REAL Men Say...

Are you a "real" woman: tight abs, firm butt, c-cup, long legs, thin hips, perfect lips? Experienced, hot, sexy, cleavage, sex tricks you need to know? Long hair, blonder hair, red head? Puts out? Good in bed? What he craves? Skinny? Arousing? ARE YOU TIRED OF THIS?!?!?! (taken from http://www.demandyourdignity.com/).

I, Saige Foster, am tired of this!

At demandyourdignity.com, a website for women from the men who love them, REAL men say "enough is enough!" You, as a woman, are beautiful JUST THE WAY YOU ARE. You're captivating and wonderful, simply by being you, and that's the TRUTH. Please, don't believe the lies. Don't give into childish, selfish boys (who may call themselves men, but no guy is a REAL man unless he respects you). Demand respect and love! Demand to be treated as the whole person you are. Girls, women, ladies: we are gifts on this beautiful earth! We deserve love and respect. There are good guys out there, but we have to respect and love ourselves in order to be blessed with that good guy.

The Myth of Independence

Some people regard me as a failure. Halfway through my sophomore year at Tufts, I went home. I gave up, I gave in. I admitted that I was weak and went home to try and fix it. Almost everyone that doesn’t know me well regards this as a defeat: Tufts was too stressful for me. And so they tell me things like It’s okay, someday you’ll be able to handle this.

I don’t blame them. I thought about things in the same way when I was contemplating the decision. To go home would be to give up, and I’m not the type of person who gives up. I’m the girl who gets A’s no matter the cost. To admit that I couldn’t face school without the support of my family and close friends required relinquishing this image of myself, and it wasn’t easy.

Why? Why do we have this idea that the pinnacle of human achievement is independence? Why do we send our kids off at the arbitrary age of 18 halfway across the country (or the world) and hope that somehow by being forced into independence they will make mistakes, discover themselves, and suddenly be an adult? Maybe I’m being unfair—sometimes it does work that way. But I don’t like the implication that to need to stay at home is somehow “immature.”

In fact, being home has helped me to understand that there is nothing wrong with needing the support of other people. Nothing. Everyone needs people; I honestly think that true independence is a myth. Isolating yourself in pursuit of independence becomes a death sentence. Instead, you become yourself in loving others and in letting yourself be loved.

I’m not saying that this can’t be done on a college campus a million miles from home. It can, and it does. I needed to go back home because the extreme stress of school made it impossible for me. I isolated myself and almost killed myself in order to achieve this independence that I thought would prove me invincible. When I realized that the type of independence that I was seeking was a myth, I knew that I had to go home and let myself be loved.

And so I don’t think my decision was a “weak” one. It was a recognition of my true nature as a dependent being. I am a person who needs to love and be loved by others. I am not invincible. I can’t exist on my own.

It’s a humbling way to look at life, but it’s also extremely freeing. Think about it—do you expect yourself to be independent? How does it affect the way that you think about yourself when you don’t live up to this standard?

Personally, I think the world would be an extremely lonely place if we never needed each other.

Even when that other is you...

I want to love me! 

LOVE WILLS THE GOOD OF ANOTHER, EVEN WHEN THAT OTHER IS YOU. -JASON AND CRYSTALINA EVERT (from the book How to Find your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul).

"Think of the happiest person you know. Does she have the Perfect body? Probably not..."

I want to write more on this topic later (after I get homework done...I struggle with being a workaholic too [but I definitely believe in being responsible about your schoolwork], and I totally agree with Catherine's message on being a workaholic-props to you woman!!), but I want you all to know that I totally believe in loving your body, no matter your shape, size, physical attractiveness, etc., etc. However, I really struggle with loving my body all the time. There are definitely days I look in the mirror and truly love what I see (in a healthy, not a vain way), but there are other days I look in the mirror and hate what I see. There are also days when I look in the mirror with vanity. I know a lot of us women struggle with our body image, and magazines, t.v., movies, the media DOES NOT HELP (for the most part). Therefore, I wanted to share these inspiring quotes with you. I read them in the book "How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul" by Jason and Crystalina Evert, which I totally recommend to EVERY WOMAN! Crystalina's story is especially inspiring (since she went through a ton of the things we are talking about on this blog post). She's a really beautiful woman-inside and outside- and a very relatable. Her story of meeting Jason is absolutely beautiful. It brings tears to my eyes and gives me hope that there's the perfect man out there for each woman (granted that she wants to get married). Anyways, here are the quotes. I came across them in my journal today because I woke up feeling bad about my body. They really help to give me a better perspective. We all need reminders that we're loved just the way we are: right here, right now. Here are the quotes:

One of the happiest ladies I know: my grandma!! She's so beautiful, and it's her inner  beauty and self respect that makes her even more beautiful. 

"Think of the happiest person you know. Does she have the perfect body? Probably not. Her joy has nothing to do with the shape of her body" (Evert). 


"Average-looking girls who possess deep self-respect are more likely to find enduring love than runway models" (Evert). 


"Accept that other women will be prettier, smarter, and more popular than you are, and that's fine. It's a big world with lots of opportunities. The goal is not to stand on the top of the pile. The goal is to hold yourself to a personal standard and become someone you would respect if you were someone else" (Evert). 

Confessions of a Workaholic

Hi, my name is Catherine…and I’m a workaholic.

I don’t mean this in the good “wow-I-love-working-and-I-find-everything-I-do-so-fulfilling” way. Whenever I meet people like this, I’m amazed. We all know them: the people who look at you with bright eyes at 1AM and say things like:

Oh, how I envy you.

“Wow! I love reading 400 pages a night! The material is just so interesting!”
“Did you know that cellular respiration makes twenty nine ATP molecules??!”
“I hope I can meet with the professor tomorrow so they can tell me more about these awesome pre-colonial African political systems!”

Unfortunately, this is not what I mean by workaholic. I feel this way about a few subjects, sometimes (yay for being a Child Development major!) but for the most part, even if I find something interesting, doing the work is utterly exhausting. And, even worse, it can be terrifying. For my entire life, I’ve been so obsessed with getting good grades that the prospect of not doing well paralyzes me. It’s a circle of doom: I’m so scared of not doing well that I can’t enjoy my work, and even though I generally do well anyway, I end up hating it, exhausting myself, and sometimes even making myself sick. This is what I mean by workaholic: I work pretty much all the time and feel extremely guilty when I’m not working, but I don’t enjoy it. It doesn’t sound very fun, does it? It isn’t.

And, as much as I believe in and write about the importance of self-confidence and dignity (ex) (ex), this is my weak spot. Sometimes it truly is hard for me to believe that my worth doesn’t depend on my grades. It sounds silly to say it, but it’s true.

The reason I’m writing about this is that I’ve noticed that a lot of people I know seem to share this problem, especially in college. On a college campus, school is your life, literally. You live, eat, and sleep right next to (or in?) the library where you study and the buildings where you go to class. Your friends are ambitious and smart; somehow they all seem to be studying more than you, although you aren’t sure how that’s possible. They also have a lot more fun than you and aren’t nearly as stressed out.

Of course this can’t be true, because so many people I know feel this way. We’re all stressed out! We’re all workaholics, to some degree. Obviously I'm not trying to say that grades aren't important, or that we shouldn't work hard. I just don't think it should be necessary for me to lose all respect for myself when I'm too tired to keep working. It just isn't healthy. There has to be a balance, right?

Part of the reason I’m taking a semester to live at home and study at Carnegie Mellon instead of Tufts is to figure out how to fix this problem. And I’m determined to fix it, because I know that school actually can be fulfilling, and that it must be possible to both get good (enough) grades and enjoy life. For me, this semester is about reclaiming my happiness and asserting myself in the face of my anxieties.

If you’re a workaholic like me (and I know that a lot of people are) then listen up: it doesn’t have to be this way. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. In any case, one thing that I know for sure, at least intellectually, is that my value as a human being (and yours) goes far, far beyond academic performance. I’ve been trying to remind myself of this every day, so that I can learn to respect myself regardless of how much time I put into studying every day.

I’ll let you know how it goes! If you have any words of advice, feel free to comment or send me an email. 

The Beauty of a Woman...

"The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. The beauty of a woman is not in a facial mode, but the true beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul. It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows. The beauty of a woman grows with the passing years."
-Audrey Hepburn

Am I Ugly? -NO NO NO.

     I came across one of the most sickening and horrifying articles on Yahoo. The article went on about this new trend (that I was completely unaware of) called 'Am I Ugly?'. After reading I discovered that this was just as disturbing as it sounded. Apparently this consists of people posting videos of themselves on YouTube and asking people to comment with an opinion on whether they think that the uploader is ugly or not. I told myself that I would not look at any of this, but I curiosity got the best of me. After searching 'Am I Ugly?' I clicked on the fourth video. I was sick to my stomach. A little girl. A LITTLE girl. She couldn't have been more than 12, if that. After watching this absolutely disturbing video where this sweet little girl showed photo after photo of herself posing and hamming it up for the camera. I had the urge to find every video like it and comment, "NO. NO. NO. You are beautiful. You are loved. I'm sorry that you feel so alone that you need to do this, but you are beautiful, beautiful, beautiful." This beautiful little girl said she made this video because "A lot of people call me ugly and I think I am." I could not watch this and not say something. This particular video has over 4 million views and has been on YouTube for about 2 years, but videos like this one are not hard to come by. Apparently in the past two months this trend has exploded and sparked so much talk that it's been featured on talk shows and well known websites.

You are beauty. You don't need others to tell you that.

     What are we doing to each other that it has come this? A young girl feels so bad about herself that she looks for opinions from people that she does not even know. Think about yourself. Are you insecure? Have people called you ugly or maybe even something worse. I know I have been called every name in the book. It's made me feel insecure and sad, but I do not think I would have ever resorted to asking strangers to tell me whether I am beautiful, whether I am worthy of love, and whether I have should feel like a human being.

We've all felt this way.. but why?

     Every person is worthy of love. A person's self-worth is not measured by others. Why do we feel the need to bully each other? Does the bullier feel so insecure about themselves that they feel the need to make someone else feel more insecure than they do? Why? Think about how damaging that is to everyone. Young girls (and boys) learn from experience. They need role models and people to show them that they do need the opinions of others to be a true and loved human being. To those who have been called ugly, gross, disgusting, not pretty, and anything of the sort. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. YOU ARE LOVED. YOU ARE TRULY A HUMAN BEING FULL OF WORTH AND CONFIDENCE. Be yourself. You do not have to prove anything to anyone. You encompass beauty inside and out. You are loved.

Be confident. No one can take that away from you.