What is a Real Woman?

With talks of the trans Miss America becoming disqualified because she isn't a 'real' woman.. I've been thinking a lot about what makes a woman a real woman (and how hard it was for me to even type that sentence because of how ridiculous it sounds). Below is a list of qualities that you apparently have to have in order to be a "woman":

• Be a real woman and pose in your undies for our company. Make women want to buy our product because we use 'real' women to advertise with. What makes you a real woman in the eyes of Dove? Be white, black, or brown. Love hanging out with other women in your undies. Have a genetically 'normal' looking body. Be tall. Have no rolls. Have no visible 'disability' (which is a topic I'll go into in another post. In my eyes, no body is a disability, if you're born that way, you're born that way DAMNIT). Puke.
• Have curves. Because apparently if you're born on the thinner side then you aren't a woman. 
• Read the bible and follow its fantastic principles... barf.
• Read stupid ass Facebook pages like this. 
• You work your hardest to be thin, because only women with 'willpower' deserve the title of being woman. You will try any fad diet, any extreme diet pill, and do anything to have that thin body.
• Real Women Don't Wear a Size 2?

This shit pisses me off. If you don't have curves you're not a woman? 

This movement goes both ways, people. You can't body bash thin women, or women without breasts, or women without big hips.. you can't do this shit and expect people to accept your body. The movement is bigger than this. Yes, bigger women are left out of many advertised images we see every damn day. But women are also very sexualized in our advertising.. why aren't we working together and fighting that.. instead of determining which of our bodies is the real one? 

Fat women are thought to eat all of the time while thin women are thought to starve themselves. Those are the women we see. What about women in wheelchairs? What about women that have had breast cancer and had to have surgery to get rid of it? What about little women? What about women with mental disorders? What about women that just happened to be born genetically male but were mentally female and transitioned? Are all of these women not real women? WE ARE ALL REAL WOMEN. 

COME ON PEOPLE. We have to fight together, not against each other. We need to show that ALL women are real women.. not just women with curves, not just women with long or short hair, not just women who shave or don't shave, not just women who are lesbians or straight or bisexual or asexual, not just women who have children or don't have children, not just one person or another. ALL WOMEN.

So.. are you a fake woman according to the standards that we have to live up to in our society? I am!

xoxo
CORTNIE