The Wondrous World Of Not Being A Bitch

Bitch.

That's a loaded word, right?  It's one of those "we've taken it back!" words that is now totally overused.

I personally enjoy the word "bitch" most when spoken by Aaron Paul on "Breaking Bad".

If you've never seen Breaking Bad before, you can see here that it's a jaunty show about magnets.

Man, Aaron Paul is adorable.  But moving on...

I don't understand why so many women nowadays think it's empowering to call themselves "a tough bitch."  Isn't being a tough woman good enough?  

Why do we have to use this negative word? 

Is it because we are "taking it back"?  And what on Earth does that even mean?  Taking WHAT back?  No one owns the word "bitch".  No one stole it from someone else.  It's public domain people, it's free to be said by anyone.  You're not the Robin Hood of swear words cause you're using it.

Don't you dare lie to me and say you didn't have a crush on this guy when you were 10.

It seems to me that "taking back" a rude slur like BITCH (or other much more severe words) really means you are allowing those morons who used this word to insult you to win.  

It's laying down dead- feeling like it's easier to accept the word than to fight against the tireless throngs of chauvinists who are calling you a bitch just because you said you weren't interested in driving 45 minutes to their house at 11:00 pm on a Thursday to play beer pong.

Is that really what we want?  Do we wanna walk around designating ourselves as BITCHES just because we are tenacious, candid, decisive women?  

And isn't it way more fun to brainstorm a list of awesome adjectives to describe yourself like "tenacious" than to say, "I told Randy that I didn't have time to make his copies cause I was busy with my own work... I guess I'm just the office BITCH." 

Yes, people are nasty and will label you with this word because your decisions put their panties in a bunch.

Yes, a lot of the time it will be because they are simply uncomfortable with how strong-willed you are.

And yes, some of the time it will be because you are being an asshole.

I'm just being real, ladies.  We can be jerkweeds too.

Acceptance of the word can transform into acceptance of the behavior the word elicits.

It's hard out there for the ladies.  We all know that.  And if you're a dude and you think life's easier for us just because sometimes we get free drinks due to our big boobies... I'll trade you my big boobies for your bigger paycheck.  Still interested?  Didn't think so.  Sometimes it can feel like we have to wear a lot of armor in order to protect ourselves against the army of bullshit that charges at us everyday.  

No please, explain to me again how my HMO covers Viagra but not my birth control pills.  I'm listening.

That being said, I am a woman who once fell victim to "taking back" the word bitch and in turn, allowed myself to just flat out BECOME A BITCH.  OH man... was I ever a bitch!  (It had a lot to due with my short lived stint of being a MySpace girl.)  I thought I was being strong... I wasn't.  I wasn't being honest, diligent and direct... I was being sarcastic, bitter and cold.  I picked fights and rolled my eyes at every chance I got.  I blew off my guy friends who had always treated me with respect because I didn't want to be 'sleeping with the enemy'.  I made myself as hard as I possibly could.  

...And I hurt a lot of people's feelings.  People who didn't deserve it.  All in the pursuit of "taking back bitch"... of trying to prove how TOUGH I was.

As time went on and I grew and life took it's punches at me, I learned... you don't have to be a bitch to prove that you're strong.  On the contrary, the times I felt the strongest and gained the most respect from others were when I mustered up all the humility I had inside of me and told someone that I was wrong, or kept myself level-headed and patient when I was incredibly upset.  

You wanna REALLY freak out a man? Admit that you were wrong when you were wrong.  

HOLY shit they look at you like you just made your reveal on an episode of THE SWAN!  

Sorry for reminding you about this.

It feels delicious to free yourself of pride and to take your armor off.  Armor weighs a freakin' TON, man... who wants to be walking around town wearing that shit?  Let it go!  You don't need it!  ...Why?

Because you are already strong without it.  

You survive as a woman in a world where being born a girl instantly puts you at a social disadvantage.  

You have menstrual cramps every month.  

You put up with assholes in college grabbing your ass.  

You hold your head high through your middle school awkward phase.  

You hug your boyfriend when he cries.  

You take care of your parents. 

You push another human being out of your vagina.  

You run a marathon.

You work hard to get a college degree.

You stand up for your children.  

You get your bikini line waxed.  

You balance your bank account.  

You get promoted.  

You speak your mind.  

You say "no".

You vote for whoever the hell you want to vote for.

You give to people who need help.  

You mow your own lawn.  

You drive the moving truck.  

You run six blocks to catch a bus in four inch heels. 

You are nurturers while being bread winners. 

 Be confident in knowing that you are a strong willed, hard working, loving, mature human being. 

That is enough.  

YOU are enough. 

So let's all challenge ourselves to let go of the word BITCH for a while and see how it makes us feel?  

I bet we feel better!

If not, feel free to come back and bitch at me.

This was at our "middle school" costume party back at college.  I went as a middle school bitch circa 1996.  Nailed it.

LEARN FROM ME,

Lindsay

My Attempt at Being A "MySpace Girl"

If you have big boobs, you know what a pain in the ass they can truly be.  However, you will spend a lifetime hearing from B-cupped women how lucky you are to have cleavage up to your chin, while you're thinking, "It'd be sweet to be able to wear tunic style shirts without looking like Mama Cass."

The grass is always greener on the other side, right?

Well, this thought process is exactly why when I was 19 years old I decided I had had enough of being the busty, blonde, sweet, girl-next-door and decided it was time to take a walk on the wild side.

It was time to become a MySpace Girl.

Yes, that's a naval piercing poking out between my AWESOME Hollister pants and HILARIOUS T-shirt about New Jersey!

"What's a MySpace Girl?"  

Oh you silly little person from the future who is reading this blog, let me tell you about these women of yester-year:

See, long before there was Instagram making it as easy as 123 to look like a professional photographer, we had a different breed of social media mavens; the Myspace Girls.  These girls took photos of themselves that would even make David LaChapelle say, "Let's be 'Friends'!"  

Here's a short list of things that made MySpace Girls so cool:

AMAZING makeup.  
These bitches could wing out their liquid liner in ways I didn't know was possible.  They'd wear faux eyelashes to the gas station.  They knew how to wear purple, green and blue eye shadow all at once and WERK IT OUT.

FABULOUS hair.  
Either cut pixie short, or rocked with loooooong extensions.  Bonus points for chunky blonde highlights in black hair.

BADASS tattoos.
Chest pieces of guns on 125 pound girls from the suburbs.  Enough said.

ROCKSTAR wardrobe.
Somehow they managed to pair huge acetate Chanel earrings with bandannas draped around their necks.  How??  How did they make this work??

They also all had cool names like Niki[Nadar] and deedee^DYNAmite

Tell me this girl isn't the awesomest.

Amazing.  Fabulous.  Badass.  Rockstars.  Why WOULDN'T you want to be just like them?  And on top of everything, it seemed like all the hot guys in bands ate out of their hands.  These girls fascinated and intimidated me all at the same time.

I really wanted one of these boys to love me.

So I went ahead and tried on a new persona.  I cut my hair pixie short and sampled a gamut of hair colors from BLEACHED blonde all the way to jet black, I wore faux eyelashes everyday (even in dance class.  WTF was I thinking?), I buckled my belt to the side on low-slung skinny jeans, I tried to self-gauge my ears (don't do this), and I even got my very own nape-of-the-neck tattoo.

Oh, hello!  I didn't see you there!  I was just hangin' in my room with a full face of makeup on at 11:00 pm.

I tried my damnedest to fit in with that crowd.
But it never worked.  I never got the attention I so badly wanted.  Or the hundreds of comments on my pictures on MySpace that the other girls had.  What was I doing wrong??   MAN was I annoyed... And more intimidated of these girls than ever.  If they could pull this off and I couldn't, that must mean they were better than me.  This "less-than" feeling I inflicted on myself transformed quickly into judgement.  I started looking at their pictures differently- making bitchy comments about them.  

"Why do you need to take so many pictures of yourself in the first place?  How VAIN are you??"

It took me a long time to realize that my venture into "the other side" wasn't as "green" as it looked from where I used to be.  With time, my hair went back to my natural dirty blonde, my Hot Topic jewelry was thrown away, the small amount of gauging in my ears closed up, and I stopped pretending I loved thrash-core metal so much.

Just in case you were ever wondering what my pores looked like in 2005.  Cause I know you were.

I still have the tattoo, though.  And I'm glad I do.  That tattoo is a reminder of the risk I took trying something new and scary.  That I made huge changes in my life to see if I'd like it better than what I had been comfortable with for years.  I'm so happy for those couple of years.  And I have a lot of amazing memories to look back on because of those changes!

I still stalk those rock star, bad ass girls on Instagram who are so damn good at taking gorgeous, tired-eyed, lips-open sexy photos of themselves.  However, I don't feel the jealousy or the judgment anymore, but more a strange level of respect for them... now knowing how TRULY DIFFICULT it is to succeed at taking those dang pictures and living that look.

And I still try!  I take pictures of myself every so often and post them to Instagram.  Let's be real here, it's fun and it gives you a little confidence boost with every *like* you receive.

But I know who I am now, and who I am is someone who will always be too shaky in the hands to wing out her eyeliner properly.  And someone who feels far more beautiful and confident wearing a Forever 21 sundress than a ripped up vintage sweatshirt.

Good for those girls.  They've honed a very fun skill.  And they're beautiful and creative.

I guess the point of all this is- if you really believe the grass is always greener on the other side, take a trip over there and see if you still feel the same way!  You'll still be welcome back onto your own grass if you change your mind.  It's a good thing to switch up your "given circumstances" and see where life leads you.  Maybe you'll make discoveries about yourself and other people that you wouldn't have made otherwise.  You'll see how the "other half" live.  You'll gain new perspective.  I highly recommend it.

Still, don't try to gauge your own ears.

@lindsaylieu

Me!

LEARN FROM ME,

Lindsay