Do You Qualify to Exist in Public Places?
It’s not what you look like, sister. It’s how the people around you identify your looks (you’re pretty, or fat, or homely, or boyish, or whatever), and what they feel you deserve as a result of their assessment.
Do you deserve to walk down the street and go about your business unmolested?
Do you deserve to attend class without worrying about whether some nearby boy will go apeshit over your bare shoulders?
Do you deserve to follow your passion for your work?
Do you deserve to remain at your job even though you refuse to have sex or flirt with your boss?
Do you deserve to be treated well in your romances?
Do you deserve to be laughed at because you’re wearing a bikini?
Do you deserve to feel pretty in your new outfit?
They believe they have the right (even the obligation) to judge you and decide. We are taught to support them in judging others and to embrace their right to judge us. We are taught shame (for being too pretty, too prudish, too plump, too bony, too homely).
We have to keep rejecting this. It’s so internalized, it feels impossible. But we have to refuse to play the game — whether it’s about others our ourselves. We have to reject the shame, and embrace wholeness. We have to insist insist insist that we are complete human beings worthy of respect. http://ow.ly/i/lF4cI
