EVERY WOMAN SHOULD WATCH THIS

http://www.upworthy.com/5-minutes-of-what-the-media-actually-does-to-women-8?c=reccon1

YOU LITTLE BASTARDS

Let me tell you about my afternoon yesterday. 

Starting in the morning: I ditched school to help my mom go find something to wear to a special dinner party. It was going to be a good day. I didn’t have to go to school, I got to sleep in, and I got to spend the day with my mom. How we were going to spend the day ended up a lot different then expected. Starting off the day right, I made sautéed  veggies with a touch of scrambled eggs, drank some coffee, and started my new book. My mom went to the doctor and returned with a few shots in her elbows for her skin disease. We drank coffee, discussed the afternoon, and planned our (expected to be) great day. We were going to go to the mall, get a few cute items, go through my moms closet like we were Stacy and Clinton from “What Not To Wear,” get lunch at Whole Foods (my favorite place) and then pick up my little sister. Then we were going to get mom ready for her night and I was going to go to work. Easy peezy lemon squeezy... or so we thought.

First incident: After taking forever to decide and try on clothes, we settled on two cute matching dresses for the each of us from Daisy Shoppe. Finally at the cash register, scanning my adorable and definitely “necessary” items, my card gets declined.....embarrassing but deal-able. 

“The bank is just part of life, always there to screw you up. But, they want your business more then the money they charged you, so don’t fret buttercup.”

Turns out when I called the bank two days prior, they had charged me for stopping some scam system from charging me. So, frustrated and embarrassed, I put the items on hold and left to go call the bank. Sitting on a bench outside the sun, getting the situation worked out and finally simmering down, my mom starts playing with my hair. 

This is a known thing in my family, playing with each others hair is our way of affection. When someone is upset, we stroke their head. Crying, screaming, yelling, laughing, stroking each other’s head is like drinking water in the Hughes household. We are kind of like a group of chimpanzees, grooming each other affectionately. 

Second incident: While my mom was playing with my hair, she started pulling on a few strands. Finally off the phone, she nervously asks me to tilt my head into the sun. A weird sight it must have been, a 17 year old sitting outside the mall, with her mom digging through her hair like a couple of jungle monkeys. 

“Um, honey, did you put that dry shampoo in your hair this morning?”

I was having a particularly greasy hair day so I borrowed my sisters dry shampoo. 

“Yea, why?” I said nervously

“Does it kind of clump up around the ears sometimes?”

I knew where she was going with this so I began to rattle on about the processes and effects between the oil and dry shampoo, the same BS routine trait I gained from my father. 

We left to go look for some shoes for my moms fancy dinner party and on the way to Burlington Coat factory, I broke into a million pieces. Upset over the possibility of lice.  We pulled over in a secluded sunny part of the parking so she could meticulously dig through my hair again. We eventually decide to go pick up my sister from school, just in case it was lice, my sister would most likely have it too. 

On the way to pick her up, a familiar nauseous feeling built up in my gut. Another trait I gained from my father’s side, deep, dark, heavy, burdening, violent, vicious, anger. 

(Although, anyone and everyone who’s ever met my dad would know he is the kindest, most loving and gentle man alive, he just blows steam through his ear every once in a while, just like me)

Fun fact: I’ve got a really bad temper. 

As I cursed the world and all its inhabitants, my mom worried if the depth of my anger and detail of my curses would end in a violent and rash act of rebellion. Good thing my bark is worse then my bite. 

She reminded me of my grounds I needed to stick to. Dealing with this blood raging, red facing anger is something I will always have to live with.

“Anger is a secondary emotion. It comes from sadness. You are extremely upset, so you become extremely angry. It’s ok to feel anger, you should feel anger, however with your unique anger, like your aunt, uncle, dad, and grandpa, you have to learn to control it and release it in a healthy way.” 

This is very true for me. Another fun fact: I hate feeling my emotions. So much so that I will suppress them until I explode over something like a broken pencil, after not getting angry over bigger more reasonable things. I’m working on it. 

As she questioned my anger’s intensity, I thought of the most radical, vicious, tremendous, adventurous, act of rebellion I could muster up. Calmness. 

All the devil wants is for me to lose my temper, it is his greatest goal in life because he knows how it hurts me. Yet, the most rebellious act against mankind, against the world, against everything and anything, against me and my anger, is to be even closer to God. 

BOOM, take THAT Lucifer! 

As the story goes, I had nits, the little bastards. Nits are lice eggs. They are obnoxiously   tiny and take two weeks to hatch into lice. Thank the Lord we caught them when we did. 

Even though it is a prodigiously difficult thing to have to deal with, I enjoyed sitting in the sun as my mom dug through each and every hair follicle; combing and snipping every few difficult strands, while reading my new book. We did get to spend time with each other, between the loads of laundry and the poison shampoo showers, we still got to sit in the sunshine chatting up a storm. 

Mom: “Oh, I think I cut that one in half, ha, take that you little bastard...Die all you little shits,” she said through a light hearted smile. 

Me: “I believe these are demonic creatures on my head, spiritually attacking us because we have been so deliberate about God lately. We are in the full cross-hairs of the devil, so he sent his little bastards into MY cross-hairs as revenge.”

Mom: “Touché, Devil. Too bad we’re stronger.” 

This is the kind of bad ass actions of love I like to see in the world. Gives me a little more faith in humanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnVbQuxok0I

We are all different and we are all beautiful, We are making up the colors of shells on the shore, Different and Beautiful each in our own way

•Beauty•

You can't believe everything you see

On TVs and movie screens

Sidewalk ads and magazines 

Everything's been photoshopped

Edited or changed

Everything's been airbrushed 

Nothing's left the same 

They've all changed their body shape

Just to please the judges

But who are they trying to please?

They’re trying to please you

Obsessing over pudges 

The muscle of your inner thigh

Dare not let them touch

The muscles in your inner soul

They don't mean that much

The makeup on your face must be

As perfect as your diamond ring

But your diamond came as a stone 

Rugged and alone

It came from the earth itself

Never meant to go

And sure it's full of beauty 

when compressed

But then it's cut and shaped and changed 

Into how you wish it be

Isn't one change just enough

To bring out your inner beauty

To the surface for all to see

Isn't this change more important

Than all of you and me?

Show the world who you are

All the beauty in thee

Show the world 

What I see 

in you and in me

You're beauty is not decided 

On your jean size or bra cup

Your beauty is not decided 

On the changes or starvations

Your beauty is decided

On your imaginative creations

On your talents, words, and actions 

On your soul, mind, and heart

Beauty is not to be seen

Beauty is to be heard

Beauty is to be felt

Beauty is to be treated in the same way

as love or charity or comfort

You feel it 

You know it

You express it

And as with all these things like beauty

The shapes and sizes are endless

Variations uncountable

Beauty is limitless

And to be unchangeable 

STOP

What if we all just stopped 

Fell silent

For once, what if we looked up and around us

What if, just for a moment, every single person stopped. 

Stopped texting

Stopped scrolling

Stopped running

Stopped yelling

Stopped gossiping

Just stopped

Imagine the people you'd see

Right there in front of you 

Standing, stopped, just like you

Imagine who'd you meet

Imagine what you'd hear

Imagine what you'd learn

What if we stopped all the radios and the engines and the machines

What if we turned off all the lights

Opened all the doors

And took a step outside

What if 

What if you were to close this screen and stop. 

Stop everything you're doing and just leave

What if you were to take off your shoes and step outside

Feel the earth drumming beneath your feet

How would you feel? Would it hurt you? 

What would it be like if we all just stopped and did nothing but step outside. 

What if we all stopped and took a moment 

A moment in silence

A moment in life

What if you just stopped. 

Stopped for a moment

That's all it takes

To stop. To listen. To feel. 

What if

What if I dare you......

Sand: tiny beautiful different individual pieces, all together making up the foundation of oceans

Oh This Messed Up World

Oh how lost we are in our own little world. Our own little bubble. Everything blurred and unseen by the world “they” want us to see. This world we see with our eyes, in the magazines and on TVs, this is not our world. Our world has been hushed out, discriminated against in the pursuit to end discrimination. Persecuted against in the strive to end persecution. Thrown into the closet claiming to be coming out of it. A cruel world that has blinded us and only claims the description of a world because of popularity. But our true world is a place of love and of compassion and of truth. 

A place where we all work as a function, together, making one machine with no extra parts. No parts the wrong size or brand or color or shape. Whether all sizes differ in every way or identical in every way, doesn’t matter. Each of us having an individual purpose all our own, vital in holding together this functioning machine. Without each purpose it would not work. 

This is our world we are destined to keep alive. 

Not the boardwalk backdrop being shoved in our faces. These images of young girls in boyish bodies, starving yet forced to have curves, but not too much, it is terrifying.

More curve here, less you there, tighter here, loser here. All these demands and judgments of how we should look, how we should walk, how we should talk. So many requirements to strive toward with every fiber in our being yet we are supposed to look effortless. This idea that all we do is lay around and eat junk food and be cute while doing it is completely absurd. Especially when the requirements for us to be stick thin, practically bow legged, with long perfectly manicured nails and luscious locks can not be accomplished through lounging on the couch in over sized sweaters and thigh high socks while caressing teddy bears. 

That is another thing. 

There is this desire to act childish, to which in thought I would agree with, except for the perverted twist society has swung upon the idea. This hope to regain childhood innocence while cuddling your overly touchy boyfriends. 

It is like the song “Like a Virgin” by Madonna. A song of sharing love with another person, “touched for the very first time”. This moment of beginnings is ultimate innocence. The transfer from a dreamer to a lover. Putting all those day dreams of boys and how you’ll kiss them and where to put your hands, all this turning into your new reality.

 This moment is once, 

and if this moment is stolen then it can happen again with time and prayer but the idea of innocence is not like it used to be. This blinding world has taken innocence away from are aching palms.

 We are required to look perfect. This is supposed to be done effortlessly while looking like a Victoria Secret model. They call themselves angels. This is almost too terrible to think about. How could an angel of God be so provocative and revealing. The only angels I know who could bear themselves to reveal so much of their beauty to any and all passerby's are those of evil.

 The angels of darkness often disguises themselves to be light. A common act of role play. They display innocence while subliminally critiquing your own insecurities to which they create. 

How cruel.

And those poor girls, they are the ones who hold no secrets. Maybe Victoria’s secret is that she and all of her models don't have any secrets. They are all out, all there, revealed in every which way. It’s ironic really.

Cruelly ironic. 

This world. So cruel, this is not the world I strive to live in. Yes there are two worlds here. The one of society and the one of love. Love from salvation. Beauty is simply a visual of love. Let it be this way. Don't try to change the face of beauty because beauty is nothing if not genuine and raw. Free and living. Beauty is the clear display of the natural ways. These ways of life we are born with. Live lovingly and you will radiate love in every step you take. 

This is the functioning machine of a world I wish to live in. A world where innocence is innocence and beauty is beauty. A world where love simply radiates.