There was a time when self-hatred was sold to us as discipline. Self-loathing was dressed up as humility. Compare and despair was passed off as ambition. Self-abandonment was called maturity, womanhood, professionalism, desirability, success.
We were taught to monitor ourselves like enemies. We were taught to stand outside our own bodies with a clipboard, taking notes on what needed fixing. Smaller waist. Younger face. Better skin. More pleasing voice. Less hunger. Less need. Less truth. Less space. Less self.
What a miserable little religion that was.
That era is over.
Self-hate is out. Self-rejection is out. Starving for approval is out. Performing insecurity so other people can feel comfortable is out. Twisting ourselves into something more acceptable, more marketable, more digestible, more male-approved is out of style in the deepest possible way.
Those things are very 2020.
We are not doing that now.
Now we are becoming women who are delusionally in love with ourselves in the holiest sense. Not because we are perfect. Not because we have achieved some final form. Not because the world finally gave us permission. We love ourselves because we have decided that living at war with our own reflection is a tragic misuse of a life.
We are done making a home out of criticism.
We are done confusing cruelty with sophistication.
We are done bowing before beauty standards built by people who do not love women, do not understand women, and do not benefit from women becoming more free.
We are not chasing thin if thin means disappearing.
We are not chasing youth if youth means apologizing for time.
We are not chasing male beauty standards if those standards require us to betray our actual aliveness.
That shit is out of style.
What is in style now is radiance.
What is in style now is devotion to the self.
What is in style now is walking in sunshine like it belongs to us.
What is in style now is strutting.
What is in style now is laughing loudly, moisturizing extravagantly, resting without guilt, getting dressed like the day is lucky to have us, and taking up space like we remember who the hell we are.
We are not awaiting transformation.
We are the transformation.
We are not one more diet away from worthiness.
We are not one more product away from beauty.
We are not one more compliment away from permission.
We are not one more man's desire away from being real.
We are real right now.
This is the season of returning to ourselves with ridiculous tenderness. This is the era of becoming our own type. Our own standard. Our own fantasy. Our own proof that a woman does not become more beautiful by becoming smaller. She becomes more beautiful by becoming more here.
More present.
More adorned.
More alive.
More amused.
More honest.
More herself.
I want women in love with the sound of their own laughter.
I want women who look in the mirror like they are greeting someone beloved.
I want women who buy the good perfume now.
I want women who stop saving their best clothes for a life that has not started yet.
I want women who take the photo.
I want women who dance in the kitchen.
I want women who let joy touch them all the way to the bone.
This is not vanity. This is resurrection.
Because there is something profoundly political about a woman who no longer agrees to hate herself. There is something disruptive about a woman who refuses to spend her life auditing her own flaws. There is something nearly uncontrollable about a woman who has ended the negotiations with shame and begun a love affair with being alive.
That woman is harder to manipulate.
Harder to sell fear to.
Harder to silence.
Harder to diminish.
Harder to rule.
When a woman stops abandoning herself, everything changes.
So let this be the decree: self-abandonment is over now. The era of dragging ourselves through life as our own worst enemy is finished. We are entering the age of shine.
The age of women who choose delight on purpose.
The age of women who dress for their own gaze.
The age of women who take beauty back from the hands of the market and return it to pleasure, artistry, play, power, sunlight, texture, color, and presence.
The age of women who understand that the glow was never hidden from us. It was only buried under the exhausting labor of trying to become acceptable.
No more.
Now we are walking ourselves home.
Now we are speaking to ourselves like someone worth keeping alive.
Now we are feeding ourselves like someone sacred.
Now we are styling ourselves like joy is a practice.
Now we are turning our faces toward the light and refusing to apologize for the shine.
Be unreasonable about loving yourself.
Be extravagant about your own becoming.
Be embarrassing in your devotion to your own joy.
Fall so completely in love with your life force that the old voices cannot find a place to land.
This is your reminder that the sun does not ask permission to shine.
Neither should you.
