Confessions from a recovered mean girl

I used to be a bitch. Straight out- I was a mean girl. My insecurities and lack of self-worth resulted in me transferring my own self judgement onto others.

I grew up surrounded by men and patriarchal misogynistic men at that. Women were less than men, they were objects and their bodies were open for opinion. I learnt quickly that to survive in this world that I would need to see the world the same way that they do or become a victim of it.

I’ve been that woman who puts down other women. I used to pride myself on not being like “typical” women. I would shame women to men about being needy, controlling or emotional. I would criticise what they were wearing, if their behaviour was appropriate or not and if I thought they were “easy” or a “prick tease”.

Last week I  was reminded of who I used to be as I attended an ice hockey game between Canada and the USA. Apart from me having a hell of a time yelling and screaming in a way that is only really socially appropriate at sporting games, I happened to sit next to two well presented women and out of sheer proximity I was privy to their conversations.

Mostly, I tuned them out as I was more interested in the game and the company that I was with, however during one of the breaks, I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. It went a little something like this:

Person 1: Have you seen her lately?

Person 2: Yeah, I saw her last week. She was wearing those shorts again-ergh!

P1: Really? Yuck, she really shouldn’t wear them. She has huge thighs and tonnes of cellulite

P2: I know! She just swans around in them as if she thinks no one notices. She’s really got to stop

P1: I mean, I’m all in for body positivity but she takes it too far- it’s disgusting.

At this point I tuned out, I had to. In order to not cause an outright riot and fly off the handle , I kept my thoughts to myself. I was hurt, upset and disgusted.

I was upset for their “friend” who clearly wouldn’t know what was being said behind her back. I was saddened for these two women who felt the need to speak so venomously about someone that they care about. Most of all, I felt for us as women.

All the old feelings of inadequacy came rushing back. Right here next to me was proof that people do judge and more often than not they are the people that we call friends. I recall having similar conversations about my friends in years gone by and how desperate I was to feel like I belonged- oh the irony.

I put down others to make myself feel better- the ultimate bully has insufferable low esteem. As someone who now loves themselves, has great self esteem and works hard to see all people as whole and complete, the conversation I overheard was heart breaking.

We have had to fight for every right we have, our bodies are compared against a computer program and we are still treated like ornaments by many people around the world.

Yet here we are, fighting each other. Putting ourselves down and shaming our own. Haven’t we been through enough? Don’t we get enough shaming from the media without us throwing in some more of our own?

I know why they felt the need to say what they did. I understand the feelings of being threatened and therefore climbing on top of others to bring themselves back up but it still makes me sad.

I set a challenged for you. I challenge you to stop the bitching, stop the judging and stop the shaming. We have all done this and like these women, you may not even be aware that you do it. If you have time to judge then you don’t have time to love.

Self-love starts from within, there is no doubt about it. If you are judging others and putting them down ( even in your head) then you are walking down a very slippery slope.

Every time you judge someone else, you are judging yourself. Choose your thoughts and words wisely.

Let’s lift each other up and show ourselves how magnificent we truly are.

Love Katie Nicole

x

The truth about confidence that you probably don't want to hear

In the personal development world the term “backing yourself” gets throw around a lot. People are referring to the need to believe in yourself, to have confidence and to bet on your own success.

It’s seems an easy enough thing to talk about, all you need to do is believe in yourself; the gurus make it seem so simple. When you go to apply for your new job, start out dating again or decide it’s time for you, why don’t you just take a deep breath and believe in yourself?

Like many things, it’s easier said than done. When we have been conditioned to think poorly of ourselves and had reinforcement to back up those beliefs, it can be extremely challenging to step up to the plate.

You’ve been running the story over and over in your head about why you can’t, why someone else will probably get the job and how nothing you do is ever enough.

Perhaps you’ve read self-help books, done some courses in assertiveness and tried your best to build yourself up but it is short lived, you feel pumped up for a little while only to find yourself crashing back down again; perhaps this time even lower than you were before. Like yo-yo dieting for your self-worth.

You feel depleted and lost, unsure of where to next because you’ve failed to believe in yourself; AGAIN!

When you’re trapped in this cycle, all the positive things that happen in your life are put down to luck and all the negative things are your fault. As if there is some inherent gap deep within you that means that you are to blame. When you blame yourself, you are giving your power to the circumstances, to your past and to the result.

You’re disempowered and here’s what you’re not being told.

 You think you’re busy taking so much responsibility for all the troubles in your life by beating yourself up and blaming yourself but the truth is, you’re obedient. You are pleasing everyone else around you and playing by their rules, not your own and you’re not taking any true responsibility for your life, you’re avoiding it and keeping yourself small.

You’re giving away your power by allowing others to take credit for your success and bearing the burden of all your troubles. It’s time to grow up- yeah, I just said that. GROW UP.

If the problems in your life are your “fault” then so is your success. It’s time to suck it up and own all of your results in life.  Even the little voice inside your head that’s whingeing right now says “but how?”- own that.

True responsibility is about owning your life. No one is making you stay in that shitty job. No one is forcing you to live a mediocre life. In the same vein, no one else is creating the opportunities that are appearing- that’s you.  

It’s time that we stopped acting like children and decide to take responsibility for our lives; for the wins and the lessons. It’s all yours.

Believing in yourself, backing yourself and  having great confidence begins when you decide to stop lying to yourself and own the fact that this is your life. Whether you like it or not, you got yourself here and it’s up to you to change it if it’s not working for you.

Get help, take ownership and start living life by your rules. Screw obedience, take responsibility.

Much love and happy self -loving

Katie Nicole
P.S Get your  FREE 5 Secrets to Bulletproof Confidence e-book here

A word on fuckability

This word has been in or around my consciousness for many years, yet today it seems to have permeated me and in combination with some fairly powerful revelations of my misogynistic rearing I have come to notice how much I have been ruled by this word or rather its impact on my being.

Girls do and girls do not. I certainly wasn’t raised a princess, more of a subordinate to my 4 male siblings and father. Now, there is no way that any of them would feel that I was raised as less; I was loved, taken care of and played an important role in my family.

What they (my male relations) probably do not or did not realise is that the undertones, pre suppositions and general demeanour towards women started me on the back foot; I’m sure my mother didn’t realise this either being under the same rule set.

You see, I watched a porno for the first time when I was about 6 or 7. It was a cartoon porno but still portrayed a woman being penetrated explicitly by not only independent army dicks with walking balls but monkeys as well. She pretended to like it. I pretended to know what it meant.

I overheard conversations of my brothers and their friends talking about who they would fuck, why they wouldn’t fuck this chick unless she had a bag on her head and what “hot” women look like.

I saw it on screens, in magazines, conversations and observing my male counterparts in public. I saw it and felt it first hand when I “bloomed” at age 11. I suddenly became interesting to men. I pretended to like it. I thought I was meant to like it.

For my entire life I have been called beautiful, yet all I wanted to be was “hot”. I wanted to be leered at the way my brother’s friends leered at the hot girls at school. I wanted them to want me, not because I had a great personality or I was beautiful. I wanted their lust, I wanted their attention. I wanted nothing more than to be fuckable. I thought I was meant to want it.

I well up as I write this. I’m disgusted to think I grew up in a world where that was all I thought my value was, to be fucked. For men to want to fuck me. I dieted so that I could be skinny and more men would want me. I cut myself when the pain of looking like a grown woman at 15 was too much to bear compared to the (what I thought) perfect girls who were short, skinny and with perky boobs. They were fuckable. I was a big, friendly, giant and hated it. Lucky I had big tits- my saving grace of fuckability. Sigh.

I once thought that my love hate relationship with my body spawned from media and societal pressures and I guess in some way it has. What I now know is that I was born a woman and raised to believe that that was somehow a bear I had to cross. I was to watch the men play sport and laugh along when I was called a spastic or unco for trying something new- I stopped trying. I was to accept that men dictated my value. I was to accept that “boys will be boys” when they spoke of my genitals, teased me while they gawked at my breasts and treated my friends like sex objects. I secretly wished I was the sex object.

All that, it would seem was my reality. I actually never knew that I needed or wanted feminism (or equal rights for those of you who find that word abhorrent) because I was raised to think I was a strong, independent woman. I could go get a job, I could vote, I could leave the house unaccompanied and I wasn’t expected to get married right away. I thought that the bra burners of my foremothers had done all the work and I was set free and easy. All that “feminist” crap was for women who wanted world domination not equality. Mm? I wonder where I learnt that one.

Despite identifying as Bi, I have never felt the same need from a woman. I have never felt the need to be fuckable, yet as this is all I have known I find dating women an interesting as unusual experience. I don’t know where my value is anymore. I’m not sure what I’m meant to do if I’m not trying to solely be the eye candy of my partner.

I reflect on the day I went from long luscious hair to a shaved head. I instantly went off the “fuckable” radar and it was liberating. People talked to me because they were curious and the energy of their conversations were that of respect and curiosity rather than “how long will it take me to bone her?”

I have enjoyed taking the immediate equation of sex out of the picture and to be seen as a whole (yes my sexiness included) not as an object of a man’s  (or woman’s for that matter) pleasure. I used to do pretty well anything to get the attention of a man and like most women have been treated disgustingly by men willing to take advantage of that.

Well, in some ways my “fuckability” has gone up. I now say “fuck you” to those people who try and define me and others as objects. I say “fuck ‘em” to the haters that assume females deserve less. I say “ fuck your beauty standards” and dress however it suits me and I say “Fuck yeah” to the incredible humans who have brought my voice to light on a subject that society tells us should be in the dark….or back in the kitchen.

P.S A few bits that have inspired me lately. Worth watching.

http://www.newsner.com/en/2015/12/a-daughters-words-is-moving-millions-dear-dad-i-will-be-called-a-whore/

http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/australians-on-porn/DO1509H001S00

                                      Before and after... a fuckability 180.

I hate my body.......

…..but I wish I didn’t. I hate how scary it is to post a partial nude picture of myself on social media when the above statement is true.

I’ve been lying to myself, for years, for decades really. I’ve actually convinced myself that I love myself and my body, that I don’t care about what others think about me and I am proud of my body despite it not falling in line with societies “ideal” body.

Being someone that is confident, someone that has never really hid my body and someone who tends to make her friends feel comfortable about their own bodies by getting my kit off, I always assumed that I didn’t have any body image issues.

I’m a strong advocate of loving your body. As a confidence coach I am passionate about helping women to be comfortable in their own skin and I firmly believe that your body should be more about function that feature. I believe that we need to define our own sense of self worth and value irrelevant of our bodies.

I hear many people talk about beauty standards and defining your own. To me we are still focussed on being beautiful and not on being a person of value. Defining your own beauty or knowing that you are “beautiful” just the way you are, is still placing an enormous amount of value on what we look like, but I digress.

Writing now, I feel like I could spruik for a thousand years on how who you are and what you bring to the world should have far greater value than how you look. I’m angry at the media and social norms for teaching us that we need to be something that we are not and I disagree vehemently with the idea ( and delivery) of the objectification of women in the media.

I’m pissed because I believe in fucking it all off and rocking out to your own rhythm. I believe that everyone and every body has the right to feel attractive, worth while, sexy and valuable. I believe in all of this, I believe desperately in loving your self not matter what you look like.

Except I don’t. * Sigh* I don’t. I know all the above rant to be true or at least I wish it was. It’s complicated because I know it to be true yet I still hate my body. Deep down I hate it. I convince myself that I am proud of it but if I am brutally honest with myself, I think it’s shit.

I think it should look different in almost every way. It should be lighter, it should have less fat, a lot less. It should be shorter but not too short, it shouldn’t have wide thighs or a round, squishy stomach. It needs to have a gap between it’s thighs.  It should keep the large breasts that I adorn yet they should be firm and perky, not soft and tear dropped. My curves can stay yet they should really be more defined, I should have a slimmer waist and a firmer ass. My arms need toning because the tuck shop lady floppy bits are really not ok. My skin should be clearer. My teeth need to be whiter and straighter. My feet are too big, I have too much hair on my body in some places and it’s not thick enough in others. My eyes should be brighter, my nails more shapely. I should have less visible veins and more prominent features. Blurch!!!!

Absurd isn’t it? My veins are too big? What the actual fuck? Insanely enough, I could keep going.

If you’re exhausted by reading this, then know that I am too. For many of you, you probably have an even more extensive list.

I’ve been lying to myself. I do honestly believe that loving myself as I am is my given right and if we go a litter deeper we might even find that I do love my body (Ahh yes, all the contradictions!). You see I have no problem getting nude, in fact I think it’s awesome. I have no issues in sharing my curves and accentuating my shape. When I think about my body outside of the messed up messages and imagery I have received over my life, I actually think I’m pretty hot.

Here comes the but. I have realised that I feel ashamed for loving my body. I feel that being over weight means that I have no right to be comfortable in my own skin. Even when I’ve been lighter I have never thought it was ok to feel sexy or attractive or more importantly, of value. I’ve been brainwashed to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with me; that I need to change myself somehow in order to get that little bit closer to perfection. I’ve been lied to that loving myself is not ok, nor should it be. In order to be accepted I must dislike my body and even better if I hate it and myself to boot.

It’s socially acceptable to talk about the bits we hate about ourselves, I have always been seen as a weirdo for accepting my body. I should be ashamed of my body, particularly if I am overweight. How dare I exercise regularly, drink plenty of water and eat good food most of the time, be overweight and be ok with that.

No matter what we look like we are taught to hate our bodies by the messaging splashed all over society. Everywhere you turn there is someone telling you to shape this, change that, enhance that, tone this down, get fitter, lose weight, be taller, improve this etc. What it’s ALL saying is that you are somehow not good enough the way you are and by buying (or buying into) the next big thing, then maybe you will be good enough, but unlikely.

I still struggle with this, being aware of it is only the beginning of the journey. I do love my body, coming to terms with the fact that the world thinks I should be ashamed of it is where my journey continues. Clearly I care more about what the world thinks of me that I have previously been ok to admit.

So here I am, just me and maybe what I really mean to say is; I care what others think of me and I wish I didn’t. I'm hoping this helps.