the cat strikes

Since Snow White has been renewed TWICE this year by Hollywood, the topic of Beauty must be kinda big on the blogsphere. Scratch that, the topic of beauty has always been big. You see make up tutorials loitering around in youtube, some are good, some will make you look like a clown gone mad. Even at blogs, the girls (assuming that we’re talking about people blogs, not geeky blogs that talk nothing but Apple  and/or Androids) are also talking about beauty, how do they buy stuff, reviews of beauty products.

It’s like us women are so obsessed with being beautiful, or even the idea of being someone beautiful, that we’ve all gone cuckoo.

Just like the ravenous Queen slash stepmother, a lot of women envy the others for being prettier, more attractive, or maybe just because they own better bags. It’s ridiculous, it’s sad even, to see how much we’ve degraded ourselves to just merely beautiful objects.

I’m no preacher, and as a girl, I think it’s normal if I’ve fallen victim for this kind of disease. I’ll call this the Queenie disease, because it sounds cool and bitchy in the same time, which is exactly the true nature of the evil stepmother. Heck, I think every girl at some point will suffer with this disease to some extent, no exception. It’s just how our minds are wired to be: we’re exposed to those of our kind, but with more superior body and more lustrous hair and smoother skin. The media have specifically chose the superior being of our kind to be exploited and this gives us the idea that women should look like that in order to stand out.

Now, let’s take a look of these examples:

exhibit A: A cool action movie starring a nerdy but kinda cute boy. The boy will start off kinda geeky and not very hot, but he’s got a HUGE crush to this pretty girl next door/ his ultra popular classmate with plump kissable lips/ the girl he just met that have this heart-stopping curves. Somehow the boy will get entangled with cool stuff that involves equally cool gadgets and become a hero. Somehow the pretty girl will tag along, and of course, when the guy becomes the hero, the girl drops her pants and let him bang her.


conclusion: the hero gets the girl.
guilty: nearly all superhero movies, or action movies that don’t star Jason Statham


exhibit B: A seemingly innocent movie for girl. So there’s this geeky girl with glasses and ordinary clothes that’s got a HUGE crush to this popular quarterback/ most popular guy at school/ the most exciting guy at college/ basically the guy is popular and awesome and scarily athletic. The guy didn’t notice her and instead went out with this bitchy blonde with boobs bigger than her brains (the tv made it look like that, not me). The geeky girl’s determined to change, and once she drops her glasses and got a few trips to the salon, voila, here comes ultra gorgeous bombshell that makes this guy forgets about his bitchy blonde girlfriend and realizes how BEAUTIFUL the former-geeky girl really is.

conclusion: the pretty girl gets the hero
guilty: old teenage movies. Fortunately, today’s teen flicks don’t follow the same formula anymore, but basically everything’s the same. The higher you are in the social hierarchy somehow go side by side at how hot you are.

exhibit C: basically every other movies that’s got a girl and a guy. The guy could be bald, or short, or kinda fat. But the girl will almost always 1. Slim. 2. Have flawless skin that will make it slippery for mosquitos. 3. Got great, bouncy hair. Never in my life have I ever seen a show in which the girl is not any of those three. It’s okay for guys to have scars or to have a slight potbelly, but not the same for girls.

conclusion: Ugly guys can get pretty girls. Didn’t work both ways.
guilty: are you seriously kidding me?

Anyway, my point is: it’s no secret that the world is obsessed with beauty. Men find challenge into conquering beautiful conquest. Girls find challenge into becoming these beautiful conquest. I weep for the inexistence of good men who don’t feel the need to beautify themshelves to be handsome conquest for girls.

But you know what’s the scary part about this? It’s becoming normal to be wanting to be PERFECT in outer appearance. It’s expected even. If there’s a group of girls eating out and one girl refuse to eat a lot, others will assume that she’s on a diet and will (subconsciously) get pissed, because that girl on the diet will get prettier than her and bla bla blabla.

Thus why catfights happens almost as often as catfights (I’m talking about literal catfights) happen.

Competitions have been hard for girls, especially our age. There are so many girls who have been obsessed with their outer appearance that they never have the time to find out what’s happening within them: what’s their dreams, their vision, their strengths and weaknesses. When you don’t get in touch with yourself, you’ll be constantly insecure. You’ll be wanting approval, just to be told that you’re good at something (and in this case, at least being told that you’re good at being beautiful), when in fact, you really don’t need approval of being pretty if you’re pretty damn sure yourself that you are in fact,EXTREMELY OHMAIGOD SO BLINDINGLY PRETTY!!

Now, I’m not saying that wanting approval for looks is wrong, as long as it’s taken in moderation. Just ask yourself, question your own principles: Do you want to be known as ‘Siti, the pretty girl’, or ‘Siti, the girl who did this and that and this and that, wtf she inspired me!’ ?

Women have been put as the weaker sex for such a long time, and this is the root of the problem: because a lot of women don’t bother to make a change in the world, they’re just too preoccupied making changes in their own bodies.

And how long do these changes can last?

Probably till you’re 40. Or probably till you’re pregnant.

What’s even more saddening is how a girl’s beauty is standarized. If you’ve got big eyes and straight small nose paired with plump lips, then you’ll be beautiful. If you’re fair, you’ll be a hit on. If you’re tanned, then screw you, I’m not even going to look at you. If you’re this and that and this and that.

See the Koreans? See how you can’t almost identify them? See how they look like a mass globe of face with no particular face that can stand out when viewed from far away? That’s the effect of standardized beauty. You lose your uniqueness, you lose your essence.

I personally think everyone got the potential to be beautiful, just work with whatever you have. If you’ve got wavy hair, you don’t need to straighten it to become pretty. Well, sure, you’ll be instantly pretty if you’ve got straight hair, but you know, since you’re born with wavy hair, I’m pretty damn sure you’ll be even prettier if you’ve got a healthy, well-trimmed, wavy hair around your face. You’ve got small eyes, hell, you don’t need to cut it to make it bigger, just work with it, to create your own beauty. To create the kind of beauty that NO ONE will be able to pull off EXCEPT YOURSELF.

Combine that amazing outer appearance with equally massive skills and a great personality, that’d be an even more amazing kind of beauty, no? And it’ll last quite a long time, too.

When you can reach that part, you won’t feel the need to hunt down every other girl that’s more beautiful than you (when it comes to generalized beauty) and eat her heart.

Before, when people say that they’re starting a new leaf, I was the kind of person who’d usually smirk and laugh inside. ‘People don’t change’, I had thought, ‘People will never change. They’re either born bad or born good.’

I’m not a nice person, I never thought I was. My mind was a pitch black, my mind was filled with negativities, my mind schemed and devised endless plots. But never have I hit bottom low, never have I been tested so bad I just wanted to die. I always prided myself to be a strong person, an ambitious person, a person who will not back down at any threat. But then things changed, and when I thought that everything was over, I was given a second chance.

A second chance in everything: in how I evaluate my life, in how I will lead this amazing gift from God called life, in how I want to be remembered past my golden days.

And I had been wrong. Horribly wrong.

Now, when I wake up, I thank every moment that I have. I thank for the possibilities of a better life, of chances that were missed but still attainable. I thank for everything that was still within my grasp, even though I knew I didn’t deserve it. 

God is good, God is forgiving, and God will always lead you to be the best version of you. And maybe it doesn’t look ‘cool enough’ or ‘open-minded enough’ or even ‘interesting enough’ to show everyone that you’re a child of God (and people WILL judge the moment you say so), but hey, how else are you going to reach enlightenment?

Take a moment, just a moment, to let hear His voice, and you’ll be brought to a new level of life. 

The foolish angel and the selfish human.

We’re family. We’re always together