I don't really feel in competition with NT women, though I guess I might if I were in the dating field. I don't know about that though-- I certainly did not feel as if I were in competition with the other girls in high school. I knew they "had something" (in a good way) that I didn't, and that I could not compete, so I just sort of went my own way and did my own thing.
I don't get bothered by Playboy women, either. In the same vein, I sort of figure that the women in those photos are about four steps of process removed from me: 1) They spend huge amounts of time and energy on looking like that, 2) They were photographed by professionals, with professional lighting and all that, 3) They were airbrushed to perfection before the photographers, wardrobe genies, and lighting magicians ever got near them, and 4) They were then photoshopped, just in case all the other artists missed something.
If I did all that, I'd look like those women too (but I'd still be 36 instead of 23, and I still wouldn't dot my i's with little flowers and hearts). But I don't wanna do all that. So they look like that, and I don't, and it makes about as much sense as a potato being in competition with an orange.
I do, however, constantly feel like NT women set the standard for what it means to be "woman." How A Woman ought to act, what A Woman ought to be, what men expect from A Woman. Against that standard, I simply do not, cannot, and will not measure up. I can work very hard to be a poor imitation of that standard, or I can work less hard to be a better me.
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"Alas, our dried voices when we whisper together are quiet and meaningless, as wind in dry grass, or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar." --TS Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
20 Sep 2014, 5:45 pm
