So I Decided to Start A Blog...

   I'm a 23-year-old feminist, humanist and all-around social-justice-rage-haver, and today I realized just how much of a travesty it is that I haven't started blogging yet. I have, however, gotten in the habit of posting long, angry facebook statuses about whatever social issue is at the forefront of my brain at the time. Not that I'm super concerned with not making random people I've happened to become facebook friends with over the years uncomfortable, but it's not exactly the ideal format. Somehow it seems less judgy and confrontational this way (but then of course, judgy is not always a bad thing, in my opinion. Some people need to be judged.) Please be forewarned, I tend to write my thoughts down pretty much as they happen, and I occasionally start paragraphs with words like "OK" and "Seriously," so don't expect any fancy self-editing or perfect formatting. At least to start with.

   I might as well start by sharing something that I already DID post a long, angry facebook status about, and that is this whole Abercrombie and Fitch dealio. You know the one: 

   Yes, true, we all already knew this was a company of, by and for the vapid, empty people. That being said, this is taking it one step further. Unfortunately most young people buy into the idea that our society's extremely narrow beauty ideals are based on something other than arbitrary social constructs. It's a problem.

   Another problem? Thousands of, to use my original facebook-rant term, self-important assholes who are concerned with the REAL problems while the rest of us morons are lettings ourselves get distracted with this drivel (which is JUST what the government wants, don't you SEE?!)

   This attitude had previously come up when a lot of people on the internet chose to voice their support for marriage equality. Rather than simply bringing up another issue in the midst of this, many denizens of the internets decided to tell the rest of us how stupid we are for caring whether a bunch of rich white men are allowed to marry each other (because of course no one else exists in the gay community) while Monsanto is getting away with murder. I'm sorry, I wasn't aware we weren't allowed to care about multiple issues at once. How about instead of your condescending attitude, maybe just post about Monsanto WITHOUT mentioning how unimportant our other concerns are?

   So anyway, this happened again with Abercrombie and Fitch. Let us get one thing straight: the body image of children matters. Dumbass quotes like the one from Mr. I-Drink-Bees-For-Breakfast here encourage kids to hate their bodies, which in turn encourages kids to hate themselves. Know what happens when kids hate themselves? Well, dead kids is not out of the realm of possibility, that's for sure. OBVIOUSLY we care and are appalled that the Syrian government is murdering its own citizens, but do you really expect us to care about absolutely nothing else while that is going on? This is something that we as consumers can actually affect, but we just shouldn't even bother talking about it because worse things are happening? Go ahead and bite me.