Not So Separate.

Last night, a group of my girls and I went tanning. Well, actually, we're calling it "thawing". One of my girls, decided that "tanning" or "fake baking" are a bit misleading. "It's not that we want to be brown," she said, "we just want to warm up a bit. February is not very nice to us."

So, I was laying there last night, on that bed of metal and glass with my little goggles in place and blue lights glaring down at me from every direction and I got to thinking (that tends to happen when you lay still for 15 mins. Actually, it was probably the first time I had been still all day)… what are we doing? I mean, what in the world was I doing? There I was, frying myself so that I could be more physically appealing to those who walk by me through my day, as judged by standards not my own.

There's a little mirror above your face in these bed, and I just kept looking at myself… I mean, at that self, that girl with the goggles who scarcely resembles the woman I know myself to be.

What are we doing, people? Why are we trying so hard to be someone other than ourselves? We're killing ourselves to meet these unspoken (and sometimes spoken) standards that are not ours! They are the requirements of our culture, the list of physical qualities that give a woman value. And we do not believe that!


…Or do we?


I mean, we do just like they do, don't we? We outline our eyes and cover every inch of our faces so that we look like the world we are so adamantly distinct from.

Maybe we're not as separate as we'd like to think ourselves.

At least I'm not...