"you are all you've got"

It is really hard for me to hear the others in class complain about girls who act stupid so that boys will like them, because for a very long time I was one of those girls. I lacked any kind of self-worth, and still struggle with my identity today, so I would take any attention I could get. I never went so far as getting a bad grade on a test I could do well on, but I have lied about how well I've done, and I even did similar things with my now-husband. It isn't something I'm particularly proud of, but there was no reason to say that I got a better grade than someone else when I felt like my worth hinged on others liking me. There was no reason for me to be perceived as "conceited."

I feel like I have been taught for a very long time that what others thought of me is the highest indicator of my worth, and one thing I have noticed is that others love to be the best. I didn't mind shrinking myself as long as it meant others liked me, and it took me a very long time to notice that it was really only other girls doing that. Many of the girls who didn't tended to look down on girls like me, who had caved to the pressure of feeding masculine egos. It was a toxic environment, and one that seemed intent on pitting girls against each other, especially when the ones who didn't act "stupid" were focused on distancing themselves as far as possible from girls like me in order to make themselves desirable in a totally different way. The girls like me, of course, tended to find the other girls conceited.

In the whole system, girls never won. It always ended up being women tearing apart other women, never realizing that we were all playing the same game with no one ever really winning. It still hurts today to hear people talk about girls who act differently than they are, because of the whole dichotomy of high school. College is different for me than high school was, but I don't think it's because of it being college; I think it's because I'm married. In a sense, being "off the market" put me in a position where I don't feel like have to impress people anymore, and it really opened my eyes to how foolishly petty everything was. Society has perpetuated a system where we (girls) always lose when we see ourselves as "us" and "them." Nobody wins except the men who reap the benefits of girls fighting amongst one another, each group feeling like they're doing the right thing. When we talk about patriarchal society, of course, it is much easier to subjugate and oppress a group that is already divided among itself, and this is just one easy example of how women are still divided in today's age. I would be lying if I said it didn't make me feel a bit other when we had this discussion in class.