Everyday it feels like I'm fighting an unseen battle with a world that keeps trying to tell me, "You're not enough." Between E! trying to convince me I need Kim Kardashian's curves, the Real Housewives propagandizing plastic, and scripted reality shows attempting to sell me real... the media makes it oh-so easy to tune out of yourself and into somebody else.
Somebody else. I'm an American woman and am lucky enough to live in a country where my voice can be my own, and all I hear is be somebody else? No. That can't be right. The signals must have gotten mixed up somewhere. What I'm really hearing is "look like somebody else." Paper bag your personality, it's your face that counts, and don't forget the size of your bra too, duh.
I was raised with the traditional American belief that if you work hard, you can get what you want. Now, I'm subliminally being told that if you don't look a certain way, if you don't allude a certain way, you just won't get what you want. Hike up your skirt, let your eyelashes flirt, and make sure your Facebook default photo screams "SEX!" -- that's how you get what you want.
So, how does that saying go again? If you can't beat them, join 'em?
Hmm. No, thank you. What about, "If you can't beat them, change the game?"
I'm a singer/songwriter in an industry where the presentation of your person matters more than the message of your music, so let's be real here, sex sells will probably never go out of style. They say times have changed, but it's still the same, and I am fully aware that sex sells is not going anywhere.
But what happens when you use sex appeal for your advantage? Projecting sex appeal as strength, rather than just drawing attention for attention's sake, is the ultimate game-changer. A woman's body should never be used to sit and look pretty, but to stand tall and stand up for herself. A seductive allure with a strong voice behind it, forces sex sells to graduate from object, to subject.
I'm not saying we should do a cultural flip-flop and think less tramp, more geek. Instead, I'm thinking chic, women clothed in both strength and dignity. Iconic females like Adele, Beyonce, and Gwen Stefani, all know that junk in the trunk and brains can go a lot further than junk in the trunk and humps alone. Beauty can be in the mirror and the mind, at the same time. What makes a respectable modern day woman, is a female who doesn't have to trade in her sex appeal to be considered strong, and doesn't have to trade in her brains to be sexy. We are now both.
Being that I am so passionate about this subject, I ended up writing a song about the emotional struggle I've been through in today's ever-changing music industry. How cliché of me. It mirrors the constant battle that females are faced with between having the ability and talent to succeed in your dreams, versus what the world says you should be in order to see those dreams realized. In many cases, I feel this struggle is felt by many different kinds of people across the board, across the world. I write my music from an honest heart and with a voice that speaks, so I hope you enjoy my song, "Notice Me."
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It's an ideal aspiration, but I'm not sure I'd agree we really are "now both." Though educated fashionistas like Natalie Portman and Emma Watson show us beauty is today allowed to come with brains, female sex appeal in western culture is still perceived as invitation for scrutiny, judgement and objectification; one doesn't need to look far beyond the Style section of this website for ample evidence of nit-picky criticism of the women who've exercised their right to show off their erotic capital. It's this scrutiny and objectification that still hampers a woman's potential to be "considered strong." Until female sex appeal is thing of plain old human attraction - rather than invitation to reduce her to individual body parts - it inevitably limits the stature and perceived strength of a woman.
Average it out and the women are slightly higher but most of your geniuses are male- just a fact.