The Woman Who Lies
By: Jamiline Marie Lebrilla
A woman owns herself, she says. She has power in her own right and walks her own course on no one's opinions but her own. She is magnificent. She is beautiful. She delights in tormenting men, and she derives power from their glances. There are many women like this, but they can also be . . . the worst kind of woman.
We have dozens of beauty products, to make us white, to make us thin, and to change our faces and our bodies.
But why are they there? It is because the Woman Who Lies does not own herself.
Who owns her? Men own her.
The Woman Who Lies delights in inducing stares, stammering proposals, handsome men coming up to her and asking her out. But if they were not there, where would she be? Her confidence in herself is taken from their attention. Her self-respect is taken from their admiration of her. She gauges her worth on how much they desire her, and so, she changes herself to be the ideal they want.
Like a simpleton, the Woman Who Lies buys the clothes they choose for her, she cuts her hair to the length they want, their desires for her become her own desires. Now, their pleasures become hers, and the Woman Who Lies consoles herself by saying that she is not owned, but that she owns them, for she controls the men like puppets on a string the way they trip over themselves to come to her.
But does she not realize that she does not own them, but that they own her? They did not tell her to buy these clothes, but she does. They did not tell her to cut her hair to this length, but she cuts it. She has let the unconscious desires of men destroy her own. They control her desires. They control the wants she chooses for herself, and unbelievably, they make her like it.
The Woman Who Lies is a true woman no longer. She is a drone to the wants of men. She disregards her capacity for her own type of beauty and takes as her standard, that of man's. She loses her own self, and in the process, is not only a fake to the whole of society, but also to herself. To do such a thing is a crime, and yet, she allows it. Her crime too, is that she does not question, she does not ask herself, why.
The Woman Who Lies no longer owns herself because she has no self to speak of. She is a patchwork doll made of a man's idea of separate body parts. She is his ideal of legs, breasts, hips, waist, and face. They own her, because she has let them own her. She has allowed herself to be plundered by them, not physically, but mentally, the most destructive plundering of all.
I am not talking here of all women, but of a state of mind, an attitude if you will. As long as you know yourself and your capacity for your own beauty, for your own…individuality…if you will, then, you are Not the Woman That Lies.