so many young innocent girls on tiktok

 i find myself dissociating in the mirror the most times. 

i am sixteen with my arms under my breasts, propping them up for a camera. i take the pictures thoroughly, multiple angles, and put them into my eyes only, not sent to anyone. i keep the pictures for just in case purposes.

 the pictures are fine, the cleavage is fine, my nipples look deflated, i'd convinced myself that i had inverted nipples and it made me feel like a large baby. my face was always fucked up looking so i'd slap some concealer that didn't match my skin tone on my acne and put my mom's brown mascara on my eyelashes. i would always end up just taking my face out of the frame in the end, it ruined the photo. 

i've deleted my snapchat so i can't take nudes anymore and a part of me is at peace with this but i also feel unsettled. i have lived 19 years and have only sent nudes to one person. the nudes are mine to keep and not to be spread. i wasn't necessarily looking for the gratification of another person nodding in agreement of my body but getting the shot correct. and for who? for myself. 

however, most people don't follow this philosophy, which i'm not shaming of because i have been victim of it in the past. i see so many underage girls on tik tok presenting themselves in the same way with different audios with boys commenting "grip reaper", "i know that it's pink", etc. punishing these girls in any way is redundant, as criticizing the individual over the system also often is. 

my controversial opinion is that i think we need to move past the statement of men shouldn't be sexualizing young girls, which is correct, but moving on to questioning why we as young girls are feeling the external pressure of sexualizing ourselves, or even unsexualizing ourselves. 

in this i suggest reading the article "everyone is beautiful and no one is horny". we are continuously allowing ourselves to be labeled into micro identities as "coquette girl", having trends in which we are looking to make ourselves have "fox eyes", and our obsession with finding which pictures are facetuned. the striving for authenticity while being in the face of perfection is killing a generation of women, and men who begin to understand these attributes. 

i think overall changing the word choice in which we use to make attributes towards our body heavily is changing the way that we are seeing ourselves and others. rather than striving towards a simple "hot", we are looking to reach the standards of having a thigh gap, no hip dips, or any other hyper specific word that is used to describe our bodies. this tricks down into men being aware of this diction, in which they now weaponize against women. 

the intuitive feeling of being attracted to someone can feel so scientific with the way that we are now describing body parts. why the fuck are men attracted to white toenails? it sounds dumb as hell out loud.  this combined with wellness culture, where we are being told to see our body as a function rather than a mechanism of pleasure, creates a horrible culture where people are less connected and less likely to pursue certain people because of defined attributes. 

this argument follows the path of having "red flags". it seems like we want reasons to hate people, to exclude people. i think social media just perpetrates this because its easy to dismiss those that we don't see as desirable by popular standards through the means of blocking. and the messages are put into more peoples heads. however, most of the things i'm saying are more cronically online and enforced online, but i think it's fair to say that these thoughts trickle into real life. 

i'm not sure if any of this makes sense but! just a thought.