The Womanifesto of a 19 Year Old Whelp
I do not worship mythical Goddesses. Fortuna and Minerva are just fairy tales to me. But I do believe in the Goddesses that I have known.
It is because of the women in my life, both alive and dead, that I am a woman. The rapes endured by my mother and my grandmothers have taught me a lot about the will of a woman when she strives to overcome it, and flourish until the emotional scars fade.
I wait for the day that the scars of my own rape will also fade. Until then, I will strive to make myself whole again.
Like other women who have written these powerful public declarations, I am angry. I am angry that we allow history to repeat itself, when all we have to do is look at our mothers and see the Hell they have lived through in their lives and know not to let it happen again. I am angry that we will not rise together and refuse to be thought of as t&a. I am angry that I do not know anyone else my age that is not ashamed of her menstrual blood. I am angry that I am forced by the media and its flock to look like a life-sized Barbie doll, ready for the fucking. I am angry that my kind, loving father feels that he must constantly guard my sisters and I because he ‘knows how boys can be’ and doesn’t want it ‘to happen again’.
I am angry that more people aren’t angry.
I will not compromise my beliefs just to ‘fit in’ with any group, including the so-called ‘Women’s Pride’ bitches that have shunned me because I don’t fuck other women, I don’t violently support abortion, and I give praise to a male deity.
Fuck them.
Am I less of a woman because of these things? Have I not felt the same pressures as every other woman is this fading nation? The pressures to stick a finger down my throat and vomit until the calories disappear? The pressures to go under the knife and fill my tits with silicone? The pressures that build up and build up until it becomes unbearable, and slit wrists seem to be the only way out?
Fuck all of them.
I’m sick of fighting with myself. I’m sick of feeling like my body is a battlefield. I’m sick of hating my stretch marks, my extra tummy roll, my big pink areolas, my scarred cunt.
hatingmybodyhatingmybodyhatingmybodyhatingmybodyhatingmybodyhatingmybody
I should applaud the media for convincing me that I’m a disgusting piece of flesh. All of the money I’ve spent on cover-up and scar removers and deodorizing tampons are proof that at some point in my life, they quietly slid their commercial jingles into my ears and imbedded their bullshit messages into my brain.
I hereby vow to forever love every inch of myself. I will never compromise this sacred love for anything. Not for the teevee, not for the teenie bopper magazines, not for the love of a desirable man.
ilovemeilovemeilovemeilovemeilovemeilovemeilovemeilovemeiloveme
— Heather Sollen
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