b-sides

If you are a woman, if you’re a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

…And it’s going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere. Especially women’s and gay men’s culture. It’s all about how you have to look a certain way or else you’re worthless. You know when you look in the mirror and you think ‘oh, I’m so fat, I’m so old, I’m so ugly’, don’t you know, that’s not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising, magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around creme that doesn’t turn around shit.

When you don’t have self-esteem you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you really wanna go for, you will hesitate to ask for a raise, you will hesitate to call yourself an American, you will hesitate to report a rape, you will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote, you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution and our revolution is long overdue.

“Everyone wants to know what the sex is like.

It’s different from being with a man, for all the obvious reasons, and many more that you’d never imagine. For one thing, it’s more emotional, and there’s less to prove. There are moments that are soft and tender, and others that are raw and intense — but it’s not as if there’s a guy to play the dominant role and a girl to play the passive one. We take turns being protected and being the protector.

Sex with a woman is what you wish it was with a man but rarely seems to be: all about the journey, and not the destinations. It’s foreplay forever. It is the freedom to not have to suck in your stomach or think about cellulite. It is being able to say, that feels good and, more important, that doesn’t. I will admit that, at first, it was strange to curl up in Vanessa’s arms when I was used to resting against a muscular chest — but the strangeness wasn’t unpleasant. Just unfamiliar, as if I’d suddenly moved to the rainforest after living in the desert.

It is another kind of beautiful.” — Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home