On the Power of Saying "NO" and Why Rape Culture is Against Girls Using It: a Crash Course

From the time we are little girls we are taught not to say "no" whether we are explicitly told or it is implied. We are taught to be pleasant, always pleasing and "lady like". Somewhere along the way saying "no" became part of the things that are not feminine. Why? Because saying "no" is assertive and being assertive is not befitting of a "lady".

As a child I was taught that I was never allowed to say no to my mother. Since I wasn't allowed the use of the word "no" I developed other ways to convey my lack of wanting to do things or I simply did whatever task I didn't want to do. I have been told before, specifically by men I have dated in the past, that I don't say "no", I just give a list of reasons why I can't/won't do something. Since I am now aware of this I have been trying to be mindful and just say "no" without giving any explanations to people. Now was my Mom aware that she was playing into a patriarchal  and misogynistic plot? No. She was just enforcing a rule that her Mother and Nana had placed upon her. She did this in hopes of raising a "lady", however, my Mother and Father also tried to teach me to think for myself and she instead raised a feminist which obviously worked out for me in the end.  

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that women tend to speak more and have a more robust vocabulary than their male counterparts. We are so busy trying not to say "no" that we have to speak more in order to find other ways to say "no" because God forbid we not be pleasing at all times. 

With little girls never being encouraged to say "no" and thusly being taught to conform to what someone else's, specifically men's, demands are it any wonder that women and teenage girls have a difficult time being assertive and saying "no" to the sexual advances of men? Stripping little girls of the word "no" sets them up to be compliant both in and out of the bedroom. Parents, listen up. Empower your daughters. Don't strip away their ability to be assertive. If you wouldn't dissuade your sons from saying "no" don't let your daughters lose the power of the word either.

Shampoo-less

**First let me apologize. I had set this blog to automatically post last Sunday since I was having guests from out of state over all weekend. Obviously this failed. And I will not be doing so again. To make up for this, this week I am posting two blogs! Yay!

For those who do not know me, I have very curly hair. My hair can be very difficult to manage because along with these beautiful corkscrew curls come the ever evil frizz. I am always researching on what I can do for my hair to make it hate me less. I have talked to other women with curly hair and they have a similar problem with haircare products. I can't keep using the same product in my hair for too long (shampoo, conditioner, mouse, you name it) because my hair seems to one day hate it and go completely flat, get greasy or frizz like a mofo. In my readings I came across a newish movement called "shampooless". I looked into this because it seemed odd at best and gross at the worst.

The basic idea behind shampooless is that you replace your shampoo with a mixture of warm water and baking soda and you replace your conditioner with a mixture of apple cider vinegar and warm water. Along with shampooless being good for the environment(absolutely no animal testing, no chemicals and you use less plastic) it is also very good for your scalp and hair. The blogs/articles I read all warned that you wouldn't see results in the first week and that finding the right mixture for your hair can take a little while. I was very luckily because my hair instantly loved this. I saw a mass reduction in frizz in a week. My scalp is healthier and while I still use hair mouse some days I do not need to use nearly as much. 

Wanna Try? Checkout this bloggers tips and instructions

I've been shampooless for nearly two months now and I love it, as does my hair. I highly recommend giving it a whirl especially if you have hard to manage hair!

How Far We Haven't Come Part 1

I have labeled this Part 1 because I am positive various other topics will arise that will illuminate the illusion of equality and how far we have come. This past week I was on the Bookface and I saw that VH1 had made a post about Scarlett Johansson being pregnant. What was the focus of this birth announcement? How big her boobs are. To be exact the article was called Scarlett Johansson is Pregnant! Celebrate Her New Baby Boobs with Her 29 Bustiest Moments.Click to read the article Really? VH1 wants to celebrate pregnancy with tit pictures? What a progressive society we live in! Even when women are pregnant they still are objectified. Yeah, we've come a long way baby.

I was chatting about my outrage to a friend of mine and she informed me that when she interviewed for a position at a store in the local mall called Motherhood, that she decided she wasn't interested in the job when they told her she would be selling skinny jeans to pregnant women. Now I myself have never been pregnant. However, I do have friends and family members who have been and from what they tell me, being pregnant can be pretty damn uncomfortable. You have a baby pushing on your organs already, why would you then shove yourself into skinny jeans? And there is no way that wearing constricting clothes can be good for you especially when you're already swelling.

By no means do I think that pregnant women should have to wear ugly clothes or that they should feel unattractive. I actually like that pregnant women have more options for their clothing choices (as do babies. Baby clothes as waaaay cuter than when I was an infant) but their clothes should also be comfortable. Pregnant women should not be subjected to objectification,

 not that any women should but this just seems worse. Talking about a glow or how beautiful a pregnant woman is, is much different than saying "Check out those titties!" I am even more outraged that it is 2014 and I have to explain this. There is such a constant pressure on women to have the perfect appearance all of the time. Shouldn't at least pregnant women get a pass to just be people since they are making a person? I don't have what one would call high standards for VH1 but they managed to sink to a new level of low.

ED

For most of high school I had a pretty intense relationship with ED. We had our ups and downs, the usual teenage disagreements. I was very committed to ED despite my oblivion that ED was even a part of my life. In fact, it wasn't until ED and I were on our first break that my friend Hanna pointed out to me that I had a relationship with ED. I had apparently worried my friends with that relationship. My relationship with ED was not a healthy one. ED did damaged to my body that took years to fix and the mental/emotional damage is something I still struggle with some days.

 ED was my eating disorder. And since we are coming off of a week that raises awareness on Eating Disorders I feel it is time to finally publicly identify myself. Throughout most of high school i was anorexic. I wasn't the only one in my group of friends, in my experience ED works his way through a group having a fling with most of the members. I can remember worrying about my one friend's health while at the same time being jealous of how thin she was. Looking at Old photos I realize we were actually the same size.

But I didn't think I was anorexic. I told myself and others I was merely dieting. My mom had no idea because i would tell her I was eating breakfast and lunch when I wasn't. I would also lie about eating at other times but those were the easiest. I was also popping diet pills like tic tacs. I remember during this time my one friend Maggi gave me a bottle of vitamins with the instruction to take them everyday and to "eat something even if it is just a cracker." I now realize that she was afraid for me. Back then I thought she was jealous of my weight loss and was trying to sabotage me.....WITH VITAMINS! How sick did I have to be to believe that?

 To this day it pisses me off when someone says that people with eating disorders have no will power or are weak minded. Anorexics literally have to ignore their bodies telling them they are dying and need food! Ignoring such a basic human need is proof of strong convictions. It's unfortunate that the anorexic's cause is to be "skinny". 

 For me it got so bad when I was in high school I started fainting. I never fainted in school or in front of an adult so my family never knew. I was headed towards hospitalization. Luckily for me, in high school I decided to become a vegetarian. A lot of anorexics hide their disorder behind vegetarianism and veganism. But for me, vegetarianism may have saved my life.

 My mother kept telling me that vegetarianism wasn't going to work for me, that I couldn't get the proper nutrition. She was completely against my choice to become a vegetarian. Being my father's very stubborn daughter, I thought, "I'll show you!" And I began to eat again. Once Hanna pointed out I had a problem, I never went back to anorexia. When I went to college I was working at an ice cream parlor and I started to really pack on the pounds. And it wasn't long before I started making myself vomit. This didn't last nearly as long as the anorexia, perhaps because I knew I had a problem.

 What finally put an end to my relationship with ED was something my sister-in-law had said to me. One day while I was at school Shannon sent me a Bookface message saying how thankful she was that her girls, my nieces, had such a strong, positive, female role model in me. After reading that message I couldn't stand the thought of my nieces ever feeling the way I had about my body most of my life. And what message would I be sending my nieces that looked up to me? The one thing that I wanted more than to be thin was to be a positive role model to my nieces and other women. I was finally able to see that I was more than what the scale or mirror reflected back at me.

 My story ends on a much happier note than a lot of others. I survived. Not everyone is fortunate enough to say that. I have friends who have been institutionalized for their love of ED. One friend of mine did serious damage to her organs from laxatives. I count myself as very lucky. How do I deal with my body issues now? I started concentrating on making myself strong. I started kickboxing, doing yoga, and running. I'm currently training for a half marathon. And I have never been as physically or mentally as healthy as I am now and it feels great. I love my body now. My body can do amazing things I never would have imagined. We only get one body. If we don't love it and take care of it, our bodies won't be able to take care of us down the road. And after almost a decade long relationship with ED I can say with certainty, we're so over.