Post-it

I have this overwhelming urge to leave Post-it notes inside women’s magazines. Little notes of love, admiration and support.

‘’ You’re perfect as you are!’’

‘’Those lines means you lived loved and laughed!’’

‘’You don’t need to sleep with him to earn his love!’’

‘’Everyone but stick insects looks ridiculous in these!’’

‘’You could have spent this money on something more worthwhile, like wine!’’

These magazines have always represented all the reasons why women cannot be all that they can and deserve to be. If I donated my life, like noble people do, to one cause then abolishing women mags would be on top of my list. Does anyone else think it is a cruel and unusual punishment to actually pay for something that makes you feel worse?

I’ve spent my entire childhood shaped by a spiny tail multimedia source that told me everything I should be instead of anything I could actually be. This may seem surreal to some men but I know every woman of a certain age will be nodding their head at this statement. Yet here I stand as an intelligent, accomplished woman in my 30’s and instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what I am, I see lines, failure, ticking clocks and disposable attributes. Someone, something has programmed us to think and feel this way. When I was younger I used to believe that this social grooming was a way to stop women taking over the world as seriously we all know we can. It was a way of keeping us in cages, imprisoning us within our own insecurities. Now that I am wiser I realise that the reason is a hell of a lot more boring than that. Money, all this soul destroying ideology comes down to a couple of grubby notes. These magazines, these models, this beauty industry is not there to hold us back from world domination it is simply there to make billions of dollars by destroying everything worthwhile about being a woman. Part of me feels slight admiration for the advertising genius that destroyed an entire sex but the other part of me, the part that struggles with sexuality, social normality, and esteem, hates the fucking bastard.

Why don’t you just, like not read it, look at it, and listen to it?

Geez I don’t know as I don’t actually buy the stupid magazines, watched the degrading representations of women on TV and film, buy the so called miracle products that erase the personality of your face. I don’t wear pretty smelly stuff, revealing clothing, sexy anything and I don’t flirt, stick out my boobs, or pleasure men for acceptance but I know confused 12 year olds that do. I see women filled with goodness, overcome with the black murky clouds of insecurity, line up in newsagents to buy a glossy magazine to tell them why they will never be a woman.

A woman! Like it is a concept that has been copyrighted by beauty corporations, not an entire gender but a myth that has been concocted within an advertising boardroom by penises that want to leach them for every dollar they earn.

Feeling foolish? Degraded? Outraged? Don’t worry it will pass as soon as your anti-wrinkle cream runs out and you have to fork out $50 to replace it. I’m not sure who I am pissed off at more. The industry for destroying women or the women that allow it happen.

Either way on Friday the 14th October it is the “Blossom for one day” event where everyday people are asked to leave little notes around their city to spread goodwill, encouragement and a little splash of humanity. I think it is time that I left those little post-it notes of love within the pages of those glossy magazines.....