"Meet loving, active women"

"Meet loving, active women" 
said the sidebar ad - and I 
immediately felt guilty, because 

the woman pictured was fat. 
I felt guilty for society. That 
means me too. Society, among 
others, is my own damn fault 
if I'm in it.

And oh I am. We gave that poor 
girl hell with unrealistic body 
nonsense, shame game, weaponized
self-image problem and all the rest.

A gender culture war with battles
doled out daily in a brutal schedule 
that only feels random because it 
always is. An unending reaming 
by impossible standards that no
one gets right. 

Impossible. They couldn't. Shit
that everybody's supposed to live 
up to can't be right. Can't be gotten 

right. 

The loving, active women you meet 
have been through a deep, vile slog 
of men and women you can't even 
imagine, unless you're one of them. 

And fuck you if you think you know 
what she's been through unless, 
you know, 

that's you.