my beauty, my say.

dear readers,

i have wanted to post about this for awhile now. so, i am glad i finally had the time to sit down and talk about this. Dove recently released a commercial using the tagline "my beauty, my say." the video will be posted here and i highly suggest you watch it. you know, growing up as a female i never felt like i was discriminated against, but i always felt and noticed that the expectations that people had of me were much more unrealistic than those of my male friends. as a young girl i wanted to be a lawyer, but people around me- men AND women- filled my head with the idea that being a lawyer would mean i couldn't be a good mom. then i wanted to study marine biology but a teacher told me that very few women make it in that field. then i wanted to be a dancer, but fellow dancers told me i was too short and too fat and not talented enough. i wanted to be a wife but past relationships told me that i didn't have the right personality type. everywhere i looked there was some expectation of what i should be in order to accomplish my goals rather than who i could be. 

our culture is famous for this whether we like to admit it or not. for some reason we feel empowered by telling people that they can't be something that they want to be because then it doesn't feel so bad when we also don't become what we want to be. rather than spread love and hope we talk poorly about each other and create labels to help make sense of the chaos we are surrounded by. i myself have spent years chained down by the labels i was given when i was younger, by others and by myself. 

fat. slut. smart. goody good. golden child. quiet. doormat. ugly. normal. inadequate. forgettable. good listener. misunderstood. too quiet. gap toothed. not talented enough. 

some of these society would deem as positive while others come as very negative. but, in my view, labels are harmful no matter what because they put a person into a box and they feel like they can't leave that box without being ridiculed. labels hold people back, labels stop progress. it has taken me a long time to understand the power that i have, the power that each of us has. we all have the ability to create and make change, to become whoever it is we want to become. i want to become a journalist and so i will work until that's possible. i want to be a wife and mother and i will find someone who loves every ounce of me. i want to teach dance so that i can help other young dancers see their potential. i want to be everything i want to be regardless of labels put on me. 

thank you Dove for supporting such a powerful message. i think it's something we can all learn from right now. the message i am trying to send is that we are more than our labels people. we are more than our race, religion, physical appearance, class, or whatever else people try to label us with. just remember that you are YOU and guess what? that matters. just remember that. now, watch this fantastic video released by Dove, and don't forget to keep trying to spread love and hope amidst all the chaos. 

shine on, 

glitter girl