Pressured to be pretty.

Yesterday I was eating an ice-cream at a bar, when I saw two stick-thin girls standing in front of me.
They were discussing about how many calories they had eaten today, and in the end they decided to to take a sugar-free diet ice-cream. They were wearing skinny jeans, tons of make-up and lots of jewellery.
What's so strange about that? You may ask. Well, nothing, if you exclude the fact that these girls must have been about 10 years old, if not less.

And the problem is, they are not the only children who spend their days trying to be as sexy as possible.
When I was in 5th grade I used to spend all my break time reading or playing tag or fairies. I didn't wear make-up, didn't read celebrity mags, didn't follow fashion. And that didn't make me very popular.
Once, a popular girl was excluded from the group because she liked too many boys. Evidently, that wasn't acceptable. I offered myself to be her friend, and she immediatly got on my case. I think she was trying to help, but I didn't appreciate it much. She wanted to make me fashionable, she said that with her help I'd no longer be an outcast. I hadn't even realized I was an outcast, actually, since I didn't care to be part of the popular group. Anyway, in her opinion changing me was easy. She had elaborated the 5-step plan below.

1. Straighten your hair. Curls are no longer fashionable.
2. Stop eating apples. They aren't fashonable at all. Chips are much better.
3. Every girl should have a bracelet.
4. Wear make-up. No-one wants to be a friend of a make up-less girl.
5. Act fashionable. Say hi with a sweet voice and look while leaning slighty back and twisting just a bit. That's very sexy. Speak sexily in a girly way. Don't read. Don't play with barbies.Wear cooler clothes and shoes.

She tried to "better" me in every way. I thought about it for a day then decided that I didn't want to become like one of the mean girls in the movies. So I stopped hanging out with her.

That was when I was ten. However, my decision to not spend my life being sexy couldn't last long. By the time I was twelve, I was desperate to earn the approval of the popular gals. I wanted to be pretty. But it was useless. Sexy girliness simply isn't in my DNA. I can't act sexy all the time. I can't style my hair each morning.

So I got kind of depressed and gave up, while all my friends- who previously liked playing with me in the woods- all started hanging out at the mall talking about boys, make-up, clothes and their wish to wear high heels. I didn't like it. I desperately tried to find a way out of it. I still wanted to be a kid.

Then I realized that the boys still played as much as they wanted. They always had. So I started playing with them instead, together with another girl who felt alienated from the rest. We played football. As girls, we had never played football before, while the boys had spent their entire lives doing so. Thus, we lost every time at first, but after a couple of months we learned. That made us feel very proud.

But it was hard, resisting the "you have to be pretty" expectation. I always had relapses, months in which I decided I would become "cool". I still do, even now, even after understanding all that was going on.

But the fact is, not everyone is as lucky as me.  I have always had the deep conviction since childhood that appearences don't matter. It has faltered at times, but it was always there.
Other girls don't. My sister is in 4th grade and has two girls in her class who refuse to eat because they are afraid of becoming fat. I saw her once staring sadly at the mirror and when I asked her what was making her sad she said she thought she was ugly.
I have tried to convince her that she is very beautiful, and that anyway wasn't what really mattered. I hope the point got across.

umm, no, not appropriate.

 It is sad enough when adult women spend all their time trying to be pretty and feel insecure about their appereance. But it just isn't fair to force it on little girls too.

How can the world understand that women are not just pretty sexual objects if women themselves don't understand it?
And how can they understand it, when the world is forcing them to believe that they are?
It's a sad circle. =(

My computer works again!!!

After days of almost total cutoff from technology, I feel pure joy when using a computer. MY computer, which now work again!! It works!! And does more than displaying porn!!

Hell, my computer has a virus. Now it appears I can do little with it other than watching porn, which is not an activity that I appreciate. =(

The 6th of April

Well, I should have blogged about this yesterday actually, but blame my stupid internet connection.

Last year, today was very different than today now. Today last year was the day after L'aquila's Earthquake.
For some strange coincidence, the day before it I was studying earthquakes , so when at three a.m. everything started to shake I was thinking: "Oh god, that's what comes out of studying too much...now I even dream of these things! Duh!"
But then I saw my mother shouting to get to the main columns, and hurry, come on! Oddly, the fact that there was a real earthquake going on stuck me as funny. It was strong. I could feel the walls and the ground trembling strongly with a huge roar all around and stuff falling down.
I told my mother and sister that we should not go down until it ended because the stairs would be the first things to crumble down. Not that my sister was listening much. 

As soon as it ended everyone rushed down the stairs, with the old lady downstairs saying:  "What? What's this? Ee-eeeh, I'm old, d'I have to do all these stairs! Four floors? Eh! Eh! I'm so lonely!"
Then we arrived on the streets, where lots of people sat in the little piazza near our house. There was a kid seriously worried about having left his goldfish in his house. He kept saying that he wanted it to his disgrunteled mother who was venting about her house having fallen down on her as she and her son run away.

By now I was beginning to think I was seriously sick, since I still found the whole situation kind of funny. And if not funny, kind of...normal. Not scary though. Evidently people around me didn't feel the same way.

We then went to a friend's house because my sister plainly refused to go back to our house. She didn't go back for about two weeks, in fact, except for one time-and that one time there was another earthquake, the left-over from the first one.

I stopped finding everything funny when they started elencating the deaths. A mother and her baby. 2. A student. 3. An old couple. 6.
The death toll quickly got longer. By morning we were at 227. Every now and then they announced someone else. We turned off the tv at some point, because listening to all the dead people isn't particularly pleasant and there was nothing else on.

At the end they got to 309. 309 deaths. Not many, if you consider how many die everyday from hunger, illness, and whatever other reasons, but still...

We lost about one month of school for that Earthquake, because it turned out most schools weren't safe. And you know, they only notice that after the earthquake. And there were teachers in mourning or in search of a new home and stuff.

It is very, very strange to think now about the way things were today last year. Everyone has forgotten and got on with their lives, which is good and all...but there are still people in L'aquila and around living in tents. Because the money meant to build the houses disappeared in thin air. And do you think the ones that have been built are actually safe? I have my doubts.

Dear old fascists...

That is what I have wish to say to the many budding fascists invading my life and facebook page. With their links such as "Benito Mussolini: a real man, the best one Italy has ever had." and groups like "For those who are tired of dirty immigrants-fascism forever!". Oh, and the scribbles I have to see on every wall every time I get out of the door? Not pleasant.

Recently a homeless man had his skull broken by a group of teenage boys. You'd think they'd be the ones to get in trouble. Well, you're wrong. He is now in prison, because he's an illegal immigrant. The guys are free to roam the streets happily getting rid of anyone whose race is not acceptable.

The Italian costitution has an article banning the reconstruction of groups supporting fascist ideology. Funny how right leaning parties can go about saying that non-Italian people ruin Italy, that sometimes violence is the only way to go and that women are the enemy. (And Bossi, a leader of a very right leaning group, really said these things.)

Women, trouble without solution. (The title of this nice, friendly article.)

TO BE CONTINUED

A case of "bullying"

Yes, I have been away for a long time. My computer is near death, and my internet time diminishes every day, so I don't usually have much time left for blogging.

*trigger alert*

Anyway, I read on the newspaper lately about a horrifying episode.
A twelve year old immigrant girl was forced to have oral sex with three of her classmates. The teacher was too busy listening to other students repeating the lesson near his desk to notice. He has been justified because he says that he practices a "friendly" method of teaching. He is so friendly he doesn't want to bother some kids raping their classmate. The other kids were standing around them to prevent the teacher from seeing.
Two girls did try to stop everything, but one of the guys told them to "go away, this is grown-up stuff." So they did.

The episode came out after one day, so the principal decided to suspend all the guilty for ten days. Including the raped girl. Because evidently being a victim or an abuser is the same thing.
The teacher was suspended too.
Reportedly, the girl's mother was disgusted and the father ashamed. The girl wrote a message to her parents saying that she was sorry for the horrible thing she had done and wanted to die.

All I can say now is: this is a really fucked up world we live in. Really. Because this is not an isolated case- 7th grade classrooms can indeed easily be used as places of tortures of any kind.

And you know what? These bully rapist kids will never understand the gravity of their actions. They may do it again...after all, it's her fault too, since she was punished with them.
The other kids will consider rape as something that "just happens", it happens at school just like someone stealing your lunch, it's okay, after all.