So last week a girlfriend sent me this article: Your Vagina Isn't Just Too Big and Too Floppy and Too Hairy, it's also Too Brown.

Which started a delightful little email thread amongst friends where we sarcastically droned on about the absurdity of this, the primary argument being, why would you want to bleach your vagina? Too brown? No such thing. Don’t you know that a good tan always smoothes out the look of skin and makes it look smaller? That’s what we want isn’t it? Tight pussy? Not a fat pussy! Who wants a fat, white vag? We should surely wax all the hair off these suckers and sit them under a tanning light for a while.

Which then led me to even more reasoning why it makes sense to not just have plastic surgery on our hoo hoo, as we talked about in this article, but why don’t we just cut the whole thing off all together?

And how about my uterus? Would I look thinner if you took out my uterus? Just a little thinner even? Surely my stomach would look flatter without a pesky reproductive system. Oh, oh, I know!!! Why don’t we just remove my skin, like all of it, that’ll make me more sexy right? All wet and red? My entire body will look like the interior of a female sex organ. Then I’ll finally be desirable right?

So we’re all completely insane about beauty. This we agree on, RIGHT? So we have campaigns marketing about real beauty and we cheer on photo shoots that don’t use Photoshop and we celebrate the sexiness of plus size models (who wear a size 6?). All because we’re aching for change and we want to rip apart the notions of what beauty means. But aren’t we just perpetuating this same thing? It’s like all of us ‘real women’ are the ugly girls sitting in the back of class saying ‘pick me, pick me, tell me I’m pretty enough!’

But, fuck, we’re still all talking about beauty! We’re still hanging our worth on our hotness. How about I post a totally unflattering picture of my naked lumpy ass squished against this chair? Will that be celebrated as ‘real beauty’? Or a close up of my puffy eyes first thing in the morning. Or my hair...as I write this I look like a goddamn Guinea Pig.

I am thirty years old and by cultural standards I am attractive enough.

I am a beautiful young woman. And I care about being a beautiful young woman far too much. So does everyone else.

Well, I don’t give a shit about your real beauty campaign. Where are all the ugly girls? Let’s celebrate some ugly shall we? Let’s celebrate distorted features and bad skin. Let’s celebrate extreme proportion that offends the eye. Let’s celebrate varicose veins and stretch marks. Let’s not pretend we think that shit is beautiful, we don’t! Let’s celebrate looking like a tired beat up bag of shit because we’re busting our asses every day to educate and empower ourselves, make a living, care for our babies, nurture our communities, deepen our relationships, fight for our reproductive rights (R U F-ing kidding me!?) while trying to make sense of the mess of this world while finding our place in changing it.

I, for one, am a self-employed single mother living in one of the most expensive cities in the world dealing with my own version of all the stresses that you’re dealing with and at the end of a decent day (not even the worst one!) not only do I not look like a 'real beauty', I don’t look beautiful at all. AT ALL.

AND I FUCKING DARE YOU TO TELL ME THAT MAKES ME LESS OF A WOMAN.

Now here’s a picture of me looking disgusting. And disgusted. God, I am SO over this.