Mom Raised me to Love Myself, Good One Mom!

Guys, I just have a lot of things to say today. But the most important thing I have to say is thank you Mom, for raising me to love myself.

I know I had a different blog post planned out for today but I have a lot of things to say about this letter I've been reading for weeks and I just can't keep it contained any longer. For weeks I've been reading this blog post written by blogger Brett Shoemaker called "To My Future Wife". I've read 20+ of my friends (males and females) praising this post as an example of romance, love, and being a "real man," whatever that's supposed to be. I'm not here to point fingers or shame anyone for their beliefs, but in all those posts by friends I never saw one that made an effort to question what this guy was really saying and how he was choosing to say it. I know some people will read his letter feeling uplifted and hopeful, and I'm not saying those people are wrong for feeling that way. I just know that I left read the letter he wrote to his "future wife" feeling patronized. I didn't see singing birds flying around my dorm room as I clasped both hands thinking Someday my prince will come with glimmer in my eyes and hope in my heart. I saw an archaic and (in my opinion) naive sense of reality and relationships and a blogger holding a list of cliches about what women want to hear and how women feel.

Now maybe this guys future wife will fit the strangely specific mold of a woman who meets all the gender box norms. Maybe this letter will be relevant to her and who she is as a person. And I know this letter is exceptionally relevant and moving to some people. But for me, and for many women like me, this letter didn't hold the weight it was intended to hold. It produced the opposite reaction it was meant to produce. It produced frustration. It produced frustration because my mother raised me to love myself, have high self esteem, and to NOT wait for some Knight in shining armor to come rescue me from a tower. While some mothers were socializing their children into gender norms, my mother was raising me to question why those norms exist and to recognize that those norms don't bind me. She was raising me a feminist, and I will eternally be grateful for that. But more importantly, she raised me to love myself and have impeccable self esteem. THAT is something I will spend the rest of my life trying to do for others. It is something I'm so thankful my mother did for me.

This letter was a veiled attempt at expressing his views on who women are. I don't claim that he did this entirely aware, but his message of loving yourself and seeing yourself as beautiful wasn't his main point. He spent more time stereotyping women than actually addressing who women are. His "future wife" was a very specific type of woman, yet it seemed as if the post was meant to encourage women as whole. That's how it's being pushed around online anyway. And he spoke to many of the stereotypes of what a woman is. There are so many types of women and so many perspectives, its a shame to try and explain women in one way. And to address women as if they meet that specific mold is nonsensical. 

First he congratulated his future wife on already being beautiful. He made some nice points about beauty not being about what you put on in the morning. This alluded to inner beauty, beauty in the person you are as a whole. This is so excruciatingly important, and I'm happy he mentioned it.I just appreciated the fact that he mentioned the idea of beauty from the inside. I think men as well as women tend to forget that this exists occasionally. 

I believe that there are many types of beauty. Now before you start messaging me about how you totally agree and that beauty isn't external, read this next part. I acknowledge that physical beauty and attraction does have its importance in my life. I believe in external beauty, and I think it's hard for us some people admit that physical attraction is important because the expressor of this opinion is often labeled superficial. This is a lie, and I don't buy into it. Physical attraction is a part of nature. Animals have it, and so do we. Now what attracts me is probably different from what attracts other people, but it's real and its a part of me. I value that. You can value physical attraction while also valuing inner attraction as well. I have a strong value of both, but because inner beauty tends to get a little less air time it was nice to see he mentioned it in his post.

He cited the societal pressure and message of not being good enough, and tells his wife that she's beautiful and to not believe society. That's a sweet gesture. But did he consider that a lot of women have incredibly high self esteem?  Did he consider that his future wife might not need to rely on his reassurances that she is beautiful, because her self esteem is tied to herself and not on the validation of others? If you (like me) read the letter from a perspective of high self esteem and self worth you might have read it feeling patronized and talked down to. Yeah kid, I already know I'm beautiful. You don't gotta tell me. But thanks I guess. 

He also made a good point encouraging his future wife to feel free to grow to be a better, healthier and more confident person. I think its important that our loved ones encourage this and support this, but again I'm left feeling patronized. Oh thanks honey for giving me permission to better myself and grow more confident. I've just been twiddling my thumbs waiting for you to say it was okay. If you could see me, I'm rolling my eyes now. I feel like he meant well, but this just doesn't sit well with me. There are better ways to express this kind of sentiment. I doubt he meant it literally, but it's not like we hang out on Fridays or anything.

Now, where he really gets me is where he tells his future wife to keep her goodies in her basket. I mean REALLY could you be more patronizing? The sentence alone, "Babe, keep your goodies in your basket." makes me want to vomit. How disgusting. 

1) Don't call any part of a woman her "goodies" or "basket" 
2) DON'T tell women what to do with themselves or their bodies. 

But the paragraph gets worse. He then proceeds to compare women to cars, proclaiming that women who show their bodies off are like Honda Civics while women who grow up wearing a religious habit and never exchange them for some shorts and a tank top are like Lamborghini's. Guess I'm a Civic, which I guess equates me to big ol' whore. Ah damn! And I tried so hard! He said everywhere he goes he sees Honda Civics, but he can count all the Lamborghini's he's ever seen on one hand. 

3) Women are NOT cars.
4) If a woman chooses to show a little skin that doesn't make her less unique, exciting, or valuable.

I mean I love R. Kelly's "Ignition Remix" but if you call my vagina an ignition I will personally see to it that your "key" wont work. And I'm sorry, but this guy obviously doesn't understand cars either, Lamborghini's are way more sexualized than civics. 

To put the patronizing icing on the towering cake of misogyny, he finishes off the paragraph with baby talk and asking for a favor, "But, if everyone and my mom has a look at everything you're showing off, I'm not feeling like as much of a lucky ducky. So please, for me, keep your goodies packaged away."

He moves on to tell his future wife that she is a princess worth fighting for. "You know, the princess you always wanted to be as a little girl?" he continues. Oh please! It's like this kid has been calling that totally real Gender Box Anonymous hotline Room mate C is so hooked on. Where did he learn about women? It seems like his perspective is so limited and specific to the inaccurate portrayals of women on "family friendly" networks like ABC family and its original movies and TV shows. Here's my beef, we don't all want to be princesses. We didn't all grow up wearing pink and fantasizing about Prince Eric. Some of us wore bandannas and overalls and pushed our 4th grade boyfriends over for suggesting we wear more feminine attire (that was me folks, and if Cory McKenzie ever reads this, no hard feelings). 

At this point in the letter he makes a "deal" with her saying that if she is a princess she has to act like a princess. He says that she needs to make him work for it, because princes have to rescue the princesses by crossing treacherous lands and fighting in battles and slaying the dragons. He says "Your prince charming isn't going to fight to take your purity, he is going to fight to protect it." 

At this point I vomited in my mouth a little. Honey, I don't need you to protect my purity. I'm the dragon you're going to fail to slay before you piss your armor and run away. And I'm not looking for some silly prince or knight. I'm looking for an equally impressive and bad ass dragon to fly around with who can handle this heat. 

5) A lot of women don't need you to protect their purity. They got it covered. 
6) Assuming makes and ass out of you, NOT me.

In my opinion, relationships should be equal. Both people should both be working towards each other and a healthy happy relationship with one another. I don't want some guy who wants to put all the effort in while I wait for it to work out. I know I'm worthy of the effort, I don't need to be told how worthy I am. But I want the person I'm with to know they're worthy of the effort as well. And trust me, my future husband will be worthy of the effort because my standards are where they should be. 

He then calls his relationship with his future wife a fairy tale. Yawn, gag, I'm over it. but he makes some good points. He says that sometimes he will make mistakes and sometimes she will make mistakes. He references the realities of the relationship for what I perceive as the only time in the whole letter. He takes his focus off of gender stereotyping and puts it on how they operate as a dyad. Unfortunately it doesn't happen until the end of the letter, but hey it's something. Then he signs it Prince Charming.

Once he finished the letter he showed a lot of grace and humility by adding a little bit at the end. "Also, I am thankful for some of the critique I have received from both men and women around the world. It is always a blessing to hear another's perspective and I am thankful people felt the freedom to stand up and call me out on some of my beliefs. You guys are awesome, thank you so much!" That in itself is pretty admirable. It can be hard to take critique from others, especially over the internet, and especially when it comes to personal beliefs and view points. So good on him.

But it's this kind of conversation and topic that makes me worry for my future daughter or son. I just hope I have the skill my mother had while raising me so that I can instill in my future children a sense of self love and high self esteem. I just hope I can teach my daughter to be wary of letters like this, and my son NOT to write letters like this.