I’m not sure if anyone seen this experiment yet (link: http://two-doors.dailymegabyte.com/they-have-choose-doors-unexpected-reactions/
) but I did post it on my Facebook page. One of my dear friends commented on it
and I thought about her question. “Why wouldn't a
woman go through the beautiful door when given the choice?” She went to further
say, “It seems insane to me that women would have to think about it or avoid
the choice.” I thought about it before writing a
lengthy response which I thought I would blog about it. My full response is
below but I wanted to add on to and not make a book on Facebook.
I have seen for years society
telling us what is pretty, or desirable and having to try to fit that mold. I’ve
been from a size 00 all the way to a 24/26 when I was pregnant. I have a
hormonal disorder in which my body doesn’t ‘do diets’ well. I lost the baby weight
however though bad judgements in eating and not understanding my body I have
gotten to an 18/20 size. Sure I’m working to correct that but having PCOS
(link: http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pcos/basics/definition/con-20028841
) it’s a bit difficult at times to do.
I have had many of the symptoms
with PCOS that haven’t molded with conventional beauty and being I’m forty now;
I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve given my middle finger to those that wouldn’t
define me as pretty or beautiful. I am who I am, a woman that seeks her own
approval, her own self validation and I don’t need the world to tell me if I am
pretty or beautiful. To get validations from the world as a compliment is
great, however I don’t live to have them.
I would hope that women start to
understand we can’t live by rules of beauty for much longer. We don’t need to
live for the validation and the harsh judgement of others and have to find our
own beauty from within. Am I going to starve myself to be a size 2? Nope! I’m
working on healthy eating, workouts and making myself happy. If I lose weight
great, if I don’t why would I stop and call it defeat? I’m making myself happy,
fuck the rest of it!
Now what does this social
experiment matter to people? It seems a small matter on how a woman views herself
right? Yeah, wrong! This is just a small building block not just on how a woman
views her beauty, but her self-worth. How she views herself as capable or
worthy of something. This then stems into women’s rights for herself both
within the civil world and the business world.
Would an ‘average woman’ fight
for her rights to get paid as much as a man, to fight civil laws about her sexual
orientation or to fight again the ‘rape’ culture within the world? Would a ‘beautiful’
woman stand up for her rights faster?
How we view ourselves does make a
difference on how we fight for our rights and how we voice our opinions on
things. If we go with the ‘norm’ or mold ourselves into what is being expected
of us then we are saying it’s okay to pay us only .75 cent when a man is making
a dollar. It’s okay that the girl ‘asked’ for it when she was screaming no the
entire time.
We need more social experiences
to show women they have a choice to be who they are and to say what they need
to say. To break societies’ norm and conventional mold and BE who they truly
are. Sure this experience, and the Dove’s experiment (link below) aren’t
perfect but it’s a start. And right now we need a start. Well without further
ado my response to my friend’s questions.
My response:
This s a social experiment to show the psychological damage
(well imho) that women have gone through as society has been dictating for so
long what is beautiful. Logically yes, I agree it's insane that a woman wouldn’t
naturally pick beautiful or just turn and walk away from the question. However,
this isn’t a logical question. This making a woman stop and think about herself
in a way that she has to show just how she views herself. Many where using what
they were taught or what they were told was beautiful NOT what THEY thought was
beautiful. Thus, you saw the reactions for those that were going through the
average door.
There was a small train of women that went through the
average door as if they were following a leader, however there was another
train of women that were going to go through the average door and the ‘leader’
of that group changed the door they were all going to go through. Questions
like these or that dove experiment (the one where you had to describe yourself
and then someone else had to describe you [link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOq71eKI5Mg
]) is to show women truly see themselves through their and other people’s eyes.
How do we view beauty and how we perceive our own beauty when we have a chance
to express it?
As a girl I never thought I was pretty. I never thought I
was pretty enough to have a boyfriend in high school. I was far too shy to ask
anyone out to both proms because I thought the boys would say no (no one asked
me either). I scared and pretty much thought that I was only good as a friend
to guys. I had some deep crushes back then but never could express it. (Plus
there was a rumor about my sexual orientation when girls thought it was funny
to label someone. There were other rumors about me as well that were unfounded
and hurt my self-esteem quite a bit.)
As a woman and have let go of the past, though some of it
has influence who I am today I’m glad to see things like this. Challenges and
questions to us in how we see beauty in ourselves and in what we think and feel
about ourselves. To challenge our self-esteem and how we can better ourselves.
Sure I make jokes about my weight (I know I’m a well-rounded woman), about my
looks and why I’m single. But to me those are to poke fun not at myself but at society’s
views of me.
To see women far skinnier than me (yes, I’m a size 18/20
atm) say they need to lose weight and get skinner; I poke at myself to show
them that they are lovely and they don’t need to change. Just because they
might not be rocking out that six pack or because they aren’t a size 2 when
they are a size 6 doesn’t mean they can’t be beautiful. I’m rocking out my
lovely body and sure it’s hard to find nice clothes and look fabulous all the
time; but hey soon as the fashion industry catches up with beauty comes in all
sizes I’ll have some wonderful clothes.
Damn I should have done a blog response to this. LOL! But
needless to say, sometimes we need these experiences to bring more of an
awareness of our self-esteem and how we view ourselves. It might seem petty
now; but if we don’t have self-esteem, the courage and the self-worth to define
ourselves as beautiful now and all agree. Then how are we as women to band
together to work for our rights and what we deserve if we didn’t see ourselves
as worth fighting for?