to me, something that will be tossed away in a few seasons and within a few years will be considered silly looking to the general masses.
What would impress me is a group that didn't care if they offended some people, that said that one thing that bigger people cannot accept: that being fat is unhealthy. Bottom line. You can kick and scream and insist that the sky is green, but in the end it is still blue, and you have no choice but to accept it.
But Ann, you say! You're big too; don't you feel insulted when people say you're unhealthy? No, actually. Hurt, yes, when people point it out. But the thing is, it keeps me grounded. It keeps me from buying into the "I'm beautiful the way I am" bullshit. Because that frame of mind is dangerous; if I didn't know that being fat was unhealthy, I wouldn't care, right? I would have no reason to. These girls that have the opposite mindset have been reeled into something far more dangerous than they realize because of the fact that perspective is very powerful.
Let me back up to better explain what I mean. I was once told "A lie told seven times becomes the truth". Honestly, it's kind of true. If you are convinced subconsciously that something is true, eventually it becomes your truth. It's the same thing here. These girls, while they are probably told in one way or another every day that they are unhealthy, society teaches them not to care, because they are beautiful the way they are, and that you shouldn't listen to what others say.
When someone says something about me or tells me something about myself, no matter how mean or cruel their delivery is, I always at least consider what they have to say. I am a firm believer that it's not what you say, it's how you say it, meaning that even if the person's delivery is terrible, they may have a good point. When these people tell me I'm unhealthy, I listen. Because they are right, and I don't want to hide behind society's "feel good" trump cards in order to make myself feel better about myself.
I am working on changing my "big girl" status. I walk whenever I get the chance to. I take the stairs. I steer clear from foods with trans fats, MSG, gluten, and saturated fat. I eat lots of salad with fresh veggies and a light dressing. I drink lots of water. And you know what? Even though my progress is slow, I am getting there. One day I will be completely fit and I will feel awesome.
If you are a fellow big girl, don't fall for the lie. Yes, you are beautiful. But you gotta be healthy too in order to truly believe it. So join me in saying no to society, and let's kick unhealthy in the ass together.
{Sidenote: Sorry it has been so long since I have written; my schedule has been crazy since I started working more hours. I should start doing this at least every other week from now on, although I am shooting for every week. Happy reading, my friends.}
Which, in my opinion, is not okay. Yeah, yeah, I know, I am gonna get a bunch of shit for this, but bear with me. I'm not some skinny girl sitting at a computer talking smack about bigger people. Just bear with me. I have my reasons for feeling this way as a bigger person.
Ever since the whole "anti fat shaming" movement started in the nineties, American obesity has skyrocketed. Granted, it has a lot to do with the crap in our food and the amount of fast and junk food people consume and a couple of other factors, but I think the biggest thing is the core obsession with looks in society.
We now tell our daughters that they are beautiful just the way they are, and as a result, girls are no longer really taking care of themselves. That is not to say that men are not just as guilty of this, but I am using this as an example simply because it is easiest. I see so many overweight girls like myself, and they really see nothing wrong with how their bodies are. They think "I'm beautiful just the way I am and haters gonna hate."
The problem with this is, because they feel like there is nothing wrong with them, nothing changes. They continue to allow themselves to go downhill health wise because so little importance is placed on health in our society. Yeah, we've got looks covered. But regardless of what we might think, looks are still superficial as can be. We place so much importance on beauty over health, it's getting ridiculous.
I remember when I was a Junior in high school, an organization by the name of Healthy Is The New Skinny came to speak to us at a mandatory assembly. Before then, I had searched the web for information on this group, because at the time I had just gotten into the whole "health first, beauty second" thing, and I wanted to see what this group's stance was on the subject.
What I saw was no different than what I had seen. They were placing looks over health, trying to make it seem like their focus was health. The reason why I knew it was a facade was because I saw zero health focused articles, no tips for eating healthy or exercising, no interviews with doctors or health specialists or nutritionists. All I saw was pictures of full figured, very pretty models, clothes for a full figured body, Oprah- esue "You're beautiful" pep talk articles, and Healthy Is The New Skinny beauty contests. All of it was superficial and none of it was any different than was already present in society, they just went up a few dress sizes.
The best part? I literally saw them poking fun at skinnier people, saying that they were victims of society's view on beauty and blah blah blah. Which infuriated me. I personally know three skinny girls who literally cannot gain weight and are perpetually underweight as a result. It isn't their fault that they are the way they are. And yet these people who claim to promote a positive self image for girls hate on a full group of girls who are not "the new skinny". "The new skinny" just sounds like a fashion fad to me, something that will be tossed away in a few seasons and within a few years will be considered silly looking to the general masses.
What would impress me is a group that didn't care if they offended some people, that said that one thing that bigger people cannot accept: that being fat is unhealthy. Bottom line. You can kick and scream and insist that the sky is green, but in the end it is still blue, and you have no choice but to accept it.
But Ann, you say! You're big too; don't you feel insulted when people say you're unhealthy? No, actually. Hurt, yes, when people point it out. But the thing is, it keeps me grounded. It keeps me from buying into the "I'm beautiful the way I am" bullshit. Because that frame of mind is dangerous; if I didn't know that being fat was unhealthy, I wouldn't care, right? I would have no reason to. These girls that have the opposite mindset have been reeled into something far more dangerous than they realize because of the fact that perspective is very powerful.
Let me back up to better explain what I mean. I was once told "A lie told seven times becomes the truth". Honestly, it's kind of true. If you are convinced subconsciously that something is true, eventually it becomes your truth. It's the same thing here. These girls, while they are probably told in one way or another every day that they are unhealthy, society teaches them not to care, because they are beautiful the way they are, and that you shouldn't listen to what others say.
When someone says something about me or tells me something about myself, no matter how mean or cruel their delivery is, I always at least consider what they have to say. I am a firm believer that it's not what you say, it's how you say it, meaning that even if the person's delivery is terrible, they may have a good point. When these people tell me I'm unhealthy, I listen. Because they are right, and I don't want to hide behind society's "feel good" trump cards in order to make myself feel better about myself.
I am working on changing my "big girl" status. I walk whenever I get the chance to. I take the stairs. I steer clear from foods with trans fats, MSG, gluten, and saturated fat. I eat lots of salad with fresh veggies and a light dressing. I drink lots of water. And you know what? Even though my progress is slow, I am getting there. One day I will be completely fit and I will feel awesome.
If you are a fellow big girl, don't fall for the lie. Yes, you are beautiful. But you gotta be healthy too in order to truly believe it. So join me in saying no to society, and let's kick unhealthy in the ass together.
{Sidenote: Sorry it has been so long since I have written; my schedule has been crazy since I started working more hours. I should start doing this at least every other week from now on, although I am shooting for every week. Happy reading, my friends.}
Friday, May 24, 2013
Patience Is A Virtue (But It's Not Mine)
These past three weeks since I broke off my engagement, I have discovered something about myself: I am impatient. And I don't mean just kind of impatient, I mean really impatient.
See, I have been told by mutual friends of my ex fiance's that he just needs time, that they are helping him get clean and that once he starts getting his life on track, he will start missing me a lot (apparently he's already started to head down that road), and he will decide to contact me.
With that newfound hope, not only has it gotten much easier to cope with being single again, but I find myself itching with anticipation, fidgeting, waiting for something to happen. And, I tell you what, I am driving myself absolutely crazy.
But, perhaps this is what I need. I have never been the most patient person, and when it is something I really, really want, it makes it so hard to slow things down and just... wait.
Waiting sucks. Bottom line.
Have you ever heard that saying "Good things come to those who wait"? Such a true, if not aggravating, statement. When you exercise patience and let things come to you, good things happen. Take for example, roses.
Yeah yeah, I know I have a sick obsession with roses, but bear with me here. You plant a little bulb in the ground. You cover it with soil, you water it, maybe sprinkle some fertilizer over the top, and you wait. You wait, and wait, and wait, and wait.
Soon, after a long time, the first tender shoots start to grow. You water it every day, making sure that there are no bugs eating it away to nothing. And you wait some more. A long time. And then you finally have a full bush. You keep watering it, you keep fertilizing and killing bugs... and one day, you have a full rosebush blooming with big roses. You have something beautiful, a reward for your waiting.
At that moment, it was worth it right? Of course it was. You waited and something great was bourne from your patience. Kinda cool, isn't it?
And that is the lesson I am trying to teach myself. Good things come to those who wait. And maybe, just maybe, if I am patient and hope for the best, I will get the one I love back.
See, I have been told by mutual friends of my ex fiance's that he just needs time, that they are helping him get clean and that once he starts getting his life on track, he will start missing me a lot (apparently he's already started to head down that road), and he will decide to contact me.
With that newfound hope, not only has it gotten much easier to cope with being single again, but I find myself itching with anticipation, fidgeting, waiting for something to happen. And, I tell you what, I am driving myself absolutely crazy.
But, perhaps this is what I need. I have never been the most patient person, and when it is something I really, really want, it makes it so hard to slow things down and just... wait.
Waiting sucks. Bottom line.
Have you ever heard that saying "Good things come to those who wait"? Such a true, if not aggravating, statement. When you exercise patience and let things come to you, good things happen. Take for example, roses.
Yeah yeah, I know I have a sick obsession with roses, but bear with me here. You plant a little bulb in the ground. You cover it with soil, you water it, maybe sprinkle some fertilizer over the top, and you wait. You wait, and wait, and wait, and wait.
Soon, after a long time, the first tender shoots start to grow. You water it every day, making sure that there are no bugs eating it away to nothing. And you wait some more. A long time. And then you finally have a full bush. You keep watering it, you keep fertilizing and killing bugs... and one day, you have a full rosebush blooming with big roses. You have something beautiful, a reward for your waiting.
At that moment, it was worth it right? Of course it was. You waited and something great was bourne from your patience. Kinda cool, isn't it?
And that is the lesson I am trying to teach myself. Good things come to those who wait. And maybe, just maybe, if I am patient and hope for the best, I will get the one I love back.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
The Worst Birthday
Three days ago on April 26th, I lost the love of my life.
I lost him to drugs. His body is not dead. But the man I fell in love with is not there anymore. Well, he is. But the drugs and his depression have made him sink so low, he doesn't know how to love me anymore.
So I broke off our engagement. I told him I would take him back if he turned his life around... but it will take a long time. He has to get off the drugs. And even then... will he still love me?
It will take me a while before I can return to writing "The Many Meanings of Love". I just... can't right now. I cannot say when I will be ready to return to that subject, but right now it just hurts too much. Thank you for understanding.
Today is my nineteenth birthday, and I have never had a worse day. A day where by default I am supposed to be happy, but all I want to do is curl up and cry.
I lost him to drugs. His body is not dead. But the man I fell in love with is not there anymore. Well, he is. But the drugs and his depression have made him sink so low, he doesn't know how to love me anymore.
So I broke off our engagement. I told him I would take him back if he turned his life around... but it will take a long time. He has to get off the drugs. And even then... will he still love me?
It will take me a while before I can return to writing "The Many Meanings of Love". I just... can't right now. I cannot say when I will be ready to return to that subject, but right now it just hurts too much. Thank you for understanding.
Today is my nineteenth birthday, and I have never had a worse day. A day where by default I am supposed to be happy, but all I want to do is curl up and cry.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
The Many Meanings of Love (Part One)
I am dreaming Dear of you,
Day by day
Dreaming when the skies are blue,
When they're gray;
When the silv'ry moonlight gleams,
Still I wander on in dreams,
In a land of love, it seems, Just with you.
Let me call you "Sweetheart," I'm in love with you.
Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.
Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.
Let me call you "Sweetheart," I'm in love with you.
Longing for you all the while,
More and more;
Longing for the sunny smile,
I adore;
Birds are singing far and near,
Roses blooming ev'rywhere
You, alone, my heart can cheer; You, just you.
Let me call you "Sweetheart," I'm in love with you.
Let me hear you whisper that you love me too.
Keep the love-light glowing in your eyes so true.
Let me call you "Sweetheart," I'm in love with you.
-Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1910)
Such a lovely song. I was doing some reading on old music (something I happen to adore), and I stumbled across this one. It wasn't the first time I had heard it; I had grown up watching Barney's Great Adventure, where the kid's grandfather sings an incredibly sweet a capella cover to their grandmother as she watches on adoringly.
A childish example of love, I suppose. But what it must be like to possess such a steadfast love, to last oh so many years! We yearn for it, we fight for it. But few these days ever find it. Why? I have often asked myself this question.
I was raised at home. Yes, I was homeschooled. My interpretation of the outside world is very different than most other people's because of how I learned and because of the different experiences I had. To pass the time when I was a child, I read books, and a lot of them. And it never stopped as I got older; in fact, I spent a great deal of time pouring through stacks of books that I would cart home from the local library every week.
My favorite genre was and is Historical Fiction. I would be willing to bet that over half of the books I have read in my lifetime have been Historical Fiction, so much of a love I had for those stories. I would become giddy reading about the lives of others living in eras that I could only dream of. I envied them, wishing I could join them and leave this world that I felt so out of place in. So many stories did I absorb and ponder that I found myself beginning to think the way they did. I had such a simple view of the world, one that I was surprised to discover could be applied to even today's ever changing world. One view that I developed from these books is the concept of Love, and what it really means.
Such a claim, one might say. No one knows what Love is, and I can definitely agree with that; I can't say I fully understand it. But I do know that Love is not to be trifled with. It is a serious thing, a happy thing. But there are certain guidelines and rules to love that I think that the world has forgotten, thus ruining their chances of finding that one thing everyone searches, in one way or another, their whole lives for.
In the song Let Me Call You Sweetheart, there is a special sort of simple whimsy about it. No strings, no notes of hardship, nothing to suggest that Love could ever even hurt, not even a promise of a wedding. All that it is, is a simple and sweet declaration of Love. And that's it. But such strength is hidden behind it! This person is bearing their heart to the one they love without any sort of fear. They are saying, I love you, and I am not afraid to say so because I love you.
Why is it, then, that today the concept or subject of Love is met with so much hesitation and fear? Why is it that less and less people are getting married, more and more people are divorcing, fewer people even want to fall in Love at all, and sacrificing for Love has become the endeavor of fools? Such a sad world it is when the driving force of mankind, something that we cannot help, is now met with so much scrutiny. I believe a lot of it has to do with fear, selfishness, and complicated lives. I will attempt to explain my viewpoint in the best manner I can; in order to do this, I feel that I will have to do this in two different posts, just to make sure I don't write something that is entirely too long.
1.) Selfishness
In today's society, it is encouraged for a person to look after Number One. Society says "Marriage? What is this, the 1920's?! You have your whole life ahead of you to be married! Drink! Party! And by golly, go to school and have a career! That's the only way you'll ever be happy; you don't wanna tie yourself down too soon, do you?"
People have allowed society to decide what is best for us. I mean, come on. How do they know what is going to make me happiest? Really, I believe it has more to do with what the upper 1% want for us; more money is made by people with careers than people with families, but that's another story. They have this picture perfect idea that appeals to a great deal of people. You get to have your cake and eat it too, so to speak. You can have your time to indulge in your little fantasies without any sort of regret, and later, after you've had your fun, THEN you can have a family, if you choose to have one, that is. If you don't follow this formula for a picture perfect life? Well, then you're some kind of nutjob that's going to end up flipping burgers at McDonalds, or, my personal favorite that's used on women on a regular basis, you'll end up dependent on a man for the rest of your life.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't that the point of marriage? To be able to depend on someone for the rest of your life? And I am not just talking about women here, I am talking about men too. People need people, in some way, shape or form. The idea of being married is creating a union, that is, two people becoming a single unit, becoming one, if you will. A successful marriage depends on being needed, being nurtured, feeling safe, and depending on each other equally emotionally. Like I said, people need people. And marriage means you are with the person you need the most on this earth, to help you through the crap life has to throw at you. So that means that yes, a woman should be dependent on a man at some point, but only if he is equally as dependent on her.
But I don't see this happening. What I do see is this mindset in a lot of people, "How can I benefit from this?" For a lot of people, a major factor in the relationship is sexual attraction. We find each other sexy? Sweet! Let's go out! They get to know each other, maybe go out on a few dates, and then they sleep together. At this point, a lot of these mock "unions" break up and are never heard about again.
Sometimes they last and they stay together. They get into this phase where everything the other one does is cute, no matter how annoying it may be (anyone know "That Couple" that you just can't stand to be around because you can feel cavities starting to form in your teeth from all the mushy, lovey sweetness in the air?). They stay together a few years, and they find key points in the other's personality that they actually really like, and manage not to kill each other. So, they get married.
Problem is, at this point they learn what it really means to "honor and obey", and they really don't like it very much. She doesn't like his best friend or his buddies, he hates her "bestie" with a bloody passion and thinks she's the most annoying female on the planet, she hates when he goes to the bar, he hates it when she goes and gets another mani/pedi with her "gal pals" at the mall, and a whole lot of other things that they never really noticed before. They start to fight with each other. He may sleep out on the couch for the first time within the first two years. They give each other the cold shoulder for a day or two. Then they kiss, they make up, they have some amazing make up sex, and then they are fine for a while. But because of the circumstances the union started on, it is just the end of a never ending, viscous cycle that often ends in a bitter divorce.
Now, that is not to say that all marriages are like this; I have seen a few successful marriages that were formed in the aftermath of a one night stand. Every couple is different, so the success rates are different. But a lot of modern couples in their thirties tend to do this; you see it in the media all the time. Movies, TV shows, music, ect. All of it paints this picture that screams "Marriage sucks".
But what is the root of all of this selfishness that drives the modern individual? Why do men and women have such a hard time understanding one another, and why do so many marriages fail that could easily be fixed if this selfishness were to be absent? That leads me to my next contributing factor in the demise of the modern marriage-
2.) Fear
But, that is enough for now. I shall leave you, my readers, to digest these theories, and I shall post the next part of my little rant within the week, I promise.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Princess Aurora and Women's Roles, Feminism, and Bossiness
I love Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty. I first saw it as a three year old child, and when I first heard Aurora sing, I said to myself that one day I'd sing just as beautifully. Ever since then, I have worked on my voice, training it to do what I want. At nineteen, I think I have made it pretty far; in the sixteen years I have been working on it, I think my voice has formed itself fairly well.
It shaped me into who I am. Even today, I try to model myself after Aurora even personality wise, because I believe that she is a very good role model for girls.
Some would disagree, saying that she teaches girls to be weak and dreamy. I ask you, what is wrong with that? Not all the time, but I think that, as a woman, every once in a while it's a good idea to stop and remember one's femininity. Dreaminess is a classic feminine trait, and not a bad one at that. Dreams are the result of a creative mind, and I can't remember when creativity was considered a bad thing.
I would hardly call Aurora weak. She is a victim of birth; born into royalty, a role not of her choosing. On her sixteenth birthday, she falls in love with a dashing young suitor, and is dismayed to find out on her returning home that she is betrothed to the prince of the next kingdom, automatically dashing her dreams of marrying her handsome stranger that she met Once Upon A Dream.
But does she protest? No! She has a good cry, then quietly follows her three Fairy Godmothers to the castle of her birth, awaiting an unwanted marriage to an unknown prince, barely used to the fact that life as she knew it was a lie, a scheme designed to protect her from her parents enemy, the fairy Maleficent, so that she could be married off in the name of a union between two kingdoms. And she does this because she knows that in order to keep peace, she must go quietly and create this union for the sake of her people.
Does this sound like a weak woman to you? Sure, she ends up with her dashing suitor in the end (He's actually Prince Phillip, her betrothed!), but what if she hadn't? What if she had been cursed to leave behind her true love all in the hopes that her people wouldn't be war torn? Some would say that she was only a political pawn and that she was forced to choose this fate. But, let's compare her to another Disney heroine who has been described by our Feminist society as a perfect example of girlhood, and is placed in a similar situation.
Princess Merida from the Disney/Pixar film Brave is a feisty headstrong lass from 10th century Scotland. She has been raised her entire life to be a princess by her mother, Queen Eleanor, but wishes to be free and choose her own fate. When faced with the inevitable fact that she must choose a husband, she violently protests, choosing to risk her family's reputation and possibly her entire kingdom simply because she doesn't want to get married. She even confirms this in the paralleled scene between her and her mother as she's cleaning her horse's stable, having an imaginary conversation where she says:
"You could just say 'The princess is not ready to get married, and she might not ever be
ready, soooo thank you for coming, but we're cancelling; we can expect your declarations
of war in the morning.'"
Or something like that. Nonetheless, you can definitely see the differences between the two princesses; while Princess Aurora's main concerns are the fates of her people, Princess Merida's concern is with only one person: herself.
That is not to say that Merida is a bad person in the slightest; she obviously has a mind of her own and chooses to spend her time with the things she likes to do rather than princessy things, and she is no weakling either. In the end, she is willing to sacrifice herself to marriage in order to prevent war, but is saved by her mother, who insists that Merida and the princes of the other clans should be allowed to choose their own fates and fall in love in their own time.
What I am saying is that society has a very interesting view on what they believe the ideal woman is. Obviously times have changed and that is why the characters are so different, for Sleeping Beauty was released in 1959, and Brave was released in 2012. But is progress always positive?
If anything, I think that Merida hints at a very underlying theme in today's society: the unwillingness to make sacrifices. We've gotten so caught up in ourselves as a society, that the younger generations are becoming more and more selfish as time goes on. Little girls are getting bossier, taking examples from the growing levels of spunk present in the characters of the shows that are broadcast for their amusement, being told by their mothers that being bossy means having good leadership skills, and that there is nothing wrong with it.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have to say that when I think bossiness, I think "rude". Plain and simple. Bossiness is a pushy, insistent, gloating way of getting people to do what you want. I can guarantee you that if you take that kind of attitude into a workplace, you'll be packing up your desk within a year. Because let's face it: no one likes getting bossed around; we make this clear in our preschool and kindergarten days when we stick our tongues out at the one person in the class who fancies themselves the classroom police officer, saying "You're not the boss of me!". It's the same way in the work place, only now instead of raspberries and a verbal protest, you get reported by your peers to your boss and possibly lose your job over it.
Some people manage to be pretty successful being bossy financially, but do you hear good things about them as a person? Probably not. Those kinds of people have labels like "bitch" and "douchebag" attached to their names, and most likely don't have many friends; if they do, they are usually just as bossy as they are.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that I think women have gotten a little out of hand as of late; as you will find as this blog goes on, I am not a fan of Feminism. I believe that as a gender we have not changed for the better; women think being strong is being rude and mean, especially toward their male peers. The days of the soft but well spoken woman are over, and a new breed of griping, nagging magpies have taken over. Honestly? I say that today's women should be more like Queen Eleanor, who I view as a good balance between Merida and Aurora. Headstrong, confident, and passionate, but soft, feminine, and graceful at the same time. And above all, unselfish. That, I believe is a perfect example of what modern day womanhood should look like.
In the end, I choose to be like Aurora. Because there is still a part of me that still believes in grace, beauty, softspokenness, and old fashioned dreaminess.
It shaped me into who I am. Even today, I try to model myself after Aurora even personality wise, because I believe that she is a very good role model for girls.
Some would disagree, saying that she teaches girls to be weak and dreamy. I ask you, what is wrong with that? Not all the time, but I think that, as a woman, every once in a while it's a good idea to stop and remember one's femininity. Dreaminess is a classic feminine trait, and not a bad one at that. Dreams are the result of a creative mind, and I can't remember when creativity was considered a bad thing.
I would hardly call Aurora weak. She is a victim of birth; born into royalty, a role not of her choosing. On her sixteenth birthday, she falls in love with a dashing young suitor, and is dismayed to find out on her returning home that she is betrothed to the prince of the next kingdom, automatically dashing her dreams of marrying her handsome stranger that she met Once Upon A Dream.
But does she protest? No! She has a good cry, then quietly follows her three Fairy Godmothers to the castle of her birth, awaiting an unwanted marriage to an unknown prince, barely used to the fact that life as she knew it was a lie, a scheme designed to protect her from her parents enemy, the fairy Maleficent, so that she could be married off in the name of a union between two kingdoms. And she does this because she knows that in order to keep peace, she must go quietly and create this union for the sake of her people.
Does this sound like a weak woman to you? Sure, she ends up with her dashing suitor in the end (He's actually Prince Phillip, her betrothed!), but what if she hadn't? What if she had been cursed to leave behind her true love all in the hopes that her people wouldn't be war torn? Some would say that she was only a political pawn and that she was forced to choose this fate. But, let's compare her to another Disney heroine who has been described by our Feminist society as a perfect example of girlhood, and is placed in a similar situation.
Princess Merida from the Disney/Pixar film Brave is a feisty headstrong lass from 10th century Scotland. She has been raised her entire life to be a princess by her mother, Queen Eleanor, but wishes to be free and choose her own fate. When faced with the inevitable fact that she must choose a husband, she violently protests, choosing to risk her family's reputation and possibly her entire kingdom simply because she doesn't want to get married. She even confirms this in the paralleled scene between her and her mother as she's cleaning her horse's stable, having an imaginary conversation where she says:
"You could just say 'The princess is not ready to get married, and she might not ever be
ready, soooo thank you for coming, but we're cancelling; we can expect your declarations
of war in the morning.'"
Or something like that. Nonetheless, you can definitely see the differences between the two princesses; while Princess Aurora's main concerns are the fates of her people, Princess Merida's concern is with only one person: herself.
That is not to say that Merida is a bad person in the slightest; she obviously has a mind of her own and chooses to spend her time with the things she likes to do rather than princessy things, and she is no weakling either. In the end, she is willing to sacrifice herself to marriage in order to prevent war, but is saved by her mother, who insists that Merida and the princes of the other clans should be allowed to choose their own fates and fall in love in their own time.
What I am saying is that society has a very interesting view on what they believe the ideal woman is. Obviously times have changed and that is why the characters are so different, for Sleeping Beauty was released in 1959, and Brave was released in 2012. But is progress always positive?
If anything, I think that Merida hints at a very underlying theme in today's society: the unwillingness to make sacrifices. We've gotten so caught up in ourselves as a society, that the younger generations are becoming more and more selfish as time goes on. Little girls are getting bossier, taking examples from the growing levels of spunk present in the characters of the shows that are broadcast for their amusement, being told by their mothers that being bossy means having good leadership skills, and that there is nothing wrong with it.
Now, I don't know about you, but I have to say that when I think bossiness, I think "rude". Plain and simple. Bossiness is a pushy, insistent, gloating way of getting people to do what you want. I can guarantee you that if you take that kind of attitude into a workplace, you'll be packing up your desk within a year. Because let's face it: no one likes getting bossed around; we make this clear in our preschool and kindergarten days when we stick our tongues out at the one person in the class who fancies themselves the classroom police officer, saying "You're not the boss of me!". It's the same way in the work place, only now instead of raspberries and a verbal protest, you get reported by your peers to your boss and possibly lose your job over it.
Some people manage to be pretty successful being bossy financially, but do you hear good things about them as a person? Probably not. Those kinds of people have labels like "bitch" and "douchebag" attached to their names, and most likely don't have many friends; if they do, they are usually just as bossy as they are.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that I think women have gotten a little out of hand as of late; as you will find as this blog goes on, I am not a fan of Feminism. I believe that as a gender we have not changed for the better; women think being strong is being rude and mean, especially toward their male peers. The days of the soft but well spoken woman are over, and a new breed of griping, nagging magpies have taken over. Honestly? I say that today's women should be more like Queen Eleanor, who I view as a good balance between Merida and Aurora. Headstrong, confident, and passionate, but soft, feminine, and graceful at the same time. And above all, unselfish. That, I believe is a perfect example of what modern day womanhood should look like.
In the end, I choose to be like Aurora. Because there is still a part of me that still believes in grace, beauty, softspokenness, and old fashioned dreaminess.
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