I can’t decide if my advancing years are making me more conservative, or they’re just bringing out my feminist side. Maybe, it’s neither – and it’s simply a measure of my strengthening character that allows me to recognize stupidities and address them.

See, I’m a big fan of fark.com. I think the site is a great deal of fun, the stories are often quite interesting, and it’s great to see other people recognize the same absurdities or stupidities in the news or stories that I sometimes see (the DB gets annoyed with me when I’m in one of those particular moods, and wind up telling off all of the commercials).

I’m also a member of totalfark, which is the paid membership area that allows you access to all kinds of ridiculous conversational threads, and some genuinely helpful advice. I’ve gone for computer solutions on a few occasions, and the other members are a great resource, if you can take the snark in stride (sometimes more, sometimes less).

But, like any internet community, there can be a real downside. And of course, I recognize that some people create persona for themselves online, and they get to pretty much role play a character that isn’t their own, and I can respect that. The problem, however, arises when the misogyny gets so thick you can choke on it – and that seems to happen regularly, even in threads that start out having nothing to do with gender relations.

As one example, there was a news-masquerading-as-an-ad article recently (yeah, I read Drew Curtis’ book, and this article personifies said category), wherein a young girl was being promoted as the next J.K. Rowling, based on nothing but her publicists’ hype – the book hadn’t even had a release or anything else, it was all hyperbole to try to drum up advance excitement about the book and get people out to buy it. However, aside from a few commenters focusing on the article’s stupidity, most of the posters were all about whether or not they’d hit the girl – sleep with, that is. The thread degenerated (if I may say so) into a discussion of the girl’s looks, and nothing more.

Now sure, I’m petty enough that I can enjoy this when they’re doing it to celebrities I dislike, but at the same time, I recognize that it’s just kinda sick. Normally I ignore it, or I stop reading the thread, but that day, it just really started to depress me.

I recognize that human beings judge one another based on looks pretty much 100% of the time. I did it when I started my new job – saw all of the attractive people here, all the girls/women who weigh next to nothing, and felt a little envious. I like to think that I don’t treat someone differently if they don’t fit my personal notion of what constitutes attractive, but speaking realistically, I’m sure on some level I do. I’m sure I get treated differently for the same reasons, and that’s just human nature.

But… to be solely reduced to whether or not I’m fuckable is just depressing. Yet I was on many dating sites for a long time, and I’m sure that was the main basis for whether many of the guys contacted me – would they fuck me. Sure, I chose whether or not I would respond to the guys based on whether or not I found them attractive, but interesting ranked up there just as highly. If I couldn’t have a conversation with them, I couldn’t be arsed to continue talking to them.

But I’m drifting. I was not a particularly attractive child. I was fairly shy (shut up, I still very much can be), I was smart, I was insecure, my best friend became one of the pretty, popular ones, and I got picked on – which totally helped the insecurity, I tell you. I wasn’t into sports, and I was always a bit bigger than many of my friends – or maybe I weighed the same as them, but because I was short, it was more noticeable.

Whatever, that was then, right? Now, I’m older, I’m smarter, I’m usually less shy, I’m fairly attractive though definitely not by society’s standards, I’m insecure, I’m not that into sports, and I’m still not in shape – in fact, I can definitely stand to lose weight now. I’ve had people comment that they’re impressed by my self-confidence, but so much of it is put on that I don’t always know where I end and the fake begins.

But it seems to work. In some situations, like job interviews, I have lots of confidence. At work? Well, I have a lot more now that I’m out from under my last boss’ thumb. In my personal life, I’ve been with a great guy for over a year, and it looks like it’s going to carry on being just as strong a relationship as it has been, and that’s great.

And yet… some of my biggest insecurities have come out while we’ve been together. It seems as though the more I like someone, the more insecure I get when I’m with them. How does that make sense? I guess it’s a byproduct of caring – if I care about losing them or whatever, then I’m more paranoid about things.

That said, I do trust the DB, and ultimately, I’m not concerned that he’s going to leave me or cheat on me or any of those things. I’m just apparently rather analytical, and I know I overthink things, and that gets me to where I am now.

I wasn’t a pretty popular girl in elementary school or high school. I have never been overly concerned about fashion, and I definitely don’t have the ‘ideal’ body – too much stomach, hips and thighs. I’ve been told by one ex- that a great deal of my attractiveness stems from my personality – I’m reasonably certain he meant it as a compliment. For the most part, I like my personality and I like who I am.

But sometimes, when I’m surrounded by skinny people, or attractive people, or bombarded with things like that fark thread, I get depressed, and I get frustrated, and the self-doubts and the insecurities come out. I know it’s unrealistic, but sometimes I want that romantic ideal I’ve read so much about, where I am someone’s everything, and they are my everything.

And sometimes I have to back up and short of shake out my brain. Why? Because while I can find someone else attractive or interesting or smart or funny or whatever, I still want to come home to the DB. Why should I assume he feels differently? Perhaps because in my past I dated guys for whom I was a convenience instead of a desired partner. Of course, throw in the strip club lapdance debate and my insecurity level rises exponentially, but…

I don’t know. I know I have unrealistic desires, but that’s the joy of being rational and emotional – my emotions want one thing, and my brain keeps telling them they’re being ridiculous. Like, I’d love it if I could be somewhere where women – or people in general – didn’t have their hittability factor as paramount.

*sigh* I don’t know where I’m going with all of this. At this point, I think I’m just rambling incoherently.

Anyhow, life is still good-ish. Some stress about school, some waiting on job news… otherwise, it carries on. Though I think I finally got my phone working fully, so that’s nice.