Simple Things and Beauty Queens

(Or, The First Lurve Blog of 2012!)

This post comes to you in two vaguely related parts.

Thing 1: I just kind of want my life to be this song is that really so much to ask.

It's cuter than my usual tastes in sentiment and musicality, but (beyond admitting that) I'm not going to apologize for wanting a relationship like the one described in the lyrics. What I want is to be in love without the beginning processes of falling in love, the "Jesus-Christ-are-my-eyebrows-the-correct-shape-am-I-breathing-at-the-correct-pace-I-just-want-to-stare-at-your-face-without-being-creepy-and-overt-about-it"-stage. I speak from extremely little experience, (Remember this tidbit of blog? We are in the same Spanish class. Everything was going swimmingly until (December 1st) I was informed that he has a girlfriend now. And then I was (only slightly unreasonably) upset about that for around two weeks. To date, this one human being is the only person to have inspired in me such girlish mental frothing, during and after our quasi-flirtation. I hated myself for it in those two weeks, having prided myself on not frothing over much of anything, least of all a guy.) but this seems to be a prerequisite for behaving like a normal person around someone you hope to attract. (Or it's an unfortunate presence of YA novel cliches in my life.)

Basically, I want to skip the awkward uncomfortable bits (especially when the frothing turns out to be for naught) and settle painlessly into the creamy, fluffy-clouds-of-nougat center that is adorable contentment.

Thing 2: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (references things but contains nothing that is necessarily a spoiler.* You should read it if you haven't already. End PSA.)

In the book, Adina goes through pretty much the same Frothing Dilemma I had. I granted myself 0.0 license to Be Frothy**, and once it went over that 0.0 came the Sense of Conflicting Self Loathing but Not Stopping because I Like His Everything.***

On an unrelated (and probably almost contradictory) point, I present a paraphrased quote:

"They [society, corporate marketing, etc] make it so hard for us to love ourselves."****

To which I say: really? Blaming society is tres en l'mode***** for disillusioned youth, but to play devil's advocate, I have to say: it's also kinda your fault for giving a shit what society thinks.****** Until the advent of literal mind control, you can just choose not to give a shit, which is part of the conclusion the titular queens come to. Unless you want to argue that society makes you care about society's opinion of you, which is, also to quote the book, "one more meta than I like."

Regardless, the above quote and similar opinions on Tumblr got me thinking. I'm really in a minority on this front. I do, for the most part, cliched as it is, love myself. (For the sake of avoiding the cliche, "accept" myself really is more accurate.) I'm fine with the fact that I'm not perfect mentally or physically, but I'll admit I'm not a troll (either sense of the word). Moreover, I've never ascribed my various character flaws to simply having a vagina. Maybe they are and I'm deluded in the opposite direction. Maybe I've repressed memories for the sake of making a point. Maybe I'm just lucky to have fallen into a non-traditional-gender-roles family from birth, with supportive parents, supplemented nowadays with bunches of kickass forwarding-thinking-people on the internet. Maybe it's just the perfect storm. Fingers crossed this type of upbringing becomes less rare, like with this awesome little kid.

But I see plenty of evidence that it's not. Pieces of paper written on in Sharpie and posted on Tumblr with thousands of notes saying stuff like, "I wish I was good enough.", "I'll never be yours.", and it's horrible and I wish people didn't think like that, but as we've discussed, mind control is currently impossible. Sigh.

* Okay, maybe except this: disabled-maybe-pansexual-Illinoisan chick gets shit done. REPRESENT. (I'm heavily biased in this footnote, read it for the other awesome characterizations too hey hey what what.)


** I clearly can't do adjectives right now, so have an extended my-brain-as-a-Starbucks-beverage metaphor.


*** Look At All the Random Capitalization someone Please Stop Me.


**** I'm going to add, "as girls" to the end, implied based on the usage of "ourselves". The book does eventually delve into "not every issue is attached to being female and guys are festering holes of insecurities too sometimes", but not at the point in question.


***** a.) Excuse my mangled French.
            b.) I've probably done this in my head, and can't promise I won't again. I'm making not giving a shit sound way easier than it is. But for now I'm in an empowered sort of mood. I include my less-enlightened past and/or future self in the general "you".


****** re: "loving yourself". Please give all the shits you deem necessary re: legal procedures and such.


Now that I've noticed that footnotes can be made a smaller font size (thanks Alex!), I feel like this gives me permission to add them in copious amounts. I hope you've enjoyed reading them.