Mirror: You're Doing It Wrong And Someone Can't Believe You're Wearing That

Some days, it’s tiring to be a woman. No matter what you do, you’re doing it wrong, and someone can’t believe you’re wearing that.

Jessica Alba

We judge each other for our career and family choices (you’re either a terrible mother or wasting your talent, or both). We judge each other for our weight on both ends of the spectrum (did you really need that second piece of cheesecake? Why aren’t you eating anything?). We judge each other for our emotions. We judge each other for the number and spacing of kids. We judge each other for our clothing – too conservative, too revealing, too businesslike, too manly, too ugly, too clashing, too good to be authentic.

Like you’re a slob who doesn’t care what she looks like and a ditz who cares too much about looks. If you’re ugly, no one should take you seriously; if you’re pretty, you probably don’t have any brains.

Like somewhere out there there’s an ideal balance of physical beauty, poise, diet, emotional finesse, and fashion sense. If we’re going to be worth anything, we need a perfect body, impeccable fashion sense, and the impossible skill of being sensitive to others’ emotions but not to our own. Anything short of that and judge! judge! judge! Even for the select few women who seem to have accomplished this, judge for making it too much of a priority, and judge if any minor thing goes wrong in your life. Because you thought you had it all together, didn’t you? Judge!

When the dust settles, most of us end up feeling like we’re ugly and trying too hard at a task we’re doomed to fail anyway. And then we judge each other for being attention-mongering drama queens (phrase courtesy of a high school friend of mine).

Why do we do this to each other? Why do we hate ourselves so much? Why are we so insecure?

courtesy some genius on flickr

Read the rest, including my proposed solution, at The Mirror!