I grew up in a small town in The South, before the internet came of age. This meant that I was heavily influenced by now outdated cultural and social norms.

When my 7th grade aptitude test came back with 99th percentile in spatial reasoning my Careers teacher said “well, you’re a girl so you can’t be a mechanic…”

My single mother also helped enforce a few unhealthy ideas about what it meant to be a girl child growing up in the 90’s. She hated her body and was always trying the latest fad diet. I helped her recover from breast augmentation when I was 11.

My siblings and I were rewarded for being thin, and I always got the biggest prizes. (Thank goodness for undiagnosed autoimmune disease!)

Mom hated the signs of aging on her body even more than excess fat. When I look down at my own hands now, I see her’s. I can still hear “oh, I hate my veiny hands! They look so old!”.

I watched her rush into one abusive marriage after only 3 months of dating for fear of being alone. (Thank god she got more sense and waited 6 months before marrying my amazing step-dad*.)

*Not being sarcastic. He is amazing, patient, and kind.

When I cut my (long blonde) hair into a pixie cut (hey, it was the 90’s man!) mom cried and asked if I was a lesbian. She had always praised me for being thin, feminine, and delicate despite the fact that I longed to be seen as strong, smart, and capable.

So I spent my 20’s looking for someone to love, accept and truly understand me. I jumped from one shitty relationship I wasn’t ready for to another. I wasted a lot of time and energy.

Soon enough I found my 20’s coming to an end. I hadn’t formally educated myself or even really invested in building on my talents. Instead, I coasted from one dead end job to another relying on charisma and good looks.

So, after a devastating break up that left me homeless in Manhattan at 3:30 am, I decided to stop wasting my effort. I realized how much time and energy I had put into that person, only to add them to a list of people it’s not polite to bring up at dinner. (Not to mention it took me a month to get my cat back from that bastard).

I had drifted from one meaningless job/place/relationship to another before a simple truth started to hit home:

You have to love yourself before you can love somebody else.

I’d somehow forgotten along the way that I was intensely fucking fabulous. That I was so much more than a “thin, pretty, blonde”. That I have a whole life ahead of me, full of potential and fueled by creativity and talent.

I suddenly felt guilty for ignoring those talents and abilities for so long instead of investing in myself. I’d been caught up with this idea that someone else needed to save me I ignored my capabilities to save myself.

The last year of my 20’s was incredibly powerful. I decided to change my life and began to actually show myself love. The big 30 came as a relief.

I was not, like so many from my mother’s generation, convinced that women over a certain age “ought to behave a certain way”. I was not, like many from the generation before her, terrified that reproduction was my only asset and that being a mother was my ultimate goal.

And, for fuck’s sake, I was not like this:

Head’s up ladies, it’s 2017, not 1957.

Girls, women, ladies, those who identify as female, and those born with that assigned gender role: stop being basic fucking bitches to each other, please.

I don’t know the back story, but this is the least creative approach to insulting someone I’ve seen in a while.

This sort of shit starts and ends with us. So let’s be the generation that ends this ignorance and embraces our mothers and sisters with love and acceptance, instead of ridicule and fear mongering.