Something Boys Should Know About

Girls get a lot of pressure from society, and from the media, and from other girls, but for a moment I have something to say about our looks, in particular. Every girl you know, every girl you've met, every girl you pass by on the way to wherever has a lot on her shoulders. I think it's something worth noting that you may look at a girl without makeup, wearing sweats, and think she's still beautiful, or she's blah, or whatever, but how she looks right now at 8:30 am drinking that coffee? That's still not natural. Odds are, there's a lot that you're missing.

Even this morning, with her don't-give-a-fuck attitude and hair to match, there are all these little things- those last two pounds she sweat over, getting the exact right haircut, her eyebrows, her knees, stuff you wouldn't think to think about- they drove her crazy once. And they made her what you see today, and I think it's a mess that this is the standard and not the exception. She's been through her whole life waxing this and toning that, all just to keep from being below average. Growing up, sometimes this message was discrete, but sometimes it was thrown in her face, and she internalized it.

So now she's sipping her coffee, thinking about that extra workout she's trying to squeeze in later today because she's so fixated on the lack of a little gap between her thighs, and the end goal is to look indistinguishable from any other girl. She's probably absolutely brilliant, or maybe she's not, but whatever her aspirations there is this lingering insecurity that has been beaten into her since the day she was born. It's a race without a finish line, and the crazy part is how fantastically unimportant it all really is. There are girls who rebel against it, and they don't buy the makeup and the overpriced clothes, and then the world is even more cruel. If this made any sense at all, I think maybe boys should start putting in a little more effort to level the playing field. You know, maybe start paying more attention to your haircut, eyebrows, fingernails... it might take the pressure off of ours, or at least make it more worthwhile.