The Crazy Bitch Inside Every Woman

            Okay, so I’m going to start this rant with a warning: this is going to be a little sexist, and my feminist friends may not want to read this one. As usual, I refuse to apologize for my opinions, but I don’t like pissing you guys off. Hugs and kisses and all that love.

            Anyway, on with the blog.

            As some of you may know, I’ve been spending most of the summer with a group of friends of mine that I’ve taken to calling my tripod, or, with me included, we are the Quad.

            I might as well introduce all of them, since they’re undoubtedly going to end up in this blog multiple times.  Here we go. Here’s the cast of the Quad, not including myself, obviously:

            There’s Venus, my fantastically energetic and beautiful friend whom I call my wifey. She’s called Venus on this blog because she is the living incarnation of what the Ancient Greeks considered perfection. Venus is a living Venus de Milo or Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, except, you know, with clothing and arms.

That's my wifey!

Then there’s St. Jimmy, my little skateboarding punk surrogate baby, my bro, and Venus’ boyfriend. I call him St. Jimmy because of his eternal love for Green Day and punk, and because for some reason, I had a hell of a time coming up with a damn nickname for him. He actually came up with the nickname himself. Though in my defense, I was seriously considering calling him Jesus of Suburbia.

He's my darling little punk.

Finally there’s Dionysus, or Dio for short. Dio is the most distant of in the Quad, as he likes to go off and do his own thing frequently. He’s my hubby (for breeding, because he’s ridiculously handsome) and St. Jimmy’s brother. The term Dionysus is perfect for him, but only if you truly look at the Dionysus mythology; Dionysus as the dying god. Generally, Dio’s a really laid back person who enjoys a good time, much like the god of wine, revelry and ecstasy.  But on the flipside, he is a tumultuous person and frequently reconstructs his life, again, much like Dionysus with his mood swings (see the Maenads, his followers) and his annual self-sacrifice and rebirth.

Right, incredibly nerdy digression.  Moving on.

Though he usually only walks around shirtless with grape leaves in his hair on weekends.

            Va bene. Despite frequent distancing of myself and Dio, as we like to do our own thing at times, and the tighter bond between Venus and St. Jimmy, we are the Quad. They are the three legs on which I stand, and Dio and St. Jimmy’s house has become my almost daily haunt. They’re my non-blood family.

            Because St. Jimmy and I are frequently home with nothing to do during the day, we end up spending a lot of time together. Despite my overly-maternal feelings for the kid, Jimmy and I are bros. His laid-back attitude brings out my inner dude. Because of this, we frequently get into discussions about how completely insane women can be. One of my favourite convos we had was about even the strongest women we know “going girl”, meaning fishing for compliments or reassurance when old insecurities creep up on them. This eventually became a little joke between us, “Jimmy, tell me I’m pretty!”

            I prided myself in not being such a girl, at least outwardly. We all have our insecurities, but I, of course, rarely ever “went girl.” My insecurities, like my problems, are my own, and I tend to deal with them as privately as possible.

            Well, a couple of weeks later, Venus, St. Jimmy, and I were at Big Boy at around 2am, paying our check. While we were in line, I realized that my pants were fitting a little less comfortably than usual. I poked at my belly. For a couple months now, I’ve been 5 pounds heavier than I’m comfortable with. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but 5 pounds on a small person like me makes a difference. I feel more sluggish, less healthy, out of shape. Idly I voiced this to my constant companions.

            “Dude, I’ve got to get back down to 115.” I said, “I feel so…I don’t know, heavy. It sucks. I can’t tell, but I’ll bet it’s showing. I don’t know. Jimmy, am I chubbier than I was when we first met?”

            Jimmy blinked as he handed his receipt to the cashier, “Dude, I don’t know. You look exactly the same. I don’t see a difference. You’re tiny. You know that.” He stopped and broke into his signature long smile suddenly, looking at me and shaking his head.

            “…What?” I asked.

            Jimmy’s grin widened, “Jimmy, tell me I’m pretty!”

            It hit me like a comically large safe falling from the sky. I had just “gone girl!” To my bro! I groaned and apologized profusely, but, in typical bro form, to this day St. Jimmy won’t let me live it down.

            After the Big Boy incident, my eyes were opened to my own hypocrisy. Here I was, rolling my eyes at my insecure girlfriends, all but groaning when they so obviously fished for compliments, when I just did the same thing to the kid who brings out my inner dude. What the hell? I started paying attention and realized that I voiced my own insecurities a lot. And what’s worse was that I didn’t do it for compliments, like most women did. I’ve never been one to accept compliments. No, I was a bitcher; one of those women who just complained while adding absolutely nothing to the conversation.

            Che cavolo! The horror! The horror!

            Since then I’ve tried very hard not to bitch for the sake of bitching, but every once in a while, it slips out, (especially if alcohol is involved when I’m already feeling a little down.) My newfound self-awareness also made me more aware of just how much women let their insecurities sneak out. I’m sure men struggle with the same internal issues, or at least similar ones. As much as I crack jokes, I know that the line between the sexes is less clear than we indicate in our culture. But, most likely because of our culture, we women seem to suffer quite a bit more (or at least more publically) than our male counterparts. It’s a rare day when I have to reassure one of my bros that their outfit looks good on him or that nobody’s noticed that he’s gained a little weight.

            Conversely, it seems that every single woman I know has an awkward teenager inside of her. I’m not making a generalization. Even the most down-to-earth girl I know, who washes her hair maybe once a week and wouldn’t know mascara from a nuclear particle reactor, has issues with her own body. Many of my friends see me as the “strong one” and are shocked when they discover that I have my complaints about myself like everyone else does.

            I don’t really care about the ‘why’ factor in this, mostly because it almost always ends up being a long-winded feminist discussion about women’s role in society, female oppression, the oversexualized media, and blah, blah, blah. I’m not a big fan of discussions like this because I don’t like blaming other people/society for my problems, even if it is their fault. Like I said, I’ve tried to cut back on the bitching, and bitching about why I bitch seems a little counter-productive.

            I will say this, though. Separating myself from my female kin for a moment…I don’t understand how we can possibly feel this way.  I look at my female friends and I find myself surrounded by beauty. Every single one of my friends is beautiful to me.  Like astonishingly beautiful. Seriously, sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie or a reality show where everyone is unrealistically attractive. And to hear my darlings complain about themselves, about their curves that I find so perfect, or their faces which always seem painted or even sculpted to me, completely blows my mind.

Okay, yeah, this is a little extreme, but we all have days kind of like this.

For a clear example, Venus, whom I obviously find ridiculously beautiful as I gave her the name of the goddess of beauty, frequently complains about her complexion.  Venus’ skin is one of my favourite physical things about her. She has smooth milky white skin, the creamy complexion that women in parts of the East douse themselves in bleach to achieve. In my nerdy fangirl-ness, her skin reminds me of a vampire’s.  But my own weird concepts of beauty aside, all of the women in my life are empirically attractive, and they all have complaints about the very things that make them beautiful.  It makes no sense.

Part of the original conversation I had with St. Jimmy included men’s complete surprise when they realize just how insecure women are.  It usually happens when they have a new girlfriend. The sexy, confident woman they fell for is still there, of course, but suddenly there’s this other girl as well, and this girl hates the way her hair curls to one side, can’t wear those skinny jeans you used to love because they give her muffin top, and can’t seem to leave the house without a little blush.

There isn’t really any cure for any of this. I suppose we women will always have our insecurities, no matter how strong and confident we are. If I were qualified to give parting advice, and I am, as this is my blog, dammit, I would say this:

To my girls, my lovelies, my fearless females: It’s good to open up to people about the things that make you feel vulnerable. It deepens connections and more often than not makes you feel a little bit better about yourself.  But keep it in check. The last thing our boys—or anyone—want to hear after they say “You look nice today” is a long list of why that statement is completely false. Nobody wants to hear about your discoloured birthmark or that one of your breasts is slightly larger than the other. And your significant other doesn’t want to spend his time with you constantly reaffirming the fact that you’re skinny, smooth, pretty, and proportionate.

....hehehehehehehehe.

To my boys, my bros, my merry men: Try your best to take our crazy insecurities in stride. When we get comfortable with you, yes, we’ll complain about our bodies more, but that doesn’t mean that we’re weak little girls who hate ourselves. Yes, we have our reservations and our lists of self-perceived faults, but don’t let that be all you see.  Men tend to forget after a while that even with all of our emotional baggage, we women still throw on our heels and turn heads on the street and flash sexy smiles that get attention across rooms. Just because we’ve opened up to you doesn’t mean that all the confidence you saw in us before was an illusion.  We’re still sex kittens, bombshells, Wonder Women, and it would be a big mistake for you guys to forget that just because we need a little reassurance sometimes.

Yup...that's us. ;)