Daily Prompt | Smoke

“Do you currently drink or smoke?”
“No.”
“Have you ever smoked cigarettes?”
“No.”

Daily Prompt 6/18/2016 | Perfection

[In response to The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt 6/18/2016 | Perfection]

No one is perfect. No one. Of course, no matter how often we tell ourselves this, it can be difficult to convince our brains that it is true when we pass by magazines in the stores and see women with flawless skin, shiny hair, zero cellulite, tight stomachs, perky butts… you get the idea. I’m guilty of tearing myself down every time I go out in public, and see pictures and videos of these perfect, beautiful women, that I could never look like. Well, the truth is, no one can look like them, not even themselves.

Photoshop, endless filter options, and apps like Facetune make it all too easy to alter pictures, whether you are just trying to erase a few pimples, or giving yourself thousands of dollars worth of digital plastic surgery, and it is just not fair. It is not fair to the men and women whose appearances have to be altered so much, just to be considered beautiful, and worthy of publication, when they were already beautiful. It is also not fair to the men and women who see these ads, and get tricked into thinking that that type of beauty is attainable, and that they need to spend their money to try and reach it.

You don’t believe me? Here are just a few examples:

Katy Perry.

It is all a lie. Models, singers, actors and actresses, reality TV stars… no one is ever thin enough, but if you are thin, you’re not curvy enough. Your skin is never clear enough. Your hair is never blonde enough. Your eyes are not blue enough. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t right. Men and women, young and old, are being told that nothing about themselves is good enough, and that they need to buy all of this STUFF to look good, but it is an impossible feat. Even these people, who were deemed worthy enough to grace the covers of magazines, and star in commercials, were not perfect enough. No one is perfect enough. No one.

I know I might be beating a dead horse here, and being a total hypocrite, but really, we need to stop focusing so much on how we look. Your eyebrows do not need to be on fleek, your winged liner does not need to survive a nuclear holocaust, and if you don’t have a thigh gap, then embrace your glorious thighs. If you’re 14, you’re told that you need to look 21, and if you’re 30, you’re told you need to look 22. It isn’t fair, and it just isn’t possible. You don’t need big boobs, you don’t need a huge ass, and you don’t need washboard abs. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with wanting to better yourself, or lift your self-esteem a bit, but do it for you, and not because you think it is how others want you too look. You are worth more than that. Love who you are, and others will love you as well.

Remember, perfection isn’t perfect, it is fake.

Thanks for reading, friends.

Jan

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Dream Journal 6/9/16 | Hashtag

I was sitting at my desk, scrolling through Twitter, when I saw the trending hashtag: #Get********to50k. I censored the name, because it is a real person on Twitter, who I have had very public issues with in the past. I thought it was strange, and clicked on the hashtag to see what it was all about. There were thousands and thousands of tweets showing support of something, but it wasn’t clear what their cause was. One tweet read something like: “#Get********to50k because we’re tired of not being listened to.” A couple of the other tweets made it seem like it had something to do with the Warcraft community, but they were all vague enough to give no real answers as to what the hashtag was about.

I went to this person’s Twitter profile, who actually has me blocked in real life, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, until I noticed that their follower count was just over 49,000 people. Their tweets were all about equality and justice, but once again, still very vague as to what the cause was. I got upset about it for some reason, and left my computer.

I called Kyle while he was at work, and told him that there was a bad storm happening outside, even though I could clearly see that there wasn’t, and he was confused, and hung up the phone because I wasn’t making any sense, and he knew I was lying.

The last thing I remember was making two salads for Liam and I, and working really hard on them, and he kept throwing all the vegetables on the floor, and it made me start crying.

Then I woke up.

Random Prompt | The Dumbest Lie I’ve Ever Told

“What is the dumbest lie that you have ever told? Why did you feel the need to lie?”

When I was in the 5th grade, I developed a crush on a guy in my class named John. John and his younger brother, Brian, were both popular, good looking guys, but weren’t all that nice, and didn’t really like me at all. In the 6th grade, I learned that John and his brother both played hockey, and had been playing since they were little. In an attempt to impress him, and get him to like me, I told all my friends to start spreading around a rumor that I played on a street hockey team. They agreed, and started casually slipping it into conversations.

The problem? We hadn’t agreed on any of the details. At all. Someone said I was a goalie, someone else said I was a cheerleader for a street hockey team, someone else said I played professionally… it was a complete mess. Word eventually got to John and his friends, who immediately knew it was complete crap. He didn’t find my desperation cute, or funny, and proceeded to tease and humiliate me, asking me hockey-related questions while we were in the cafeteria, or out at recess, that he knew I would never know. It was awful.

Despite the humiliation, in the coming weeks, for some idiotic reason, I kept going with the lie, making up excuse after excuse for my lack of knowledge. I even blew off a school dance and told people I had a big street hockey championship game. Eventually, I gave up. No one was impressed by my stories, or even believing a single word I said. To save face, I told everyone that I had actually quit the team, but maintained that it had been real the whole time. I later joined the field hockey team, and ended up being a freaking rock star on the field, but it didn’t make up for my ridiculous lie.

So what’s the moral of the story? Never make something up to try and impress, or get attention, from people. If people don’t like you for who you are, and how you live your life, then they aren’t worth your time and energy. Be who you are, not who you think other people want you to be. Lies always come back to bite you in the ass.

Always.

Thanks for reading, friends.

Jan