In the last year my self-image suffered a breach of contract with the mirror, which had never happened before, and with it my emotional state was quite shaken. Or would it have been the other way around?
In one of the most important and happiest moments of my life, in which I was returning to an old dream, I was filled with words of admiration and at the same time with judgmental eyes. It felt as if with every compliment, like you have so much energy, there was a criticism in the opposite sense like wow, isnt it time to calm down?
I entered a terrible crisis, in which other cruel sentences regarding my way of being and facing life coming from people close to me joined these not-so-new eyes of standardization and attempts to diminish women, which occur throughout our lives.
We know that patriarchy objectifies women and, as we get older, the criticism becomes more pronounced, we are pushed aside, excluded, as if our bodies and faces represented our only value and now no longer serve this system.
Our sexuality is questioned as if our desires were also determined by our physical aspects. The standard of patriarchal culture directly and proportionally relates beauty to youth, so we cannot be attractive as older women, just as we should not express our interest in sex.
If I talk a lot about sex it\’s because I need a cock or I\’m a pervert. If I talk a little, it\’s because my sexual desire has already decreased due to age. If I dream, have ambitions, and risk traditional stability to pursue a life that is meaningful to me, it is because I am suffering from late youth, I am irresponsible or crazy. Let\’s face it, it takes very little or no audacity from women at all for a man to stand up and call us crazy.
Some of the fallacies of this system intend to stop women from knowing that the older we are, the more knowledgeable and aware of our capabilities and wants we become. Our sexual desires and our lives can be much better than before. We know more clearly what we like and accept and what we no longer accept. We cum for ourselves and not to please someone else! We tell them what we want in bed and not otherwise. We are more selective about who we want to be with and when. We cannot be shaped, bent, or diminished like we were when we were younger, at least not for long.
They try to diminish the value of an independent woman. They impose a life project on women by stipulating their roles, under the false promise that these will give them some value. If she refuses it, she is socially disowned. I had the house once, the husband and the stable life that patriarchy teaches as the life goal that every woman should have and I wasn\’t happy. Who is truly happy under so much oppression? Who feels valued having to behave within a standard that punishes every desire to live, to create, to be free? I missed a partner who sincerely wanted me happy. I missed being able to dream. I missed sex with admiration and lust. All of that just showed me that I missed myself.
No, the problem was never the mirror. My self-confidence and self-love became stronger and more genuine in my thirties than they ever were in my twenties. I started to be happier and feel truly beautiful when I started acting in accordance with who I was, with what I really wanted for myself. There is nothing more powerful than a woman who knows she can and should make her own choices.
The real problem is the need for this oppressive society to classify people and place them in boxes, according to their convenient standards and concepts of usefulness and value. Well, guess what: I don\’t need a mirror, I don\’t fit into any box, my appearance doesn\’t determine who I am and where I can go. I am unlimited and priceless!