Why Women Punish Themselves

     Why do we (women) punish ourselves!  I used to be a woman who didn’t care what people thought of me, I am fat and plain.  I didn’t want people’s perception of me to be PWT (poor white trash), but other than that my theory was, if you don’t like me don’t look ayt me or be around me.  I would brush my hair, put on clean clothes, and brush my teeth.  I would not put hours in doing my makeup and my hair or worry about wearing name brand clothes. 

      I would go to kareokee once a week and one night I noticed something; no-man would hit on me or flirt with me, or even glance my way.  Now I am a married woman, and I love my husband very much and would never, never cheat on him, but it does make a woman feel good about herself when a man shows interest in her whether she is available or not.  I was not getting any attention from the opposite sex at all, so if men at a bar was not interested in me am I still keeping my husbands attention as well.  I started to watch women in general to see what they were doing to attract men and what I was not doing. I seen women on a daily basis loosing weight, and primping themselves and men were hitting on them or flirting with them.  Here I am gray haired, fat and ugly.  I was not primping or loosing weight.  I then became obssessed about my appearance and how people would look at me.  My best friend asked me what was wrong with me and I told her about my feelings, of course she did not understand, I never cared what people thought of me before so why change the person I was.  She is skinny and beautiful she had no clue what I was feeling and why, she had never been fat or ugly.  She had good advise but, it did not make sense to me because she was what I wanted to be, so it is easy for her to say these things. 

     I took a look at my friends and women all around me to see what they were doing to themselves and I came up with the conclusion women punish themselves on a daily basis for the world’s perseptions of beautiful.  Women, exercise, diet, tweeze nip, tuck, stretch, roll, flatten, hours of applying perfect makeup, hours of fixing hair, wax, creams, lotions, dyes, perms, matching outfits with shoes, perfumes, pedicures, manicures, facial, scrubs, hot oils, polishs, and haircuts, all for the sake of beauty.  Punishments to be beautiful, A thousand years ago women were all plain janes and yet they still attracted men.  Why have we changed so much about what our perception of beauty is?  We need to be happy withourselves whether we are fat, ugly, thin, or plain.  It is our inner beauty that makes us beautiful in and out.  It is not all this stuff that we punish ourselves with that deciedes if were are beautiful or young.  We all grow old and even if you are 80 yrs old and had all the plastic surgerys in the world you are still going to look old but with alot of plastic all over you. Think about what image we are impressing on our children.  Why don’t we change the way we think about beauty and realize that true beauty is within, not all this punishment of primping.  Heres a challenge for all women, take a good look aroung and analyze why we punish ourselves for beauty.  Lets change the world’s perception of beauty.  Be beautiful on the inside and it will shine on the outside. 

april.means@yahoo.com