you know things are bad when I make the top five in the swimsuit competition

LADIES. I have beef. It's not for dinner. It's with you. My adorable progeny and I went to the splash pad (for the non-moms a splash pad is like running through the sprinklers, but the sprinklers move and change and are choreographed to Mozart's Requiem in D Minor). It was fun. And sad. Mostly fun. But still sad enough that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Alls I wanna know is

WHEN DID WE ALL GIVE UP?

Uh, yeah, having a baby messes you up. I have some crazy stretch marks and I am pretty sure the geography of my body will never be the same. But that's not what I am talking about. I am not telling you to be freaky like Victoria Beckham and be so skinny that you sharing jeggings with your newborn. Being a mama I don't always want to spend my "baby free" time sweating to the oldies. Physical fitness is important, but it's not what makes you beautiful.

Today I was faced with a lot of abandon-all-hope haircuts and skirts over shorts. It's no wonder that one of the biggest clubs in the world has an unflattering jean named after us. After all the kings, queens, humanitarians, billionaires, and world-changers we have collectively given birth to and then raised, one would hope that people would think of something besides just jeans to describe us. Nope.

So why have we all just given in to it? Can we not have a little pride in ourselves? I've watched enough What not to Wear to know that the excuse is always the same. No money, no time, no knowledge. Blah blah blah. I, for one, don't want to Liz Lemon my way through life. I don't want to have to develop a personality because I no longer have looks (ha). I know, I know. We all have this little battle raging in us. This is how it goes:

Me: I don't want to kill myself to be beautiful just because society tells me I am a woman and that beauty is where my value lies. Sure, it can help a man to be good looking, but for a man to NOT be good looking wouldn't hold him back the way it would a woman. C'mon, we all know that Hilary would've had a better chance if she were better looking. It's a terrible double standard!

Also Me: Yes, but regardless of your motives, whether you are inadvertently driven by society or not, it makes you feel good to be beautiful.

Me: My intelligence requires me to reject that. I pretty much just want to look like a hag to spite society

Also Me: But by doing that, you are still responding to society. Just because you are not responding as a proponent doesn't mean you have risen above the argument. You, my ugly friend, are just as influenced by society as I am.

Me: It is unfair that this argument is relevant to women alone.

Also Me: Is it unfair? Or is it because of us that it even exists? Biologically men are attracted to certain characteristics of a woman that may point towards her ability to procreate. In our less primitive world we call those characteristics beauty. However, women are also attracted to men in a biological offspring-ability way. I think the difference here is that women have a competitiveness that men lack. Sure, men are competitive, but it's more like a primal "I kill animal/dunk basketball more than you" and for women it's a more refined (but still primal) "I want to procreate with that man in order for my offspring to have the best chance of survival, but he's got his eye on you so I will pick out your flaws to convince him that I am a better mate" type thing.

Me: Hmmm. So you are saying there have ALWAYS been Regina Georges?

Also Me: That is exactly what I am saying.

Which isn't really the end of the argument. I can keep going on for days about this inner-struggle. But when it really boils down to it, it's kind of like money. People with no money obsess over money. People with lots of money obsess over money. Someday I want to land right in the middle, where we have enough money that we never have to think about money, but where we don't have enough to go around wanting to show everyone our stacks of jewelry and gold toothpaste. It's the same with beauty. I want to look good enough that I am not constantly self-conscious, but I want to be ugly enough to keep me humble. Right in the middle, where I don't have to think about things. Where life is simple and I can focus on the things that really matter in life. Like how to convince McDonald's to deliver.