Reading: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
I am blessed with the burden of being an average looking female in a family of gorgeous women. Then to add salt to the wound, I have managed to surround myself by a set of beautiful friends, both physically and intangibly. For the final cherry, I chose to attend a college where the female student body looks like they walked out of a J. Crew advertisement and a regularly ranked on of the best looking college campuses. (What misogynistic ass decided that such a ranking was necessary?) The combination has always left me with a long list of self-criticisms in regards to my body image.
Luckily, the gorgeous women of my world have been coupled variety of wholesome and supportive men. (For all fairness, they are equally attractive, just as the women in my life are as wholesome and supportive as the men.) They have shown me time and time again that beauty is goes beyond your looks and that as a woman, I will always be their equal. It has left me with a sense that am I capable and entitled to my own accomplishments, counteracting my bouts of insecurity.
Joining Peace Corps and moving to Ecuador has thrown that reality into complete chaos. Suddenly, my worth as an individual human being and more so, as a woman, had little to nothing to do with my wit, intelligence, and values. Instead, I became an object of my physical attributes—my Scandinavian blue eyes, my golden brown hair, and my light complexion—and how those are valued in Ecuador’s machismo-driven culture. Here I am faced with the consciousness that I was attractive and desirable based solely on my appearance while being marginalized and objectified by this desirability. The incidents that these circumstances have bore a very visceral backlash—never have I have so vehemently hated my own skin and reactions in incites in others.
