Happy 4th of July weekend!

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“my dear girlfriends, in a cafe after the spa. they all, for the record, have brilliant minds.”

I’ve always been a woman’s woman, and I’ve always read women’s blogs way more often than those written by men. The lives of other women interest me, and when I realized that there was an entire network of women bloggers I was stoked, and I booked a trip to BlogHer this July.

Since I decided to go I started reading a lot more BlogHer bound ladies, and in a lot of them there is a hugely disappointing theme of self deprecation in blog after blog after blog that really took me by surprise.

I’m all for poking good-natured fun at myself… I do weird shit sometimes, like blending pieces of paper with a hand mixer, but I’m very careful never to say anything about myself that I wouldn’t say to my best friend, or my sisters, or any other woman. Think about it: if you’re a chick, picture your reaction if you were at a coffee shop with two other women you’re friends with. Friend A says to Friend B, “Ugh! Your hair looks so retarded today!”

The horror. The nerve! But so many of us say stuff like that about ourselves all the time, and it’s just not cool. And I know, women are harsh on their appearances because of the media purporting a standard of beauty that is unattainable to 99% of us. To that I’ll just say, “Baby, put on some lipstick if you’re feeling down, and hold your head high. You belong here.” And that’s all I’ll say about it because what I saw went so much deeper.

I noticed a lot of, “I’m not as smart as so-and-so” or “I know that I’m silly for saying this, but…” in opening paragraphs, and I was all “Say WHAT?!” Now, in addition to feeling bad about our hair-skin-thighs-fingernails we have moved on to our minds. OUR MINDS! There is a collective undercurrent of “feeling bad”, about our creativity and intelligence, and THIS IS NOT FUCKING OK. I’m bummed. These are the women I had hoped to look up to.

I’m not sure what to think about this, and I’m hoping that further reading will enlighten me. Why is this happening? What can we do about it? And where the hell are the feisty, speak-her-mind ladies? I want to hang with them.

If the above embed doesn’t work, go here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/real-women-respond-to-palin-webathon

or here: http://womenrespondtopalin.com/