These Things Really Make My Inner Feminist all Ranty

Today I was scrolling through my Facebook feed during my ten-minute break in French Class, and found this link that was shared by one of my female friends.  The entire article is all about how guys hate high-wasted shorts and how ugly they all are on the women wearing them.  It goes through various (and pretty offensive) quotes from men of various ages saying things like "they're just fat-hiders" or "boner-killers."

If your'e not sure what high-wasted shorts are, here's a look:

(Source one, two and three.)

It should be noted that none of these women are hiding any fat that I can see. Not that it's any of my damn business.

Seeing as I only had a few minutes to scroll through this article, I decided I was too disgusted to even read it word for word and closed it down just taking a moment to leave a comment with my disagreement on the Facebook status that had shared it and turn to my classmate to voice my disgust.  My class mate, the petite and absolutely gorgeous Mandy, sat there blinking at me wearing her high-wasted shorts.  High-wasted shorts she'd made herself by frugally cutting up an old pair of jeans.

Yes, going back and reading it now I see that this article does it's due diligence and wraps up at the end with the statement that we shouldn't be dressing to impress men-but that statement almost seems to contradict the entire premise of the article at all.  If you don't believe you should be dressing to impress men, why are you taking the time to interview a bunch of them on the subject of women's clothing?  Why are you taking the time to write up an entire article spreading this misplaced idea that what we wear is influenced by how attractive the opposite sex finds us?  It feels like while you're saying one thing at the end there, but your actions with the rest of the post are entirely different.

So you don't like high-wasted shorts.  I get it.  Do I think they're attractive on everyone?  No.  Do I think you should try and dress for your body type?  Yes.  Would I wear them?  Not a chance in hell. On me, they would be fat-hiders, but let's be real-I wouldn't wear the low wasted ones and show off my stomach either-I'm just not comfortable with that. But you know, even if a girl twice as big as me wants to wear them (or wear a bikini and show off her stomach) I'm not going to fault her or tell her she's "ugly" or ask 12 guys to tell me how bad they find her fashion choices because she is wearing whatever she's wearing and then post their comments full of sexist slurs on my blog for everyone to read.  I'll look at that other girl and say, "gee, you're pretty.  I'm sure glad you're having fun with your own body and your own fashion!" 

And I get it, this article was written to be "witty" and it was meant in humor... Typically I'm all for not taking things to serious-I mean just about everything is funny.  However I find it sad when that humor is at the expense of others and includes some pretty awful misogynist garbage.  A quick look through the comments and I'm happy to see some guys jumping in to point out that it's BS.  To be honest, I don't think I'd want to date a guy that had that much of a problem with any article of clothing... Yeah you can have your preference, but to actively go out and proclaim how much you hate them and wont even consider getting to know a girl who is wearing them says more about your character than the girl who made that fashion choice for the day.

(source)

But sadly, along with the guys commenting to let us know that there is hope for men everywhere and not to judge the gender by those few comments, I was sad to see so many women perpetuating this girl-on-girl hate.  By the way, why on earth is there so much girl-on-girl hate?  One commenter pointed out that she never dresses for guys, but she dresses for girls because she knows they'll judge her.  

I should remember by now that I hate reading the comments on stuff like this (and news articles, and YouTube) because people are hideous to each other.  But that's another topic for a different day.

So what is my point with ranting about this?  Why can't we all just live our own lives and let other people live theirs without proclaiming how much we hate them for it?  Sure, I'm not always perfect and I catch myself unfortunately judging people now and again, but it is rarely over something so extremely trivial, and I usually correct the problem the minute I catch it.  We're human.  It happens.  How about instead of furthering all the negativity we take a moment to stop and add a little more positivity into the world?

Today, I'm going to encourage you to tell at least three women you meet how beautiful they are.

Even if they look unkempt.  Even if they're having a bad day and are scowling.  Spread love.
You never know who's world you'll change with one simple comment.

(This awesome comic comes from Penny Candy Studios who you should check out!)

As always, if you want to disagree with me it's welcomed in a professional courteous manner.  If you leave a ranty slur-filled comment it'll be deleted.  You're an adult, you know how this works. :)