Invisibility Encroaching
In my youth, like many young women, I wanted to be seen. My life was constant attention seeking. Even when I pretended I was not flirting or trying to pull focus to myself, I was. Women are constantly socialized that our value is in our beauty. And let’s be clear, this means youthful beauty. Even now, in 2021, as women are taught to love themselves and Me Too has demanded a voice and a place, there is still so much weight placed on our attractiveness. I recently had a doctor point out that there is a movement away for body-positivity, which was started by overweight black women to push back on social expectations, to a movement of body-neutrality because attractive, thin, white, young women had appropriated body-positivity for themselves.
"What I don’t like is how the people that t...