ugly women – just moving along like everyone else

oldcoyote:

there’s something magical about ugly women. women who broke the ruleset constantly imposed on us all, and instead of apologising for it, cracked a smile and carried on and blew people away anyway. women who looked in the mirror and saw something less than what the world told them to be, and did what they fucking well wanted to anyway

Cleopatra wasn’t beautiful. from what i gather, stories about her beauty were made up mostly to discredit her, but all evidence points to her being plain as day, but with the brains and the sheer unbridled force of an epic personality to pull of what she did, to be remembered like she is

Janis Joplin and Nina Simone and a dozen other female singers are still constantly mocked, even in their hallowed place in the halls of music history, for being ‘ugly’. do you think they gave a shit? it doesn’t mean your soul feels any less alive when you hear their music, when their voices hit your ears and the sound gets in your blood and makes you feel like you’re on fire

Carrie Fisher hated the way she looked. she loathed her lack of ‘classic’ beauty, picked herself apart constantly. she hated that she aged, she hated that she gained weight, but she decided in the end she didn’t care. and she was one of the most brilliant, hilarious, charming, and beloved women in recent history because the person she was underneath all the other incarnations of her stood larger than life

there’s a million other incredible women – scientists, activists, artists, poets, etc and on who completely blew apart the expectations of what women are supposed to be and do and want, in just about every era of our history. do you think more than a handful of them were truly beautiful in the way the world today quantifies it?

ugly used to make me feel angry and alone, and then i started listing names. now it makes me feel powerful.

and yet, “everybody’s beautiful” is what i see stamped everywhere right now. maybe, if you so badly need them to be. but if you do maybe that’s something you have to think about a bit more. how about “nobody has to be beautiful”

or even better, fuck beautiful. be amazing.