Fuck Flawless

Fuck flawless.

And fuck you beauty industry.

Okay, let's backtrack for a second while I dive into a couple disclaimers.

The inspiration for my anger/irritation/general-feeling-of-over-it comes from a Jergens campaign that touts its skincare as being able to provide you with “flawless" looking skin.

A couple days ago I was innocently reading a blog about craft beer.
Getting into the nerd zone of reading about hops. As I scroll down, I see one of those embedded video adverts in the centre of the text that plays with no audio unless you click the sound button. It was featuring Leslie Mann.

I love Leslie Mann!

She's smart, quirky, funny, and incredibly interesting to watch. 

In fact, I'll pretty much watch anything she's in.
She usually plays an underdog of sorts in her movies, and I freaking love an underdog.

Cool. So I click the un-mute button so I can see what all the fun is about.

Insert utter dismay.

I'm watching a Jergens commercial where a mother tells her daughter that she needs to start working on her elbows.
They’re just not smooth enough! The commercial ends with the mom about to start moisturizing her daughters feet too. Because apparently those aren’t smooth enough either.

I’m kind of hooked. 

I need to watch more of these. I both love and hate everything about it. 

Leslie Mann’s skin does indeed look strangely smooth.
But like an alien. Not a human. I’m pretty sure aliens would be that smooth. My point is, she doesn’t look like any human I’ve ever seen. Her skin is bizarrely smooth.

Probably because of the post-production work done on her skin.
No, not because of the lotion she’s selling, but the work of a skilled editor, combined with flattering lighting, a beautiful lens, and some outstanding makeup work.

The next Jergens commercial I watch pisses me off.
So much so that I have to stop watching. This one is selling me tanning lotion that is supposed to give me “flawless” colour.

First of all, what the hell is flawless colour?

What colour am I supposed to be?

Really, I want to know.

What goddamn colour am I supposed to be today? 
 

But before I go all out with my rage-fest, let me just say a couple more things about Leslie.

Leslie Mann is the bomb.
And although I'm sad that she did these commercials, I also get it. Hello, she's a 40-something woman working in Hollywood. Do you think that she's fielding calls every day? No she's probably not.

Just like most female actors in their 40 plus years who didn't make their name as character actors (i.e. Meryl Streep) and are not fielding a million calls. 

Also, like most humans, Ms. Mann is human.
Meaning she herself has probably fallen into the trap of thinking she needs to be flawless. Which isn't so strange since she works in a male-dominated industry that prizes looks over talent. Again, thank you Hollywood. 

Okay, discalimer and love for Leslie, aside, these Jergens commercials are a travesty. 
They are a goregous metaphor for what is wrong with how we raise our females, treat our females, package our females, objectify our females, and tell our females what they're worth.

First of all, flawless is not a thing.
Even the most flawless diamond isn't flawless! Even the most crazy hot super model has zits, and blackheads, and stretch marks, and dandruff. Or whatever. 

And yet, there’s a long list of "imperfections" that women are supposed to fix.
Get rid of. Or at the very least hide! And in a second I'm going to share that list with you so we can collectively feel angry about how insane it is that women walk around with a list like that clogging up their beautiful minds and making them feel worthless.

Making them go out and buy products that don't work to do a job that doesn't need to be done. 

Okay here's the non-exhaustive list of things that women need to get rid of now:

• zits

• blackheads

• visible pores (oh yes, our pores are not supposed to be visible...cool...how do I manage that one!?!)

• stretch marks

• flakiness of any kind (too dry = not good!)

• shininess of any kind  too oily = also not good!)

• wrinkles

• fine lines

• loose skin (you gotta tuck that shit, get under the knife or start some crazy "firming" routine)

• fat

• body hair

• spider veins

• vericose veins

• grey hair 

• boring coloured hair (yes, just normal hair colour is called mousy these days)

• frizzy hair

You get the picture. And I'm sure you could add to the list,

These are just the basics mind you. 

If you want to be a truly successful female in North America you need a few more things.
Flat tummy. Thin thighs. A thigh gap is a bonus! Nice toned muscles. White teeth. Perfect smile. Always happy. Or at least sultry. You can only be morose if you're being sexy while doing it. Big boobs. Curves. Beautiful perfect nails. Even your toe nails are supposed to look like candy!

After looking at this list I'm actually surprised women aren't going ballistic on a daily basis.

But I guess we are in a way. 

We just go ballistic internally by doubting our worth.
Undervaluing our contributions. And not going after the things we care about. It should be no surprise after looking at that laundry list of things women are supposed to eradicate if they want to be of value that there aren't a ton of women in power positions. 

Can you really imagine leading a Fortune 500 company and also staying on top of your imperfections. 

What about leading a country while never having frizzy hair or visible pores?

It sounds tough. And that's because it is!

It's not just tough. It's impossible. 

Human beings aren't flawless.
There's nothing we can do to get rid of every strange bump and line and wrinkle on our body. And nor should we bother trying. Because trying to that adds literally no value to human society or planet earth.

Nobody's life becomes better because you dedicated your whole life to looking perfect. Nobody's life becomes more full, more meaningful, more joyful because you tried for 25 years to get rid of your spider veins.

And that is why I say, fuck the beauty industry.

The advertisers writing the scripts for the commercials and adverts know perfectly well that none of the products they are selling are going to make anybody flawless.
Or perfect. Or even more innately beautiful. They are selling straight up lies. Lies that make little girls feel bad about themselves. Little girls who grow up into women who also feel bad about themselves.

And that is just shitty.

That's a shitty way for a company to make money.

And the sad thing is, they make a lot of freaking money doing this.

Let me insert an amazing quote from the Global Cosmetics Industry online magazine:

“Boosted by makeup and premium offerings, the sector is expected to rise from $80 billion today to $90 billion by 2020. Assuming the forecast hits its mark, that represents a nearly 45% gain over 10 years.
”

— GCI Magazine

The beauty industry is growing like a hot damn.
And that growth is fuelled by females who want to look perfect. 

If that isn’t enough to make you want to storm into a Shoppers Drug Mart and start throwing all the lotions and potions they’re hocking into the aisles while yelling "Enough already!!!" then you probably haven’t digested those numbers. 

With 80 billion dollars you could feed 1 billion people for over 40 days.
With over 1 billion people around the world living off of less than $1.25 a day, you can see how relatively speaking 80 billion is a huge sum of money.

It’s more that double the entire GDP of the entire country of Bolivia.

It’s 5 times what Americans spent on books in the year 2016. 

I repeat, what Americans spend on beauty is 5 times what they spend on books!

But money aside, and number aside, it’s just a little insane that women have so deeply fallen into the seductive trap of "flawless". 

I propose that we un-fall.

That we rise up out of this sick programming and stop buying into the messages that we are not enough. Because we really are enough. We don't need to be perfect to be enough!

And empowering our young women to know that they are enough will not just change the world, it will transform it completely. 

How The Selfie Is Keeping Us Down

The girls teeter over to their table holding a photogenic coffee of some sort in a tiny martini glass, and then something with lots of extravagant foam. 

They plop down.

"What is that?"

One girl enquires of the other's picturesque drink.

"I don't even know!"

I'm already judging them. Before they've even pulled out the cell phones and started the selfie session that is inevitable, I've already decided who they are. I'm mid-sigh when the phone comes out. 

Insert selfie session.

It takes about four tries to get the photo right.
They adjust, freeze, adjust, take a photo. Examine the photo. Readjust. Freeze. Photo. Examine. And again. We're outside a local coffee shop. The kind of place that serves pour over that takes ten minutes to be ready and has free water that is always ice cold.

I LOVE this place. It's nerdy. It's delicious. The baristas never ask me how I am. Which is how I like it. The answer to that questions is way too complicated for a 2 minute interaction. 

These girls are kind of anomalies.
Most of the patrons of this cafe are hard core nerds who click away on their MacBook Airs like their solving the hunger crisis. 

But outside on the patio the air is somewhat different. 

I'm about to direct my attention elsewhere when a dog prances out onto the street right next to the cafe. He's gentle-eyed Rottweiler who is deeply curious about these selfie girls. Maybe he senses something I don't.

As soon as Girl 1 lays eyes on the dog, she is BESIDE HERSELF.
She spends the next ten minutes, being the biggest most hilarious weirdo, scratching the dog between the eyes, under his belly.

I wish I could remember the things she was loudly saying to this dog, but I was so fascinated by this sudden display of weirdo-ness from a girl who had just been doing fake presentational photography, that it went through one ear and out the other.

I wished I had a camera and could capture the aliveness of this girl as she went ballistic over this dog.
It was more human, more adorable, more engaging, then anything I've ever seen on screen. It was like she had found her spirit animal after years of hunting diligently in a desert with no water or shelter.

I'm not exaggerating.

This, I thought, is what people really need to see on social media.

Not the fake perfection of crafted expressions we post when we share selfie after selfie.

The selfie is robbing us of our humanity.
 

In order to have the perfect selfie you have to completely remove yourself and your humanity and your uniqueness from the photo.
You have to ensure your face has the perfect smile. There's no weird wrinkles or bulges. No odd looks in your eye. Just a placidly sexy expression that broadcasts to the world, "I FIT IN. I'M OKAY. I DESERVE TO BE HERE."

This, to me, is the worst thing that has come from the social media smart phone era.
The vast proliferation of dehumanized images. The habit of actively dehumanizing ourselves in our photography and then broadcasting it day in and day out. 

It doesn't make the world a better place. It doesn't make the viewer or the maker more fulfilled in life. 

The robotic nature of the selfie those girls took compared to the insane aliveness of the dog interaction was so disparate, it was like two different people were fighting for dominion in this girl's brain.

And in reality, they probably were.

***

"Vapid" he says, looking out at a group of girls who are engaging in a selfie session that's probably going to take the better part of the next fifteen minutes.

If you're an experienced person watcher, you can usually guess how long a session is going to take by how long the girls (and yes it's almost always girls!) take examining the photos afterwards. 

He had nothing but judgement and dismay painted across his face as he watched them engage in their photo session.

Yes, he was right. It is pretty vapid. 

But what he didn't know was WHY it's happening. Why its so prevalent. What dark place in the human psyche this neurosis is coming from. And why it's mostly ladies, not men, who are engaged in this dark art.

Selfies are just a side effect of the large-scale brainwashing the beauty industry has been perpetrating upon young women since the dawn of shampoo. 

I got lucky because growing up without TV, my only brainwashing came from reading fashion magazines.

That was still enough to make me think that at 5'4" and 115 lbs, I needed to lose weight.
At the age of twelve I had conjured up the idea that I needed to lose weight because if I were going to become an actress, I might get asked to wear a bathing suit, and if that happened I needed to be "bathing-suit-ready". 

BATHING SUIT READY!?!?!?

That's fucked up.

What does that even mean?

Well, I'll tell you.

It means a flawless toned body with no visible bulges or imperfections of any kind. 

And that's what I was after at age 12.
Newsflash to twelve-year-old Colette, I already had that exact body. My body will probably never be as "flawless" as it was then. And it pisses me off that I didn't know that.

The point is, that starting from a very early age, the advertisements on TV and in magazines focus on female insecurity around their looks and place a huge amount of emphasis on achieving perfection.

The words "flawless" and "perfect" get thrown around like vital conjunctions in a beauty magazine. And almost every single girl in North America grows up reading hundreds of beauty magazines. 

And not just reads, she PORES OVER THEM like they contain the secret to success and happiness. These magazines are like holy grails.

On top of that, you've got TV and movies full of insanely attractive women who toss their shiny hair around like they haven't a care in the world. The advertisements then tells us that we're WORTH IT as the incite us to buy a shitty hair care product.  

***

Yesterday I listened to an interview with an incredibly intelligent woman.
A Harvard Graduate who is working hard to alleviate the world poverty crisis. She is truly a maverick. But she too has fallen for the false wisdom of beauty as a metric by which you can measure a women's success.

In describing a change that one of the women in her program underwent, she cites the girl wearing makeup as an example of how the girl had changed for the better.

This young woman had been at risk of entering the sex trade before she was given a job opportunity that changed her life. She went from wearing baggy clothes, to clothes that fit her figure and wearing makeup. 

Wait a hot second...

How is wearing makeup and fitted clothing an example of success!?!?

Seriously, how?
 

This is just one of the examples used to demonstrate that this young woman was on the up and up. The woman did state other examples of how the young woman was more articulate and had prospects. But the emphasis was on the SUPERFICIAL CHANGE. The emphasis wasn't on internal change. 

You would never in a million years say something that dumb about a man. 

You would never say that you could really tell that the man's life had been transformed because he was now wearing fitted suits and doing his hair nicely. Or he was shaving on a regular basis. 

Because we don't judge a man's success by his hairdo, his attire, or what he puts on his face.

You wouldn't say that Steve Jobs really was on the up and up when he started buzzing his hair. 

But with women, the more attractive we look, the more successful and happy and worthy the world thinks we are. 

We have been so successfully brainwashed, as a gender, that most of us can barely recognize the difference between our personal inclinations, our true inner desires, and how we have been conditioned to value our appearance in a very specific and commerce-advancing way. 

***

I think this topic is important because I see it as a way that women hold themselves back.

Part of the reason the pay gap exists is because women don't fight for what they're worth. If we're spending two hours a day on looking hot/polished/perfect, that's time NOT spent on thinking about strategy and how to move up or jostle the status quo. 

My partner just spent a month coming up with a strategy that ended up earning him a 30% raise. 

A month. 

Every morning for a month he considered his strategy. And then he put it into motion. 

It takes him 2 minutes to do his hair. He doesn't wear makeup. And he shaves once a week, usually on Tuesday.

So it's safe to say he's got A LOT of extra time in the morning to think about strategy.
Time that a woman who spends an hour or two hours getting ready, doesn't have. 

The female obsession with perfection and flawlessness and beauty is part of what keeps us as second-class citizens, with lower incomes, less power positions, and less wealth. 

And I think as women if we want to change all of that we have to stop objectifying and dehumanizing ourselves. 
 

That means no more protracted selfie sessions, no more taking two hours to get ready, no more spending 10% of our income on beauty products and then having zero income to retire on. 

Unless of course, we want to be trophy wives. 

Let's Just Take This Little Guy Off The Table

Can we never talk about overcompensating again?

You know what I mean, right?

Where some guy rolls up in a convertible with a very elaborate hairdo and we think it's okay to make jokes about his penis size.

"Look at that ridiculous car. Hehehehe. He must be overcompensating for something."

Silence.

"Hehe. You know, small penis syndrome."

Oh no, we get it.
We really totally get what you're talking about. But it's not funny. It wouldn't be funny to say that a woman who rolls up in a fancy car is compensating for having a large vagina, so why is it funny to say about a man?

Why has the male genitalia become such a completely acceptable target for our derision.
And if the guy does have small junk, well whose the asshole now? Not him. Us. We are. Because we're making fun of a medical condition.

Microphallus i.e. micro penis is a birth defect.
Or a genetic mutation. It happens when the fetus doesn't get enough testosterone or if there's a mutation in the gene SRD5A2. 

Having a micro penis or even having a small penis isn't really a joke.
It doesn't make a person better or worse as a human. It probably causes them a lot of emotional pain. And frankly what someone's packing in their pants isn't exactly your business unless you're planning on unpacking it personally and getting down. And you're definitely not making the world a better more equitable place for all of us when you bring up penis size casually as if it IS a joke. 

But in our culture it seems to be allowed as a jokey insult.
But do any of us actually feel happy, comfortable, at peace, when we're talking about another person's sex organs as if we have the right to do so? Do we have the right to even do so? Is that a right? Or is it some fucked up entitlement shit?

When it comes to women saying shitty things about men, there might be an issue of oppression entitlement.
You know, you've heard so many hurtful comments said about, towards, against women, that you feel entitled to make them yourself, but against men. You feel angry, tired, irritated, and you don't see the point in being nice, or decent, or respectful. Because if your team isn't going to be given the respect it deserves then why the hell should the other team?

Except that someone has to be the bigger person.
 

Like when your relationship is failing.
If you're both waiting for the other person to step up and do better, then you're on the HOV lane towards divorce. You can't wait for the person you love to do better. YOU have to do better.
 

And that means, that as women, we have to do better.
 

We don't get a free pass when we open our mouths and start spewing hate speech. 
Hundreds of years of oppression didn't buy us a get out jail for free card. And I would really really really love it if men started rejecting the stereotypes and biases and sexist bullshit that gets laid on them from the moment they leap out of the womb with the greatest of intentions, only to discover that their world is only slightly more hospitable than Mars. 
 

***

I guess if you were a man you could say that when a woman makes penis-size comments that's a micro aggression.
It's used to shame and belittle one man, but in fact it is an aggression against all men. Because if you're just standing around minding your own business and some woman starts talking about penis size and you happen to not have a big one then where does that leave you? 

Feeling uncomfortable. Feeling not good enough. Feeling a sense of shame that you now need to escape. 

And even if you happen to be well endowed, are you feeling comfortable with someone making sexist comments about the people of your gender? Or does it just wash over you?

I don't know.
Maybe you've gotten to a point where you're so good at shoving your feelings down that it doesn't register. But it's not nothing. 

It's part of a larger issue.
You know, where we expect men to have no discernible feelings and yet to be sensitive to the myriad of emotions that a woman might have. We want men to be tough-it-out soldiers who can take anything, and then we wonder why a young boy shoots a bunch of people in his school.

We wonder why rape is an issue. We wonder why violence is an issue. We wonder why most political interactions seem like a bunch of school-yard bullies jostling for the front spot at the lunch line. 

At some point, some of us have to call a truce, and just say no to ALL discrimination. 
All denigration.
All dehumanization.
All stereotyping.
All labelling.
All hatred/
All ignorance.

It's going to be hard, at first.
We're going to stumble along for a while. Still making stupid comments. Still being mildly or greatly offensive. Still wondering why we feel shitty at the end of the day. But we will get there. If the greater goal is to make everyone feel safe and included, then trying and failing is worth it.

And I do mean EVERYONE. 

We don't get to pick and choose inclusion. 
That, my friends, is not inclusion. 

It's 100% difficult. 

And 0% fun.

It's way more fun to call Trump a dickhead then to use your words to accurately describe the behaviour he takes that you disagree with.

It's way more fun to say that a man is probably overcompensating then it is to unpack the reasons why their alpha swagger makes you feel uncomfortable. 

But nobody ever said that working to make the world a better place would be fun.
Important, yes. Difficult, yes. Worthwhile, yes. But fun? Oh hell no!

My Dirty Secret

I have a secret. 
It's dark. It's dirty. And admitting it could mean getting shunned by women who I love and respect.

Luckily, I'm not famous so nobody is going to publicly rip me a new one when I admit this dirty secret out loud, in public.
And I don't have to worry about a well-meaning (or malicious) journalist asking me this question and then twitter going crazy because how dare she.

Alright, here it is...

I am not a feminist. 

There I said it.

I'm not.

And no, you don't get to interject and ask me if I believe this and that and this other thing, and then tell me that well, yes you ARE a feminist, because if you think those things then you are a feminist. 

And no you don't get to tell me that I've been brainwashed by men to be anti-women, thank you very much. 

I mean maybe I was brainwashed at one point.
But trust me, I have worked hard to undo that. In fact, I struggle daily to pull apart the pieces of my reality that are true and separate them from the fiction. And while part of that is due to sexism, the greater part of that struggle is from being raised in a system that wanted to keep me and every other cog in the machine down.

And that includes men. And transgender persons. And non-binary persons. And all other persons that define themselves as anything other than female.

Listen, if you think for a second that white male factory workers got let off the hook and weren't brainwashed in any way to be less then their true and beautiful selves, then you've got to think some more.

Across the board, across time and space, since the beginning of large scale disparity in wealth, both men and women have been oppressed by the super-wealthy.

We are the leverage.
We are the bicycle wheel that they use to speed towards supremacy. And this crosses all cultural and political boundaries. If you've got a country with some people making billions, and others making dollars, then you have oppression. And it isn't just against the women. It's against everyone. 

I need to just say this again because I think it's really really really really really really really important.
 

Oppression is not the exclusive domain of women. 
 

And please don't misinterpret this. 
I'm not saying that by focusing on women's rights, and female oppression, we're erasing the oppression of others. It doesn't really work that way. One person's struggle doesn't invalidate another person's struggle. 

But by ONLY considering the oppression of women, we create a void.
We erase the other human struggles in our mind and in doing so we don't see the whole picture. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think that the solution is in the big picture. I think that we find our humanity, our compassion, our understanding, when we see the whole, not the singular. 
 

***

These days admitting to not being a feminist is like wilfully putting a scarlet letter on your breast.
But I'm fine with that. I think. Having felt like a black sheep for the better part of my 33 years on planet earth, it doesn't really matter if that status continues.

But why?
Why don't I?
Why aren't I?

Because just like I don't want there to be such a thing as Manist, I don't want to have to be a Feminist.
I don't want to participate in women's only festivals. And women's only groups. And women's only courses. I want men and women to have equal rights. To both feel safe, and included, and worthy.

I want men whose issues and intricacies are not represented at all in the media to be included. To be no longer invisible. Just as I want to see the accurate and equal representation of women on screen and the end of the hilariously illogical pay gap.

I also want to see the diverse array of humans from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds to be treated with equal respect and equal rights.
I want to see the end of racism, the end of sexism, the end of abuse, the end of genocide, the end of oppression, the end of warfare, the end of casual violence, the end of rape, the end of... you know, all the shitty things that humans do to each other and the planet.

Don't even get me started on what we do to the planet.
If the Mother Earth made action movies they would all be about how animals took back the land and kicked us all into outer space where we were collectively left to rot in a black hole.

But I digress.

Point is, to give myself a label that includes one gender and not the other, doesn't feel right to me.

When I try to say it out loud, it doesn't ring true.
It straight up feels "not me". Fake. False. Disingenuous. 
So why should I HAVE TO use that label in order to be a good modern woman who cares about women's rights? 

Just in general, I'm not much for labels.
I don't want to be told what to do, and I don't want to be told what I am. I don't want to try and define myself by a single word, or even a series of words. I don't want to be put in a box. I want to be free to evolve and express and work towards what I believe is important, without the need for a tidy set of words that make everyone else comfortable.

***

We use labels to divide. 
To draw lines in the sand. 
To create tidy packages that we can tie up with string.

Ah okay, you're that thing. And I'm this thing. So we're not going to agree on these things. Okay, so now we can be acquaintances and not friends. And probably I'm going to secretly judge you for being this thing and not that thing.

It's the same as saying you're a conservative or a liberal.
The second you say you're a conservative, all the liberals in the room are aghast, like you've just admitted to having leprosy. They now get to decide that you are less than, they are better than, and you need your head checked. And they are now comfortable using a full array of horrific insults to describe you and your belief system behind your back.

But what happens when we take away the labels?
 

Everything changes.

When we take away the labels, we make room again for complexity and conversation. 
If you can't find out who I am by the label that I choose to use, then you've got to get to know me. We have to talk about a wide range of topics. We've got to exchange stories. Argue our perspectives. Make concessions. Discover the good and the bad. And then you can make your judgement about who I am.

And so no, I'm not going to make it easy for anyone to quietly put me into a category and then treat me just as they would every other person in that category. 

Women can be assholes too

Many pockets of feminism would like to paint women as sacred cows who can do no wrong. 
While men as the evil-doers who are responsible for all ills in the world. But the truth is that women are just as capable of acting like assholes as men are.

And not just capable.
We straight up screw people over, act catty, aggressive, insulting, oppressive, and toxic. We kill. We rape. We main. We blow shit up. We wage war. We are not innocent. Not by a long shot.

I didn't consciously realize this until a couple year ago. 
After an epic blow up, I came to the conclusion that I was just at much at fault for the relationship problems I was experiencing as my partner was. Having somehow subconsciously decided many years before that men were the root of all evil, I believed that all acts of relationship aggression came from my partner. Not me. 

That's pretty sexist. In so many ways.

After one particularly spectacular fight my partner and I had the kind of talk that either results in a dramatic break up or in the beginning of a healing process that changes everything. I think I could feel what was at stake, and so despite my desire to finger point and blame, I managed to listen. To ask questions about my partner's experience  of me. And to actually, for real, hear the criticism. 

And I was shocked.
It was like I'd suddenly been given a movie of all the shitty horrible things I had ever said and done to him, and I was unable to walk away or ignore it. I was stuck there watching this movie unfold inside my mind, act after ugly act.

It was not pretty.
But boy was I grateful. I could have gone my entire life never seeing my own guilt - my own responsability. And thus never seeing how I could change. How I could be better.

I had already been eating up relationship books like they were chocolate and I was on my period.
So I knew about male sensitivity. And I knew that women could hurt their men deeply just using their words. But I had no idea how potent my ability to make my partner feel unsafe was. 

Unsafe. 

That's what I discovered. 

I could make a man who is physically twice as strong as me feel unsafe.

You may not strike terror into the heart of your male partner, but you can definitely make him feel unsafe.

***

Every man started his life as a baby. 
A tiny human being who had to navigate a world that expects men to be "manly". And whatever that baby boy's parents decided manly meant resulted in how he was treated. 

Many young boys are treated in a surprisingly abusive way.
They're spoken to and treated in ways that a little girl would rarely experience. Because our idea of boys is that they're tough and they can take it.

Newsflash! They're not tough.
And they can't take it. It might appear that they can. But it's all going to come out in the wash somehow, somewhere, in some strange form. 

***

For years I had basically had no male friends.
I didn't seek out male friends. I didn't even think it was possible to be friends with men. I basically objectified men as being only good as romantic or sexual partners. In my head, men simply weren't capable of being friends with a girl.

In the past 5 years I've changed.

Becoming best friends with my romantic partner allowed me to understand men in a way that I could never have before.
I no longer viewed men as simply scary creatures that were probably up to no good. Instead I viewed men as complex beings who were able to experience pain, suffering, trauma, and love just as much as women.

I discovered that men are as romantic, and sometimes more so, than women. I discovered that men are incredibly sensitive. The way they express it and deal with it might be different from how women do. But that doesn't erase the fact that it's there.

For the past few years I've worked in a restaurant with mostly men.
There are three women on a staff of about 15. And on a usual day I might be one of two women in the building. Which means that I've spent A LOT of time talking to men about their lives, about their relationships, about their concerns, their interests, their perspectives.

In a restaurant you typically have a 3 hours window where most of what you're doing is talking. You're polishing glasses and cutlery, you're folding napkins, you're setting up the room. You don't do these activities in silence. You talk -- the entire time. 

This experience has been a huge blessing.
Being the minority means that I have learned to listen carefully, to speak up when I hear something that isn't okay, and to try my best to understand differing perspectives. Having previously worked in majority female environments, this has been my first time being surrounded by sensitive men from a variety of cultural backgrounds.

Most of the men I work with are introspective and introverted.
They're pretty far from the stereotype of the manly man that we see displayed on screens in the cineplex. Our resident Alpha Male is a former opera singer with an obsession for bit coin, who is a self-professed romantic. 

Over the past few years, as I've tried to pay more attention to the men in my life, the men coming into my place of work, I've come to the tentative conclusion that those so-called Manly Men are actually few and far between.

Someone who on first glance looks like he might fit into the stereotypical alpha role on second glance turns out to be eccentric, or introverted, or highly sensitive, or artistic. It's rare that I encounter a man who checks all of those Manly Man boxes.

And so I'm starting to believe that it's largely a myth. 
Like the big foot. Or the loch ness monster. I'm starting to believe that even those men who do appear to be hyper "masculine" are in fact just as sensitive as anyone else. Whether I'm right or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that we extend the possibility that women have been oppressing men in a very subtle way for just as long as they have been oppressing us. 
 

Like evil fraternal twins in a soap opera, we've both been out to get each other. 

Part of moving forward as a culture, achieving true equality, achieving gender parity, will have to come from women admitting that they are just as capable and guilty of being oppressive as their male counterparts. We have to dig ourselves out of this hole together. Because in many ways we've gotten here together. 

But it's going to take compassion, understanding, and an eye to moderate our own behaviour, and dial back our generalist finger pointing.
Sure it's probably true that out in the world men wage more wars, kill more people, and generally wreak more violent havoc. But in the home, it's unlikely that the man is the only one at fault. That the woman is an innocent bystander who has never made her partner feel small, insignificant, unloved, alone, or unsafe. 

It's a common thread in spiritual teachings that you must give to others what you think has not been given to you.
Only then will you receive it. We must give love. Compassion. Acceptance. Openness. Understanding. Generosity. Empathy.

And we must, as women, unravel our own sexist thoughts and behaviours, the ones that oppress men.
That rob them of complexity and humanity. Only by doing ourselves what we expect them to do for us will we find the equality that we so deeply desire. 

Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

When a celebrity, an artist, a person whose work we admire falls from grace there are a lot of ways to excuse their behaviour.
One of the most common is to blame the person making the accusations by saying that they should have SPOKEN UP in the moment. 

They should have said, "Hey, that makes me uncomfortable." 

"Hey, no I don't want to see you masturbate in front of me."

"Hey, don't put your hand up my skirt. That's not okay."

"Hey, I have zero interest in you kissing me right now. Or ever."

"Hey, why don't you fuck off already."

The burden of moderating the unwanted behaviour is on the receiving end rather than the actor.

That man is inappropriately hitting on you. You must be a bad woman.
You got raped while wearing a revealing dress. Shouldn't have worn that dress, right?
You got hit on by your boss for a year. Well, you should have quit if you didn't like it.

Oh, hell no!

That's not how this works, people.
 

The burden of moderating behaviour is on the ACTOR. Not the receiver. 

Oh, sure you can tell the BIG BOSS to go screw himself.
And then you can get fired. Or shamed. Or ostracized. And yes, we DO need to do that. We do need to be BRAVE. But sometimes we also need to SELF PRESERVE. Sometimes we need that job. Sometimes we are tired. And we just don't feel like being Police Woman #1 when we never signed up for that role in the first place. 

So yeah, when people with power, ANY POWER, act without decorum, without respect, without care, without kindness, without checking in on the receiving end of their comments or behaviour, then it is THEIR BAD.

And yes, we do get to place the full force of the blame on them. 

We're all adults here.
We're all responsible for our own actions. Oh sure, we might have had crappy childhoods. We might have grown up in a different time with different cultural norms. But grow up already! You have eyes. You have ears. You can CHECK IN with the way the world is moving. At the very least you can check in with the person you're talking to. See how what you're doing is making them feel.

The beauty of being human is that we are incredibly sensitive.
We can tell how someone feels without even having to think about it. All you've gotta do is look. Just look. That's it!

So the people who consistently make enemies by treating people in a manner that is disrespectful are CHOOSING NOT TO LOOK. They are choosing not to pay attention. 

Or, or, or...

Or maybe they are choosing to pay attention, and they like what they see.
They like making people feel uncomfortable because it makes them feel POWERFUL.

Yes, forgiveness.
Yes, love.
Yes, moving forward.
 

But let's not be innocent about this.
Humans may be amazing. But we're also broken. We're a broken species that is disconnected from our essence. From nature. From who we really are. And that means we like to wield power over other humans. Because we're broken. 

Let's not excuse bad behaviour. 

Oh, he didn't mean. Oh she didn't mean it.

He wasn't being sexist.
She wasn't being racist.
 

Nope, they were.

They most definitely were.
Nobody made them do it. And they knew what they were doing. Of course they knew! Just like when you bullied that kid in middle school. You knew what you were doing. You wanted to hurt someone because you're were hurting. 

We can be generous in our forgiveness, but let's not be generous with the blame.
There is one person and one person only responsible for an adult's actions. The actor. End of story.

And one more thing: if the bar that you're using to measure your conduct is whether or not people protest, then your bar is really freaking low.