SEX. BODIES. CONTROL.

Our culture’s obsession with our sexuality, our thickness, our thinness, our assness, our tallness, our youthfulness, our sweetness, our pigment...is not about beauty.  It’s about obedience.  

It’s not about us.  It’s about control.  Because if they can control the target and keep it moving forever, we’ll never stop trying to hit it.  We’ll never rest.  We’ll never look in the mirror and not want better lighting.  We’ll never let ourselves be ok.  We’ll never allow ourselves to want something without a disclaimer.  We’ll never want someone without flipping ourselves inside out so they keep wanting us back.  

If the ideal changes often enough we will never settle in.  We’ll always be running ourselves into the cement trying to prove everything.  As long as porn and religion remain unprosecuted, we’ll never make peace with this body we were gifted or the soul she holds.  We’ll never feel clean enough to unleash our primal instincts and meet our original.  The one before the world got in the way. 

We’ll just keep wishing and spending.  We’ll keep manipulating and perfecting and dieting and purging and crying all the way to the bathroom and back to the party.   And to the end of every almost dream come true in between.  Just eating lies and puking shame.  

We’ll feel our light start to leave.  Then our brilliant ideas.  Then our confidence.  Then our knowing.  Then our voice.  Then our sanity.  Then our purpose.  Then our hours.  Then our days.  We’ll start saying no words at all because no words is an easier aftermath than saying the wrong ones. 

We’ll please instead because that’s all we know how to do.  Please our way to whatever fake thing we were told love is.  We’ll shift from whole to parted.  Whole to dismembered.  Whole to disconnected fragments of someone we used to know when we were five. 

And you know what a disconnected insecure woman is?  She’s an obedient one. 

And you know what an obedient woman is?  She’s a controlled one.  

And you know what a controlled woman is?  A woman who has given herself over to a culture that doesn’t deserve her.  A culture that is dependent on her not knowing who she is.  

A system that strives to keep her in her place.  To keep her believing she is only a body.  Only a look.  Only sex.  Only smiles.  Only sweetness.  Only sacrifices.  Only accommodations.  Only a selfless woman.  A woman without a self.  A woman of service to the rest. 

Are you over it yet?  I am.  Know who you are.  Know all of your dimensions.  Intimately.  And without apologies.  Never again not one more time, hand yourself over to someone who doesn’t deserve you. Never again, hand yourself over to a culture that is so far beneath where you’re standing right now.

julie harper I AM HER