I don't understand why people feel they have the right to point out anything that they see as being wrong, unacceptable, different, or just not for them. Not everyone is blessed with the huge set of balls that I have nor are they lucky enough to have sarcasm as their best friend.
I've had some horrible things said to me over the course of my life but the things that bother me now are the comments made by judgemental assholes who view themselves as a few steps above everyone else.
Here's a fun fact (just in case you haven't seen me in a while or not at all) I like to do fun stuff with my hair. I can honestly say, while I've done a lot of things to make other people happy, my hair has always been about me. I finally found the haircut that I'm meant to have (for this moment anyway) so, in the last year, I've been playing with different colors. I've dyed it black, a million different shades of red, an unfortunate platinum blond, dark purple, and lavender. But the one color that I can honestly say that I feel suits me is blue. I'm not talking old lady white with a tinge of blue. I'm taking BLUE...
It started out as a few blue streaks mixed in to my blond highlights.
I absolutely loved it. I felt that it made my gray eyes shine, it made me happy, and, dare I say it, it made me feel pretty (or at least prettier cause I am totally cute).
A few months after that, I went back to Lesa, who is the woman who has done my hair for the last five years, and I told her that I liked the blue so much that I wanted more of it. So then this happened:
FYI: I have no idea why most of my selfies are taken while driving my car.
Then I saw a YouTube video of a girl with the underneath of her head shaved on one side and I decided that I wouldn't survive another minute if I didn't try it so I did that and I loved it.
Then I had the thought that if one side of my head shaved made me feel that good about myself, having it shaved all the way around would make me feel amazing.
So I did this:
I've had it cut/shaved like this for two days and had a new shade of blue added that I hadn't tried yet and I feel beautiful.
I have a point to all of the selfies, I promise.
Then today, while having lunch with my heterosexual life partner and the youngest spawn, two women walked by me and I heard one say to the other "obviously blue is her natural color". The other lady said "oh yes, blue is absolutely natural" then they both laughed.
I could have torn these women to shreads. I felt my inner Samuel L. Jackson fighting to surface to tear them apart.
Instead, I said nothing and just smiled to myself because, in my experience, it's the women who are uncomfortable in their own skin and are so busy trying to hide their flaws and shortcomings by making a comment about someone else who are the most unhappy.
I didn't dye my hair blue in the hopes that people would think it was my natural color (duh). I dyed it blue because I fucking love it blue. And I can tell you, I've had more compliments from complete strangers about my hair than I have had snarky comments made about it by uptight, snarky bitches so I'm good.
The Point:
The point is, we are all individuals and, as such, we all have the right to make choices for our own lives that make us happy, feel better about ourselves, helps us hold our heads up even when our lives are absolute shit. Those choices could consist of how we dress, what kind of music we listen to, whether or not we exercise, choosing to marry your first cousin because you know he comes from a good family, whatever. Those choices are our own. I feel that as long as I'm not walking around shanking strangers and punching babies, the choices I make aren't any of your business.
Did I make a rude comment about the one rude lady's neon purple fanny pack? No because that was her choice and maybe she knows some secret about fanny packs that make them amazing. I wouldn't know because I made the choice to never own one. Wearing the fanny pack was a choice she made for herself. Never owning one was a choice I made for myself because I feel that my fanny is perfect without the pack. I didn't stand up and rip her a new one because I didn't know her life story and that gave me no right to knock her off of her natural hair color, purple fanny pack wearing pedestal.
And the honest truth is, I didn't give a shit what she thought about my hair color (obviously she didn't think it was my natural color) because it's my hair. I love it and I feel better about myself than I have in years because I'm being who I want to be for the first time in my adult life.
My kids are happy, beautiful, healthy, and well taken care of. While my job will never make me a rich woman, my bills are paid. And I haven't stabbed anyone with a fork so far today. I didn't make unnecessary rude comments about a complete stranger who was within hearing distance. I call that being a decent human being.
In hindsight, if I could go back and say one thing to her it would be "while it may not be my natural color, it made you look didn't it?"
In the world we live in today where there is a higher percentage of our population on anti-depressants, where people are making horrible decisions that hurt the people closest to them or complete strangers, where people are fighting for their right to marry the person they love who just happens to be the same gender as they are, and most people are living the lives society tells them they should be living instead of living the life they want (possibly with the hair color they want), is it really necessary to make comments about someone's appearance even if the comments are hateful? Has the human race evolved and adapted to change so little that we still have to make hateful comments about a complete stranger without knowing what they've been through just because said complete stranger had the misfortune of falling in your path that day with a hair color you wouldn't choose for yourself? Have we honestly found nothing better to do with our time on this earth?
Lucky for me, I have broad shoulders and a backbone that has taken on more than one woman's comments and I'm thankful that it was me she chose to make fun of.
I know that there are people out there who are going through things that a lesser person wouldn't survive. They don't need comments made about their choices in appearance to make them feel worse. And I'm going to keep living my life and making the choices that are going to make that life better for myself and my spawn.
And, right now, after all of the life experiences I have accrued from a shitty marriage, I choose to make myself happy by getting out of bed in the morning and looking in the mirror and seeing my magnificent blue hair that is mine, and only mine, and saying "ok you... You woke up and accomplished being the sexy vixen that you are, now we're going to go out in the world and search for the next thing that's going to better our life. Oh and let's have another successful day of not punching someone in the forehead, no matter how badly you covet that neon purple fanny pack that can be seen from space. If it's meant to be, one day you'll have your own fanny pack and it will be glorious and it will have a million dividers for all of the essential items that are so important that one needs to own a fanny pack just to carry them around."
(Yes, I can be awful chatty with myself).
In closing, I'm throwing it way back to an old saying that I have heard a million times:
If you can't go out into the world everyday and find something nice to say, shut your whore mouth....
(That quote may not be word for word)
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