In today's society, people constantly receive the definition of beauty one commercial after the other. If it's not a sneaker commercial showing off a girl's butt the whole time, it's guaranteed that the show coming on after the commercial ends will have some hot mom or dumb blond with a size 36DD bra as one of the stars. Even if they're not the star, one of the main male roles will more than likely be sleeping with her. Granted, I'm currently watching Friends while typing this so maybe I'm a little more bias considering Rachel is a blond bombshell and Joey's a womanizer, but, it just helps prove my point. Being a female in today's society is extremely difficult with all this NEED to be beautiful being shoved down your throat. Now I'm not saying being a male is any easier, because come on, at one point in time girls decided whether or not they'd go out with you based on your shoe size - and don't even try to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about - but I can't sit here and recount stories of how difficult it is to be a man, considering I don't know, so I'm just going to sit here and complain about being a woman.
In my family, I have three brothers and zero sisters, all of my cousins are all boys and the closest girl relative I have to me in age is my 40 year old aunt. So, let's just say I haven't had many female figures in my life. At the age of six, my mom was throwing Barbie dolls at me, begging me to be girly, while my dad taught me how to change the oil in his truck. I must admit, it was the perfect balance for me. I enjoyed playing with Barbie and Ken and I had a wedding ceremony for them and they had their honeymoon in Maui, oh believe me, it was fantastic. What made their wedding fully complete, though, was that Optimus Prime was their Minister and Ironhide was Ken's best man. Of course, this made growing up difficult - the girls at school didn't want to play dolls with me because Optimus didn't look good in Polly Pocket's playhouse, and the boys didn't want to play with me because I had cooties. So there I was: me, myself, and the Autobots, on the playground by ourselves. Don’t worry, fast forward
During Whale Rider, I couldn't help but silently scream "girl power" in my head when Kahu was like, "Ha! Look Koro, I'm that person you've been searching for and I'm a giiirrrrllll." (And if you were wondering, yes, in my head, "girl power" was in a British accent like the spice girls would always say it.) It was so great to see another person, even a fictional character, have so much satisfaction because they are happy with who they are, even if others aren't. You can put on as much makeup as you want and play with Barbie all day long, but you can never change who you are inside. Shakespeare's My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun completely reiterates how, boy or girl, you should feel beautiful no matter how you look or who you are, because you need to love yourself, and if you love yourself, others will love you as well. In his poem, he speaks of his love who has none of the well-known beautiful attributes of his time. She has pale skin, colorless lips and an ugly voice, but he doesn't want to touch any skin but her pale skin, kiss any lips than her colorless lips, or fall asleep to any voice if it's not her ugly voice. Just like Kahu was who she was meant to be, and every single person, by the end of the book, loved her for who she was. After reading, When I consider how my light is spent, I can’t help buy feel stupid for babbling on about beauty this and beauty that when this man cannot even see what people generalize as beauty. Milton has so much happiness and so much faith in this being that created him, even though he was created without vision. Now I just feel like sitting here being like, “Forget your mascara, forget Koro, forget Shakespeare’s wife being fat and ugly,” and just be happy that you can see a person in order to judge them on their beauty. Just kidding, don’t judge, but just enjoy what you have, because there’s always someone who has less.
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