So I was listening to my itunes recently while getting dressed, and Alicia Keys " A Woman's Worth" came on. Being that I haven't heard that song since like 2001, I was excited when it came on and immediately put on my best diva face and began singing all the words. I have to admit that it's one of my favorite A.keys songs...cause I think we ( and as in we I mean society) sometimes forget a woman's worth ( especially a brown woman)....so of course I got to blog about it.
I think discovering your true "worth" in life, is one of the most difficult journeys a person can make. First, what determines a persons worth....more specifically what determines a woman's worth? Unfortunately for women, our worth is sometimes wrapped up in our physical being: either the way we look or the "things" we can do. It seems that some people ( both men and women) put more value in the roundness of someones ass or how well they can "suck -- swallow- then repeat", rather than their character or intelligence. With standards such as these, its hard not to reach for superficial criteria to define ourselves. But when it comes to establishing "worth", i don't think that using shallow specifications is the worse offensive. The worse offense has to be letting someone else define your own worth. I think people do this all the time: we rely on our boyfriends, fiance, husbands, lovers, family and friends to tell us how freakin' great we are. We constantly compare ourselves to others: even when we are not consciously trying to do so. I know I have personally struggled with this. I can name specific times when I have asked a boyfriend/ex-boyfriend to compare me to someone else. Why? why do I do that s***. Am I a masochist....emotional cutter ? Why do I want or need to hear I am prettier, smarter or better than someone else?... And why does it hurt sooo much to hear that I am not? I realize that by doing this I am just handing my worth over to someone else. Allowing somebody else to stick a "metaphorical price tag" on my forehead.... and determining what i'm good for. I want to learn how to start defining my own worth, make my own determinations of what is important... and try to live by my own standards.
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OH MY DAMN! this is a fantastic observation. what makes it the most interesting for me is to think of when i started to need to have my identity validated by another person. I couldn't help but think of the pre-puberty days when nothing i did mattered to anyone but myself. how i acted, dressed, spoke etc was all built on how i felt and the idea of being who i was. then it seemed that new physical attributes contributed to the new mental attitude. as a young girl, you couldn't do this or act like that for the fear of being labeled something and the idea of be ousted was like a virus. as people we are drawn to the idea of the group. it is a second nature to us. that i what i think makes it so hard when trying to define our worth.
ReplyDelete@ Shaina- Thank you for your comment. I would have to agree it does seem like human nature just to be validated by people. But i think it is important that people start trying to define their own standards. Don't get me wrong I do think that other people can push us to be our best...but when we start defining our own "value" or "worth" b/c if we don't we will never be "good enough" cause there will always be someone..bigger, stronger, prettier, younger...whatever
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