"Pro-Lifers" Please Please Please Read and Consider This

"People will go all out for the unborn, but couldn't care less about those who draw breath."
- Robin J. Landwehr (in this blog post)

So lately there has been a SLEW of news coming out of the US regarding abortion limiting laws getting, or getting close to being legislated. As a feminist, this abhors me, as a person, this truly, truly distresses me. 

Now I don't live in the States and so those laws probably wouldn't affect me, but this is still my problem, because if they can get abortion bans legislated in one country, the potential for abortion bans to get legislated in other countries increases; if it happens in one place it could happen everywhere. And then it WOULD affect me. 

Many people pushing for these laws limiting abortions are calling themselves pro-lifers, if you are one, or know someone who is I'm pleading you especially to read this and hear me out. 

I respect your point of view, I really do, but it's just not practical, it's not equitable, and yes I will even say it's not ethical for the way the world is right now. 

I get it, you want to save lives and that is a beautiful, good aspiration. But why are you so focused on saving a fetus' life? What about the life of the person that is pregnant? Because even if there are no medical complications that physically endanger the pregnant person, forced parenthood can be truly detrimental to somebody's life.

I recently read this article in which one woman shared her experience with abortion, and this one quote really struck me:

"[Having the abortion] saved my life, not from the pregnancy itself, but from what enforced parenthood would have meant for me holistically in body, mind and spirit as a woman and human being." - Linsey Rosenthal (find that blog post here)

What it all comes down to is this: Once you analyze and dig deeper into it, it becomes a question as to whether anti-abortion is really pro-life at all. 

I saw this comment on facebook, and the woman said it beautifully:

"In an ideal world abortions wouldn't be needed. All pregnancies would be planned and prepared for. Women wouldn't be raped and impregnated. Young girls wouldn't be molested and [made] pregnant. Mothers would never get sick and be at risk having to choose their life or the life of the fetus. [...] [But] that is not the world we live in. The world you are fighting for is one full of unwanted babies, neglected children and orphans.[...]" Her facebook name is 'Andrea E. Polite'.   

And so I have a couple questions for people to consider. I am not accusing anyone of anything, so please don't get defensive. I just want you to read these and reflect on your answers to them.

1) When there are medical complications, is it really pro-life to endanger the mother's life to try and save the fetus?

2) Is it really pro-life to mess up someone else's life, or a couple people's lives to protect the life of someone who has yet to know what it is to live?

3) Is it really pro-life to force a terrible life upon the very children you are trying to protect? 

4) If you are pro-life, pro children's lives what have you been doing for the 153 MILLION orphans worldwide? 

5) If you are pro-life, what do you plan on doing for the unwanted children you fought so hard to give a life to? 

My comments on some of the questions:

1/2) Think about it. A fetus has life and nothing else in their life to lose. Everyone else, be it just the mother, or the mother and the people who would help her with the child, they have lived. They have lived years of their lives and have gained experiences and memories and people they care for. The fetus has a life to lose yes, but the mother has a life, as well as everything she has gained in her life to lose.

3) Okay so the unwanted child is here because abortions are illegal. Now what? Best case scenario they might be adopted/fostered by a loving family, but that's not always going to be the case. Children that would have been aborted could be neglected, and/or abused. Isn't it more ethical to spare them that fate?

People don't make the decision to abort a child lightly. (An exemplary story of that can be found here) And the reality is, if people need something enough they are going to find other ways of doing it, so by restricting abortions all you're doing is taking away a safe place to have them done, only endangering the mother's life further. That doesn't seem very pro-life does it? 

There are already so many ways to be pro-life in this world - you could help those less fortunate than you, you could fight for social justice. When there are so many children in the world who are not cared for, it doesn't make sense to have more unwanted children be brought into the world. We already have so much we could do for children, so much we need to do, why add more to the problems? 

Finally, the world is having a hard enough time sustaining the people already on it in addition to different plants and animals. If the world gets seriously overpopulated, each one of the billions on Earth will suffer. How is that pro-life? 

It's not. 

At best it's pro living thing. At worst tt's pro putting a cluster of cells above the needs of full grown people.  It's pro "I want this and that's what I'm going to get". It's pro not being able to see past your own beliefs. It's pro not having foresight. 

If you are so pro-life why are you not advocating for the lives of people already here? 

Yes a fetus' life is a life, and all life is precious, but we need to focus on protecting and nurturing the lives of those that are already here. 

We should be protecting the lives that have so much more to lose than a growing bundle of cells in the womb. 

We should be allowing the lives that can only nurture and give a good life to a beautiful child when they are ready to the time to get ready, the time to grow. 

We should be affording women the right to choose when her body is going to carry a child or if it will ever carry a child at all. 

We should be working on the lives of those already here, making them as wonderful and fulfilling as they can be. Adding a child to the mix means you don't just have one life to try to make as great as possible, you have (at least) two. 

Life is a beautiful gift, but life is not a good enough by itself to merit "worth living" and forcing that on a mother and a child is not pro-life at all. 

Self Fulfillment in More than Just Body image.

"[... T]o all those who are judged, 

stay beautiful, stay you.

And don’t ever change,

unless you choose to.

You may feel like you’re broken, 

you may feel all alone, 

but you are something greater 

than you have ever known. 

- From "Controlled by What We Can't Control" copyright me.

 

Shout out to Sahar for liking my posts, and for being the first commentor on this blog! I appreciate it, girl! :)

So recently I've done a lot of posts about self fulfillment rather specific to body image. (If you haven't already, please check those blog posts out! Butts Part I, Butts Part II, Butts Part III, Selfish Not Immoral ) Here I want to talk about self fulfillment in more than just body image and why you shouldn't care what general people may think of you when making decisions about your life. 

Gender Roles in General:

Women! Cook clean, take care of the house etc. Men! Work, work, work, be the breadwinner support the family. Sound familiar? Sound as grating against who you are as nails on a chalkboard? Yes I am talking about the truly atrocious gender roles!

There is just so much wrong with them.  

First what they are based on is ridiculous. Gender roles are expected of us based on whether we are born male or female, something we have no control over, why do we think we can tell what a brand new person, a baby, will act like, enjoy, be able to achieve, etc. before we even get a chance to know them as a person?

The very heart of the matter is that Gender Roles limit us.

"Sexism is stupid

gender expectations make us small.
They confine us in a little box, 

and tell us that is all,

all we should be, all we can be,

and that we shouldn’t strive, 

to be more than what we’re told, 

To live, to dream, to thrive." 

- From Controlled by What We Can't Control, copyright me.

We are told what we should be often before being able to discover who we are. And because of that we think we can only be so much, achieve so much, but you can't know what you are capable of unless you try.

They dictate who should be taken seriously in different situations and base things all on what you are, not who. 

- From "You Are More" by Tenth Avenue North

I believe we are more, or can be more than what advantages and disadvantages we are born with. Maybe what you are can hinder or give you advantages, but with hard work and determination you should be able to achieve whatever it is you want. 

But unfortunately, it's not always up to you, because you can't do anything if others don't give you a chance, and it's incredibly unfair if that's based on prejudice, discrimination and stereotypes.

Career Choices:

For this point I'm going to focus on females' experiences, mostly because I don't think I'm qualified to talk about what males go through, but these are by far NOT the extent of what people may experience.

The fact of the matter is you can't win.

Women are often judged negatively no matter what they choose to do - If she wants to stay at home and be with her children she is often judged as "weak" or "lazy". (And might I say that's just ridiculous, housework and taking care of kids is really HARD); 

If she chooses her career over her kids or simply doesn't want kids, she's "selfish". And this one is ridiculous because first off, if we only focus on the next generation, we'd never accomplish anything now. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Brilliance does not care about gender or race.

"There are so many brilliant minds 
That have withered and gone to waste

All because some old idea says 

That because you’re different, brilliance is not your place"

- From Controlled by What we Can't Control, copyright me

Second, I refuse to be only a means to continue the species. Just because we have the biology needed to carry children, that doesn't make it a woman's duty to do so. It might have been important way back when there were very few people on Earth, but right now the Earth has plenty of people, several countries are overpopulated.

The fact of the matter is: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should or have to. (This goes for many situations, ie: freedom of speech; just because you CAN say something doesn't mean you should.) And really, is it wrong for me to want to do something great (that is unrelated to children) with my life?

We don't seem to have any problem with males doing that.

(And before you shout "man hater" I'm not hating on men, I'm hating on the fact that there is a double standard)

As I have discussed, I don't think equality is what we should be aiming for, there are definitely situations where I think equal treatment should apply, but I think the overarching branch we should be aiming for is equal respect, equal value and equity. 

Once you look deep into many (particularly social) issues they tend to come straight back to gender roles, this being no exception.  

I think the major reason women are judged negatively for choosing work over children is because they are being compared to gender roles by a person who holds gender roles as the way things "should be"

This idea that only women are suited to be caregivers is simply archaic, there are plenty of studies that suggest parenthood changes men to be better nurturers. (Two of which can be found here, and here) This still widely held belief harms women who want to do other things and it harms men that wish to be involved in their children's lives.

It's the same thing for the other side, women judged negatively for staying home with the kids are being compared to gender roles by someone who doesn't hold gender roles as the way things should be. 

This too, is a dangerous route because those that choose and want to go along with the traditional gender roles are marginalized. Which is not what we want either, we don't want to stop shaming the non-conformers by shaming the conformers.

All too often people who break away from what is traditional are heralded for doing so, but we should be praising people for daring to be who they are, because otherwise we're sending a message that we think there's something wrong with going along with the gender role, but there isn't.

I want, perhaps more than anything, to achieve a world where everyone can be themselves.

Thank you for reading and I'd love to know what people think so share your opinions with me in the comments. 

*** Also on a side note, if you enjoyed the snippets I posted from my poem, I'm thinking of putting it up as my next post, would anyone be interested if I did?

Please Please Please Don't Listen to Anything Anna Todd's "After" Series Tells You About Life

I found out about this book called "After" by an author named Anna Todd a few days ago and I can't stress what I'm about to say next enough: Please Please do NOT take the themes about relationships from that book and apply them to real life. 

I want to make it clear right here that I am not attacking Ms. Todd, her writing ability, or even her book. I am attacking the themes it presents.

Personally right away when I read the description I knew the book wouldn't be one that, would tell a story I wanted to read/fit my taste, but was curious about the whole "fanfiction" aspect of it and I wanted to know what it was a fanfic of and... two things: Fifty Shades of Grey and One Direction. 

Now I don't know about you, but when "Fifty Shades of Grey" comes up alarm bells start going off in my head. 

Then I read some more and all I can say is that it allegedly (since I haven't read it) portrays a MESSED UP relationship as love. Basically, it follows the story of a woman in her early twenties named Tessa and the relationship she develops with a "Harlin Scott". (Originally this character was named Harry Styles, being a 1D fanfic and all)

In this relationship there are components such as emotional abuse, obsessive-possessive behaviour, and manipulation. 

I just want to make it very clear that components like that in a relationship are NEVER okay, (no matter what may have happened in the person's past) and are NEVER  a part of love. (Or at least not love that's worth sticking around for)

From what I've seen of the series' book synopses, the series wraps up terrible behaviour, even cruelty, (After's book description actually says the word "cruelty" when talking about the characters relationship) and physical attraction and calls it love. 

The book just shoots off unhealthy messages in all directions such as "anything is forgiveable if it's "love"", (It is not, this all depends on how much the person feels right to forgive) that sabotage is okay, and just an unhealthy definition of love in general.

Why does this matter? Well first off the story started off on wattpad, and it's main readers were tween girls and the thing racked up a billion views. No matter what the actual numbers are, that is a LOT of young girls whose definitions of love are influenced by this totally wrong portrayal of it. 

It's already done a lot of damage, all we can do now is try to remedy that and try to keep any more from happening. But undoing damage is always harder than doing it, and just how many will we be able to reach in an attempt to undo the damage?

And things like this do cause damage. 

When people think it's okay for them to be mistreated, in a relationship that involves the word love or not, they're not going to be focusing on reaching their full potential, they are not going to be able to contribute to society to the best of their ability.  

So not only do they suffer, there's the potential for the rest of us to suffer, too. 

It's also important to note what the fact that this story exists alludes to. This book was written by a woman, and if it's presenting this kind of relationship as "love" that means she probably thinks it's okay for men to treat women this way, and if you broaden it some, the book can also be seen to mean that it's okay for people to treat other people this way. 

First, the fact that there is a belief like this out there is a problem.

Second, it gives the message to women that's it's okay for men to treat them badly, it tells men that it's okay to treat women that way, and most worryingly of all it tells men that women think it's okay for them to treat women badly. (But guys is ISN'T, so please don;t listen to that. Abuse is really not cool and never will be) And if people think it's okay, there's a lot less reason to not do it. 

There is nothing wrong with telling/reading whatever story you like, but when you're telling, it's never going to hurt to consider the consequences your story may have on other people, and when you're a reader, ALWAYS evaluate how appropriate things are before you take them into real life, and DON'T let fiction define what you believe to be true about real life. 

Fiction can represent situations in a way that may work in a story, but would not in real life -- that's why it's fiction. And feel free to disagree with me, but I definitely think this "After" series is a prime example of this. 

Read more about this issue here.

I'm not trying to get people mad about the books existence, I just don't want it's existence to affect yours.

(On a side note, if you want to look into a book I think handles an abusive relationship right, may I just recommend "The Taming" by Eric Walters and Teresa Toten? That book was magnificent. Here's a link to the book on Indigo, here's a link for Amazon US)

I'm not going to try to get people to boycott the book or anything, (that's a bit too extreme) but it's safe to say I would choose to cheer #WESSA (aka #Twill) over #Hessa any day.

#TheInfernalDevices #CassandraClare ;)  

Why Selfish is not always the Same as Wrong or Immoral

So in my last couple of posts I talked a lot about how important it is to fulfill the self. (If you haven't read those posts, here are the links Part I, Part II, and Part III) and in this post I'm going to address a question I'm sure came up. "But isn't doing that stuff... selfish?"

When we think of the word "selfishness" we almost have a knee-jerk reaction in associating it with words like bad, or immoral, but how do we know that this is true? There are instances in which I think being selfish is not only moral, but important and too often people overlook them.

I won't deny that together selfishness and fear can create a powerful paralytic - In December of 2012 alone there were two instances of people being pushed onto the subway tracks in New York, possibly because nobody stepped in to help, the victims were killed by the arriving subway train. (Links to articles on those two incidents here and here) 

There's no concrete reason to explain why no one helped, but I would say [the selfish] fear for personal safety was most definitely a factor. (Which is totally fair by the way, everyone has the right to look out for themselves).

"if there were absolutely no pros for you in doing something, would you do it? "

All this seems really negative right? So when can selfishness ever be good? Well, selfishness and fear can also incite action. For example, the desire most people have to matter. To satisfy this, people tend to do great things such as running into burning buildings to save lives. In truth, the motivations behind actions like this aren't always purely going to be "because I want to help" there's probably a part that's motivated because you like it, you like how it makes you feel, and/or because want your life to mean something. That's kind of selfish isn't it? 

And couldn't it be that part of your motivation to do good is due to fearing reaching the end of your life and realizing nothing you did really mattered?

I do believe we are selfish creatures, and if you thing about it, if there were absolutely no pros for you in doing something, would you do it?

The best example I can think of is with suicide. Would someone kill themselves just because? Or is it for personal gain? (Ie: since they don't want to live anymore).

After thinking about the above question, I'd now like to pose this one: if nothing we did could benefit ourselves personally, would we be motivated to do anything?  

"I'm arguing for selfishness, but a certain kind of selfishness"

I would say no, and I know that sounds really negative, but that's what this post is for - shedding light on the positive of being (a good kind of) selfish.

In the movie "Nell" there's this really though provoking line in the beginning where the characters are discussing selfishness and selfish intent and one person says something like "Even Mother Teresa wanted to know her life would help others." it's not wrong to be selfish, even those we put forth as the best of us fall prey to it. (Don't worry, I'm not trying to flip everything you learned in elementary school, I'm arguing for selfishness, but a certain kind of selfishness)

Now here is the big question: do selfish motives undermine any of the good things you may choose to do? I don't think so, I say this because once a good deed is done, the IMPACT is there, and that is what is known, that is what is felt. (great blog on that can be found here) 

So what if you didn't mean for something you said to hurt someone? It still did. 

Similarly, so what if inside you are a terrible person, so long as you do and/or tell others to do good things? No one but you are going to know your thoughts if they are not spoken or acted upon, and so they don't necessarily mean all that much, and they certainly can’t weaken anything you've done.

For example if you give your hot chocolate to a homeless person on a cold day, the kindness you showed them and the warmth the drink would afford them would make their day brighter, no? It doesn't matter if the reason you did it was because you wanted to feel like a good person. Your action still made life better for that person, and on a small scale your action still made the world a better place. Thought/intent does not do anything by itself. It needs to be translated into an action and/or words for it to do something.

Like with me, I try to do my best to advocate for feminism and social justice, but because I am a part of the disfavoured group, are my intentions selfish? 

I'd like to say no, but in reality the answer is probably yes. Does that make it wrong for me to advocate for the equitable treatment of people, women in particular? I think most people would agree with me when I say no, it doesn't. 

It's not wrong for me to not want to have to act differently from who I am just to be taken seriously. It's not wrong for me to want to be judged by my capabilities and if I make morally correct choices rather than the way my body looks, and it's not wrong for me to want this for all women.  

"In a way we need to be selfish, so we can take care of ourselves and be the best people we can be."

The other thing is that you need selfishness for self love. We tend to build ourselves around other people, and if we suffer for them, it's okay so long as it makes them happy right? That's noble to do, but you can't forget about yourself and your own needs. Because at the end of the day, your greatest duty is to yourself.  You might say, “Oh but I have a duty to my loved ones, I feel bad when they feel bad and I want to help them,” you empathize and may sort of feel what they feel, but the only feelings you'll ever feel keenly, in their most raw and pure form will be your own, you are not them, you don’t actually feel what they do. 

Also being willing to do anything for someone can lead to dangerous situations for you. Someone could be abusing you without you realizing it to be abuse. Also, if your whole identity is wrapped around one person, what would happen to you if that person leaves your life? So in a way we need to be selfish, so we can take care of ourselves and be the best people we can be.

It's important to work on yourself because then you can become a person with the capability to do great things, then you can become a great person. We can't have great societies if the building blocks, the people, are not also great (or at least more great than bad). If we don;t ever do anything for ourselves, we would never be able to reach that point.

Though I would never say that selflessness is wrong - there is a female philosopher named Ayn Rand that has a theory called "the Virtue of Selfishness" (read up on that here) where she argues that properly understood self interest is the basis of morality, and selflessness is immoral. 

I wouldn’t go that far, selfless acts like helping others and giving are probably the basis of kindness, but at the same time there needs to be a limit to stop selflessness from becoming self-harm. 

Also, in a way this idea sort of contradicts itself. Selflessness can stem from selfishness as I said above, so calling one moral and one immoral would mean each trait would flip flop around the line of moral and immoral.

So to sum up, selfish isn't bad when it's impact is good, be it self-love, the desire to feel like a good person, etc; Selfish is bad, when it's impact is bad.

In Which I talk about Butts (And their Portrayal in Music/The Media) Part III

Shout Out to the person who has been liking my posts and thereby adding to my presence on Google. (Sorry the thing isn't giving me an identity so I just have to go with "Awesome post-liker person" hope that alright :) )

And without further ado: For Part three I am featuring the big butt "trend" as well as talking more about fulfilling the self and challenging others' expectations of you.

The Big Butt Trend

So... this new big butt "trend" people are partially attributing to celebrities like Beyoncé Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj etc. Once again I'm going to go back to the problem of messing with your body to please other people. 

On the surface it might seem like the solution to the constant pressure to be skinny that has been predominant over approximately the last fifty years, but really I think it's just the same thing taking on a different front. 

There's still the pressure to look a certain way, there's still an ideal that not everyone would be physically able to achieve. The fact that it's about having more weight makes little difference. To be honest it's possible that it could be harder to meet the standards of this trend because the weight is idealized in certain areas and where you gain weight is not necessarily easy to control. 

"Must we really celebrate big butts by deriding small ones?"

The woman in red addresses the problem pretty well at approximately 1:46

There's a difference between celebrating and turning something into an expectation. 

I wouldn't even call it celebrating as there are several cases where by "celebrating" small butts/small bodies are scorned, (I talked a bit about such a case in Part I of this series, read that post here) and as the Huffington Post says "must we really celebrate big butts by deriding small ones?" (full article on that here)

There is a difference between celebrating and showing it off as "the way" to be beautiful. Because when you do that people are drawn into the trap of changing their body for other people. 

When it comes to beauty, people can be desperate, we resort to extremes such as literally SUCKING OUT our fat to be skinny, now that we want big butts, we're getting butt implants. 

And when we do it for other people often even when we do achieve what we feel are appropriate looks, we tend to still hate ourselves, as we start to view ourselves so negatively, and because society will never be satisfied, we always feel like we're not pretty/skinny/big/[insert other adjective here] ENOUGH. 

We just have to stop showing off a certain thing as beautiful, stop obsessing over body parts and start focusing on what matters to us. 

But when we do it for ourselves "Oh I like having big arms, I'm going to try to get big arms, oh I like skinny calves so I'm going to work toward skinny calves" only then when we're doing it to satisfy ourselves, and our health, only then are we able to accept and be satisfied with ourselves because we're aiming to fulfill ourselves and not others. 

I think we'd be a lot happier if we just let go of some of that burden because honestly always trying to please others is crazy hard. 

If we stop being concerned with what others think of us, I think we'd be a lot happier. When we stop obsessing and just take time to enjoy what we enjoy life is a lot less deplorable and that frees up time to do things like improving yourself, and discovering who you are and not what people want you to be. 

Besides, when we do our best to be the best person we can be, that high opinion and approval will come naturally.  

I mean, yeah, it feels great to put on something nice and know that other people will see you and have a positive opinion of the way you look, but that shouldn't be all you live for, there are other ways to get that feeling - think about the last time you did something and were really proud of it. Wasn't that amazing? Even better than getting a compliment on your outfit maybe? 

The other thing is you're never going to be able to please everyone and all it takes is one negative comment to make that great feeling come crashing down. 

"Question what the media shows as appropriate, evaluate it against your personal morals, and do your part in keeping whatever meanness you can out of the world."

The media definitely plays a role in this - bombarding us with ideals and what we should/shouldn't do, but that doesn't mean we are powerless about things either. (And I keep on saying this, but I really think it's important) Question what the media shows as appropriate, (Some of what it shows will truly be appropriate, some is not.) evaluate it against your personal morals, and do your part in keeping whatever meanness you can out of the world. 

A shift in the media to encompass a broader range of ideals would be awesome, but it would be very difficult, if not impossible to be able to include everyone. so let's try to change the Media, but we shouldn't be afraid to rely on ourselves either. 

And thus conclude my Three-part series on butts and the media. Thank you for reading this post, and if you read all three of them multiply that by three. (If you haven't read the others, here's a link to Part I, and here 's a link to Part II)

I'd love to hear about what you people of the internet think -- I know this can come off as really negative and not happy with anything, but when good intentions take a detour when being translated into action I think it's worthy to point that out, and remind people to think about the media so next time the detour is smaller, and/or doesn't affect people as much. 

So how are people feeling about this three part series? Do you like them? Would you prefer I do more series like this or space out blog posts on the same issues?

Share your opinions with me in the comments! I do believe I am still looking for my first comment, so get a commenting and I'm going to try to get a cool prize for the first overall comment on this blog. :)

In Which I talk about Butts (And their Portrayal in Music/The Media) Part II

For Part II I am featuring Nicki Minaj's Anaconda. For those who know anything about the song I'm sure you're very clear as to why I'm bringing it up. The music video features, to put it lightly, a lot of butts. 

Consideration Because of Reputation: 

Here is one of my main concerns, with a song and video like this I'm afraid of the ramifications. I'm not trying, nor do I want to try to control Nicki Minaj in any way, however I do think that especially when you are in a position like Nicki (being that famous, and having a large reach) you need to be careful as to how you're portraying yourself not only because of how it might affect you, but because how it might affect others like you. 

When Nicki Minaj show's off her butt, and her body in general as a sexual object, that creates an idea, a reputation of ALL women in the minds of some people. 

What she does, what anyone does with their body is TOTALLY their business and their decision UNTIL there is a possibility of affecting others negatively, then I feel like there needs to be more, and more careful, consideration about whether or not to follow through with the idea. Then I think that what you, the owner of the body wants should take a smaller chunk of importance and allow some priority to how it might affect others. 

Because this kind of thing feeds into the rape culture, it does, it feeds into the perception of women being a certain way and it can feed into male entitlement. It's the idea that "well if such a successful young woman is choosing to do this, clearly I can expect this from all women."

[More on] Messing with your body to please other people

A very prominent lyric in "Anaconda" goes "My anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hun." First off, has it been made clear that the person wants anything to do with said anaconda? Because assumption is NEVER good enough. 

Also, I'd like to point out that this is a situation where we need to take a step back and distinguish between what may be acceptable in fantasy [fiction] and reality. In all honesty, if a request like that had been directed at me I would have found it quite offensive. 

The person is essentially saying that unless the other's body is a certain way, that's not good enough for them. It puts all the importance, all the emphasis, on looks and there's none allotted to traits, character and/or other things that have been proven to be important for a healthy relationship. 

It almost threatens the person with "I won't be with you unless your body meets my standards" and sends messages like "your body needs to please me" which if you read Part I you would know I think messages like that are a huge problem.

Also it disregards the other person's health, something society really needs to value more. They're sort of asking you to do something potentially harmful to your health to please them, which I think is totally disrespectful. 

I do believe that getting things like that in real life are warning signs for an unhealthy relationship. Had this been me, I would have ended the relationship because there's no way I'd be with someone that treats me as nothing more than something to please them, no way I'd stick around with someone that disregards and disrespects me like that. 

And you might ask "what's the big deal it's just a song and/or just a lyric" but the truth is it can be a big deal. Clearly, I have noticed it, and I guarantee there are plenty of other people that will notice and have already noticed it. People are going to interpret things in all sorts of different ways, and that includes in ways that lean toward the negative or bad. 

The other thing is what we see others do, we do hold onto, consciously or unconsciously it stays with us, possibly for only a little while, possibly forever. (I'm not a scientist, I don't know) and if the person we see is like us, that's going to contribute to what we perceive ourselves as able to do, and what other people perceive of us, and of our limits. This in turn can affect what you can achieve because of your own perception of what you are capable of, what other people think you are capable of, and how seriously other people will take you. 

THAT is a big deal because of people aren't reaching their full potential... just think about it, we've already done so many amazing things in this world where not everyone is given the chance to reach their full potential, from exploring the universe to finding life-saving medicines to nearly defying the laws of the world that governs us we've done it all, think of what we could do if EVERYONE was given the chance to be their very best.  

So yeah, I think there should have been more responsibility taken and consideration put into some of the lyrics of "Anaconda" on the creators' parts, but I'm not going to call it some crazy terrible crime, and I'm not saying everyone needs to conform to my ideals. I'm just going to keep on reminding people of two things: try to be considerate, and remember that just because it's in the media, doesn't mean it's okay, or that it's the way things should be. 

So I wasn't planning to, but it seems like everything I have to say is calling for a Part III, so look for that in a few days. Right now I am looking for someone to be my first comment so share your thoughts with me in the comments of any of the posts and to the first person to comment on the blog overall, I'm going to try to get you something. :)

Peace,
Maggs