sometimes i really do want to climb on rooftops and scream

It is tiny, seemingly insignificant, insidious things like Special K ads or the fucking Woman's World campaign which I hate even more than Special K ads, or other ads which insinuate that the only way to be happy is to diet in some form), in addition to the Kevin Smith thing*, which make me want to keep fighting, no matter whether I think I'll win. I like to think that if I keep fighting then someday I won't see dozens of my friends struggling every single day to be the perfect girl/woman/person every day, and any possible daughters (and their friends, and their daughters, and so on) I might have won't struggle with years of hating themselves. I don't think I'll win in my lifetime but every little baby step I make, or you make, or anyone makes, the world is one step closer to being a safer place for girls to grow up in. Just being a woman gives nobody any right to make judgments on my body or the choices I make regarding my body, and it's the same for every woman, and in fact, any person ever at all regardless of gender--or at least it should be. And all of this has been said before, over and over again, I know, but sometimes I have to keep reminding myself.

*My favorite article so far on that: Overall, though, fat-shaming is everywhere we turn. It happens in the erasure of fat bodies from the media. Women who are average weight are routinely photo-shopped to appear slimmer. Fat people earn less than skinny people, even though there is no substantial evidence that they are less competent. Doctors routinely ignore the medical complaints of fat people and assume that every illness or complaint is weight-related, even when the patient and medical evidence indicate otherwise.

We have been socialized to believe that fat is always the problem. If you cannot get a boyfriend, the answer is to lose weight. If you want to be successful in life, lose weight. The answer is always “lose weight.”