Just as there is a fee for everything else in life, there is a fee for opening the gates to your heart. People do not see you. You are just a flutter of wings above their heads. They will destroy you. They want nothing more than to destroy who you are. They will break you in every way. They want nothing more than to break your will and create an obedient slave. You think it’s a joke. That it can never happen to you. You toss your hair and laugh while bowing down to the same master who hides behind a smile and soft hands. Until, one day, the truth will beat you down. Your body violated and no longer your own. When you can hardly think straight, they will hammer at your mind. Every insecurity and fear will be magnified and confirmed to be true. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. Your isolation and loneliness will be absolute. They will become your world. The entirety of your existence bending to their will. So, what will you do then, proud one, gaudy one, “strong” one. Oh, but it’s your fault, isn’t it? You allowed this to happen. Isn’t that what you said about the others? Yes, that was before they broke you. That was before you became a doll.

Walls of green surround us as we travel and into the moon we fall. Every detail sharp and as crisp as the weeds rustling in the wind. Her fingers trembled as she clutched her cigarette. Her past and present tumbled from her lips. Her words tripping over one another, but why? Faster and faster as Father Time drags his hands down her thighs. Our faces become our masks as we dance to the ramblings of ghosts. My heart reborn as a Ruby embedded in a fallen angel’s chest. I, the demons and I, stain her soul with paint richer than blood. The grinning moon graces innocence with pain.

She came to me dressed in sheets of white cotton. A pearl necklace around her neck. Eyes full of hope and desire. I sold her out to the Demon limping with his lacquered cane. Preaching to me about God and his angels in a cemetery surrounded by statues of Mary piously staring down at us in prayer. He came to us, lies tumbling through his loose lips and eyes cold with hatred. Would I be lying to say that I did not know what he would do? To save myself, I saved her. She left as she came, with blood stained feet and a broken heart. Our shared trauma fragmented in her mind until the day she dies.

Even though women’s lives have changed from how they were a century ago, there are still many changes needed to improve their lives especially in developing countries. Some societies still believe it is right to treat women as the inferior sex and even in developed countries; women still have a long way to go before they can catch up with equality in wages and in business environments.

The media has put even more pressures on the modern woman to look and behave a certain way and we have young women who suffer health problems to try to look like their size 0 role models. It is a sad fact that there is always a new benchmark for women to match up to before they feel accepted. Maybe they are their own harshest critics and to move forward women have to accept themselves beyond looks and society’s limitations and focus on health, education, political and social issues that affect them and above all they need to celebrate how far they have come from their sisters a century ago.

Nevermind the fact that we as women create double-standards as well.  Criticizing not withstanding, we also tend to do to each other what we don’t want men to do to us.  Women get up in arms when they are referred to as whores and bitches by men in casual conversation….and yet they call each other that.  It’s the same bullshit hypocrisy as the whole black people saying nigger/nigga versus other races saying it.

Another thing that gets me is the whole freedom of dress bullshit.  Those women referred to in the article fought hard to be considered seriously in the work force.  We’re a joke because we feel “empowered” by wearing clothing that draws attention to certain aspects of our anatomy.  We feel “empowered” when we use our boobs/ass/legs as a weapon to get what we want versus using our head.  Because of morons that take the easy way out, the ones that try to actually perform their jobs, to the best of their abilities, are actually social outcasts.  Seen as geeky, unattractive, someone to be used and trampled upon, etc.

Think of it this way.  You know how some men wear those skin tight pants or jeans?  Yea.  Draws a woman’s attention to certain..”assets” don’t they?  Exactly.