Hi, I'm Here To Make You Uncomfortable

Have you seen the pictures that I have posted of myself on this blog before?

Well most of you have and let me tell you, a few aren't too happy about it.

Here, I'll give you a few examples so that you don't have to scour all 180 posts on this blog to find the ten or less that I'm talking about.

My covered boobs made it into "Conversations I Did Not Think I Would Be Having This Week."

You got a glimpse of my back and covered ass in the post "And Before I Knew It My Boobs Were On Facebook,"

I had a few tummy shots in "Things That Make You Ask Why." and then my body also made an appearance here and here, as well as an underwear shot here,

"How DARE Eden point out all of those scandalous photographs to us! What an attention whore!"

Are you annoyed yet? Because I can keep going if you want.

What if I were to add another photo?

Are you fully irritated yet?

What if I had a longer skirt on?

Still too slutty?

Would it help if I portrayed myself in a classier manner? 

That's not any better? 

What if I were fully covered by winter clothes?

What if I just gave up and got into pajamas instead?

There, I put those sweat pants on and snapped a picture just for you. 

I may have posed a bit just to add to my point.

Although, the sweatpants probably won't even help because a few of you were annoyed with me for posting a picture of myself, fully clothed, and wearing a raincoat in the post "At Least It's Not An Umbrella" and you really can't get any less sexy than I was in that photo.

So...I'm confused.

It's not just the scantily clad pictures that bother people, it's any pictures of me at all.

Actually, they don't seem to bother people, they bother women.

Of the 180 posts I've written, is it the handful of posts with pictures of me in them that make some of my women readers the most irritated.

So let me get this straight; I can come on here and talk about child abuse, rape, domestic abuse, parental abandonment, drug addiction, and other uncomfortable topics, but it's the photographs of me that cause women to recoil in horror and call me all sorts of fun and nifty little names such as "attention seeker," "narcissistic," and "egotistical."

Interesting.

I think what astounds me the most is that on this blog I pretty much let all my ugly hang out. I make fun of myself, point out my flaws, and I let you all get a good laugh at my expense. I consistently show you the worst parts of me and let you in on situations that definitely don't make me look all that stellar. In nearly every serious post I talk about how broken I feel and how I'm struggling. I talk about learning to accept myself again and I encourage you to except who you are. We talk about learning to love our bodies after abuse and just learning to love our bodies in general. We talk about being proud of our physical appearance and sexuality and I remind you to never let anyone else define who you are.

But if I actually happen to be as comfortable with my body as I would like all women to be, OH THE HORROR.

I'm not egotistical about my looks, in fact as I said in another post I think I fall somewhere within the category of "she's cute but not unapproachably gorgeous." in other words, I figure I'm pretty average. What I am however, is comfortable and accepting of who I am; inside and out. I've already proven by this entire blog that I no longer feel the need to hide away parts of me that aren't perfect, mind and body included.

My whole mission on this blog has been to empower you to love you, to be proud of you, to accept you, yet I get chastised for taking my own advice (But if I didn't take my own advice, I would be chastised for being a hypocrite, so really this is a lose/lose situation for me). 

I have made fun of my tiny boobs (I don't have much more than a handful, I'm a small chick) and I told you about the time a renowned plastic surgeon told me that my ears stick out. In fact I've consistently talked about how I truly believe there are no ugly people, that we are all beautiful in our own right, and that I wish everyone could see that. Yet by believing the same things for myself that I believe to be true for all women, I have been inadvertently pissing some of you off when I choose to include my body as a part of everything else I share with you.

For those of you who read the post "And Before I Knew It My Boobs Were On The News"  you know that I've already made peace with how I portray my body/sexuality to the world so I don't really feel like we need to cover that topic again. If you haven't read that post I would suggest popping over there and checking it out before continuing on because we are going to skip right over why I feel comfortable with how I portray my body and jump right into asking why some of you are uncomfortable with my body.

This whole situation has really got me thinking about why it is that we as a society— women in particular— are so bothered by other women's physical self confidence. I'm not even specifically talking about women that choose to dress in revealing attire or women who choose careers in the sex industry, I'm just talking about women in general that are confident in their appearance.

We applaud women for their achievements in education, their high profile careers, their lucrative political positions, but the women that choose to show confidence in their bodies, well we just can't have that. Oftentimes many of us judge her while hiding behind a cloak of feminism, saying "we don't like it when she shows off her body because it objectifies women and we don't want to be labeled by our bodies!"

But isn't that exactly what we are doing, labeling her by how she portrays her body?

Women have turned on their own gender, forget men, now we as women are reducing ourselves down to nothing but an appearance.

I was thinking about this and then something dawned on me.

We aren't bothered by all women being proud of what they have, just some women.

Do you remember the Dove campaign for real beauty? It had an ad that featured gorgeous women of different shapes and sizes in their underwear, all of whom were proud of their bodies. Women across the nation went crazy, they loved that "regular, everyday" women were staking their claim in the beauty department. They loved that these women were standing up and claiming that they beautiful. (Which they are!)

Somehow I do not think that people would have had the same reaction if it were a group of Victoria's Secret underwear models self proclaiming their beauty.

Why is it that women are celebrated for their body confidence, as long as they aren't too confident? "Yes, you think you are beautiful and that's wonderful, but if this becomes a regular thing I'm not going to like your self confidence too much you egotistical bitch."

I really don't think our problems with female displays of sexuality are about not wanting to be objectified by men anymore, I think a lot of it has turned into women competing with other women.

Let's face it, I would venture to say that the vast majority of women in this world would like to look good. Most of us would be happy to feel pleased with the way we look, yet do we, as women understand that and build each other up?

Noooo, we tear each other down.

"Ashley thinks she looks so damn good in that dress, what a slut. Katie always wears such low cut shirts, what the hell is she trying to prove?"

We applaud women for their intelligence but we, we as women, judge them for their physical appearance just as much, if not more, then men do. We as women fight together be equal to men, but when it comes to our physical qualities we fight against each other. We've made it all about competition and jealousy and to the women that have said "fuck it, I'm happy with how I look" we tear them down and try to bring them back to the where we think they should be.

Can you imagine a world where women felt confident in their skin because their gender equals made them feel that way? The first thing many of us do in the morning is to prep our bodies to go out into the world. We take a shower, pick out some clothes, do our hair, apply make-up, and then we get ready to face the day. Wouldn't it be amazing if every morning you faced the day with confidence? If you looked in the mirror, saw your beautiful self, and then set out to leave our mark on the world?

I would venture to say that we would be an even more productive gender if we all had the confidence to go after what we wanted, confidence that we as women strip away from each other on a daily basis.

Most people would say that the need to throw rocks at another women's self confidence stems from feelings of insecurity and jealousy. If we don't feel great about ourselves, we don't want others to feel great about themselves either because then we perceive them as thinking that they are better than us.

I love my friends because we are all cut from the same cloth. If you overheard us talking you would probably think we were all gay. I have a best friend that has the best boobs I have ever seen in my life. Even as a totally straight women I think I comment on their amazingness every single time I see her because they are just that good and she in turn is always commenting on my legs. Together we feel pretty damn good about ourselves even though we really couldn't look any different. My eyes are a piercing blue while hers are a stunning shade of brown. I am a few inches tall than her and she is several shades darker than me. She wishes for my waistline and I would love to have her gorgeous hair.

We are not the same, yet we are equally beautiful in our own right. Together we remind each other to put our best face forward; our face of confidence and self acceptance.

So again I ask you, what might we gain if we set down our shields and started praising each other? What would we gain if we as women encouraged each other to be proud of who we are not just intellectually, but physically as well? 

We would probably bring our gender up a few notches in almost every department, because as the basis of every Disney movie out there reminds us, only when you believe in yourself can you really reach your full potential.

We blame men for holding us back, but we are doing a pretty damn good job of holding ourselves back.

So I guess my question is, when we see a women who is confident in her appearance, shouldn't our reaction be more of "good for her" and less of "who does she think she is?" Why do we cheer for the previously less confident but when someone fully accepts their beauty, we trash them?

Do women not realize that it's not an all or nothing situation? If someone is beautiful, sexy, confident, do you realize that it does not in any way lessen who you are?

We as women have the power to stop a lot of the problems our gender has. We have the power to empower women to expect more for ourselves. We have the power to build up our self esteems to the point where we don't chase an ego booster from men. We have the power to demand respect for our bodies. This is nothing new, we have known that for years, but when women whole heartedly embrace themselves, we as women judge them.

It makes me sad that here, on my own blog, where I routinely point out all my flaws, where I spend a vast majority of my time reminding women to love themselves, where I've never claimed to be anything other than equal, have I been labeled with a few really nasty names for embracing who I am in body as well as soul.

The shorts that caused some readers to deem me "disgusting."

It doesn't make me sad for myself, it makes me sad for my gender.

We as women have fought to be seen for who we are beyond our physical appearance, but maybe it's time to stop fighting our physical appearances and embrace them, all of them, for all of us.

It's not until we truly love ourselves as equals, will we ever really be an equal gender.

So despite what you think of me, smile because I think you're gorgeous! When you finally see that and fully accept it, I'm going to give your sexy ass a great big high-five because there is nothing more that I want for you, than for you to see how beautifully amazing you really are.

I challenge you to hesitate in your judgments of the way other women view themselves. Cheer them on when they are down and when they finally stand up instead of muttering in their shadows, consider it a job well done and stand up beside them.

It is only when we are all standing together will we truly be a united front.