Post by mintygreen on Feb 24, 2013 2:24:48 GMT -5
I have a friend on FB who's a few years younger than me and she often makes insecure FB status posts. 
I often post trying to encourage her but it seems very hard to break some trends.
I think a main problem is that her mother is always telling her to be fashionable and wear whatever is currently in fashion.
I find this really sad. I wish people didn't feel the need to pressure their kids to be someone they aren't.
I mean aren't there a lot more important things in the world than being FASHIONABLE?!?! Why is that even something that women are suppose to care about? I mean, why? You know I like fashion in the sense that I think it's artistic sometimes....but that's simply because I like creativity. And because I like creativity, I like to DO IT MY OWN WAY. As in, I don't like to FOLLOW others. I like to be my creative self....and just wear what the heck I want. I don't care if no one else is wearing it. I mean I probably dress relatively normal/average I imagine but still I just wear what I want, not because something is 'in style' right now.
If people want to follow fashion and only wear what is currently in style, fine, but don't act like there is something wrong with people who don't. I mean....WTF.
Obviously keeping up with whatever is in style also requires you to buy new clothing often....that is expensive. No wonder there is pressure for women to do this though. It's just a way for companies to make a lot of money off of us.
Males have pressure too, just in different ways. Males are often expected to be 'tough' physically...and they face a lot of that pressure as teenagers. My boyfriend got his nose broken by some other nasty boys when he was a teenager. He didn't even start anything with them, they just attacked him because they wanted to prove how tough they are or something. He'd also get jumped by a gang of guys on the way home from high school(more than once). And society acts like he's less of a man because he isn't a very big guy. He is very intelligent though(he was recommended by his teachers to be tested to become a part of Mensa when he was little but his parents wanted him to have a more normal life). However, intelligence sometimes seems to not be considered as important in either males or females as other aspects. :/ Women are expected to look a certain way, men are expected to be tough physically. Intelligence usually seems to be considered less important, for some reason. :/ At least when you're a young person anyway there seems to be more pressure to be something else. I think it might change when one gets older.
Anyway, I have said things like this to my friend and she agrees with me and then feels better, but she often is still insecure because of the stuff she hears from her mother on a daily basis.
Her mom even tries to tell her what kind of hair to have and what not. -_-
Speaking of which, my mom used to try to tell me to always have a certain kind of hair too. :/ My mom would always tell me to keep my hair short and that I would look horrible with long hair. I listened to her until just before my 24th birthday a few years ago....then I just let it grow out. What's funny is she now says my long hair is pretty. Funny how she somehow tried to get me to never grow it long and assumed it would look bad for some reason. :/
I sometimes think that parents really do think that they're helping their kids by saying stuff like this....because they want their kids to 'fit in' and be as 'normal' as possible and not get bullied(because yeah who wants that for their child?) but sometimes I think that when parents say stuff like this, it can do more harm than good because sometimes you can end up feeling like your parents just don't accept/love you for who you actually are.
I experienced a LOT of trauma as a child because of the birthmark I was born with on my face.....but part of it is because I ended up feeling, for a long time, like even my own parents didn't accept me for who I was. This was because they sent me in for a lot of laser surgeries on the birthmark when I was a child to try to lighten it. I now am old enough to understand that they did try to have my best interests at heart....they just wanted me to look more like a usual human child so that other kids would stop treating me like I wasn't even a human. However, as a kid I didn't really understand exactly why my parents were doing what they were doing....I just ended up feeling like even my own parents didn't like the way I looked. I just felt horrible, and the surgeries were really traumatic for me. Especially because the first time I went in they didn't even put me to sleep and they were zapping my face with a laser and it really really hurt. I didn't even fully understand why it was happening to me. I was so young that first time. It remains either the first or second memory I have in my life.
It's also a large part as to why as a teenager I was so insecure about my birthmark. I just felt like I'd grown up being told that I should want it gone from my face. Like the birthmark is just this horrible bad thing that I'd be better off without. I mean what other message was I suppose to get when even my parents had been trying to remove it from my face with laser surgery for years?
I also experienced having my arm broken by another person when I was 8 years old. Then the doctor didn't even fix it properly and I ended up needing further major surgery. I have some huge scars to prove it...I think I posted some pictures showing them before.
I'm able to look back on it now and at least understand better as to why all of it happened(the laser surgeries on my birthmark)....but it messed me up for quite a while.
Sorry, this ended up being a bit of a rant. LOL.
I think that part of why I feel like talking about things like this here....is because it seems like Randall most likely suffered from similar feelings of being insecure that a lot of us can relate to and some kind of pressure from the society he lives in/the other monsters around him.
It's a big reason as to all of us here can relate to him I think. I definitely ended up writing more than planned though....and now I really need to go to bed. I'm up later than I planned.
I often post trying to encourage her but it seems very hard to break some trends.
I think a main problem is that her mother is always telling her to be fashionable and wear whatever is currently in fashion.
I find this really sad.
I wish people didn't feel the need to pressure their kids to be someone they aren't.I mean aren't there a lot more important things in the world than being FASHIONABLE?!?! Why is that even something that women are suppose to care about? I mean, why? You know I like fashion in the sense that I think it's artistic sometimes....but that's simply because I like creativity. And because I like creativity, I like to DO IT MY OWN WAY. As in, I don't like to FOLLOW others. I like to be my creative self....and just wear what the heck I want. I don't care if no one else is wearing it. I mean I probably dress relatively normal/average I imagine but still I just wear what I want, not because something is 'in style' right now.
If people want to follow fashion and only wear what is currently in style, fine, but don't act like there is something wrong with people who don't. I mean....WTF.
Obviously keeping up with whatever is in style also requires you to buy new clothing often....that is expensive. No wonder there is pressure for women to do this though. It's just a way for companies to make a lot of money off of us.
Males have pressure too, just in different ways. Males are often expected to be 'tough' physically...and they face a lot of that pressure as teenagers. My boyfriend got his nose broken by some other nasty boys when he was a teenager. He didn't even start anything with them, they just attacked him because they wanted to prove how tough they are or something. He'd also get jumped by a gang of guys on the way home from high school(more than once). And society acts like he's less of a man because he isn't a very big guy. He is very intelligent though(he was recommended by his teachers to be tested to become a part of Mensa when he was little but his parents wanted him to have a more normal life). However, intelligence sometimes seems to not be considered as important in either males or females as other aspects. :/ Women are expected to look a certain way, men are expected to be tough physically. Intelligence usually seems to be considered less important, for some reason. :/ At least when you're a young person anyway there seems to be more pressure to be something else. I think it might change when one gets older.
Anyway, I have said things like this to my friend and she agrees with me and then feels better, but she often is still insecure because of the stuff she hears from her mother on a daily basis.
Her mom even tries to tell her what kind of hair to have and what not. -_-
Speaking of which, my mom used to try to tell me to always have a certain kind of hair too. :/ My mom would always tell me to keep my hair short and that I would look horrible with long hair. I listened to her until just before my 24th birthday a few years ago....then I just let it grow out. What's funny is she now says my long hair is pretty. Funny how she somehow tried to get me to never grow it long and assumed it would look bad for some reason. :/
I sometimes think that parents really do think that they're helping their kids by saying stuff like this....because they want their kids to 'fit in' and be as 'normal' as possible and not get bullied(because yeah who wants that for their child?) but sometimes I think that when parents say stuff like this, it can do more harm than good because sometimes you can end up feeling like your parents just don't accept/love you for who you actually are.
I experienced a LOT of trauma as a child because of the birthmark I was born with on my face.....but part of it is because I ended up feeling, for a long time, like even my own parents didn't accept me for who I was. This was because they sent me in for a lot of laser surgeries on the birthmark when I was a child to try to lighten it. I now am old enough to understand that they did try to have my best interests at heart....they just wanted me to look more like a usual human child so that other kids would stop treating me like I wasn't even a human. However, as a kid I didn't really understand exactly why my parents were doing what they were doing....I just ended up feeling like even my own parents didn't like the way I looked. I just felt horrible, and the surgeries were really traumatic for me. Especially because the first time I went in they didn't even put me to sleep and they were zapping my face with a laser and it really really hurt. I didn't even fully understand why it was happening to me. I was so young that first time. It remains either the first or second memory I have in my life.
It's also a large part as to why as a teenager I was so insecure about my birthmark. I just felt like I'd grown up being told that I should want it gone from my face. Like the birthmark is just this horrible bad thing that I'd be better off without. I mean what other message was I suppose to get when even my parents had been trying to remove it from my face with laser surgery for years?
I also experienced having my arm broken by another person when I was 8 years old. Then the doctor didn't even fix it properly and I ended up needing further major surgery. I have some huge scars to prove it...I think I posted some pictures showing them before.
I'm able to look back on it now and at least understand better as to why all of it happened(the laser surgeries on my birthmark)....but it messed me up for quite a while.
Sorry, this ended up being a bit of a rant. LOL.
I think that part of why I feel like talking about things like this here....is because it seems like Randall most likely suffered from similar feelings of being insecure that a lot of us can relate to and some kind of pressure from the society he lives in/the other monsters around him.
It's a big reason as to all of us here can relate to him I think. I definitely ended up writing more than planned though....and now I really need to go to bed. I'm up later than I planned.
