Radical Notions

You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random people on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.

I’m not saying that you SHOULDN’T be pretty if you want to. (You don’t owe UN-prettiness to feminism, in other words.) Pretty is pleasant, and fun, and satisfying, and makes people smile, often even at you. But in the hierarchy of importance, pretty stands several rungs down from happy, is way belowhealthy, and if done as a penance, or an obligation, can be so far away fromindependent that you may have to squint really hard to see it in the haze. 

(Source: goforthandagitate)