STOP TELLING ME LOW CONFIDENCE IS BEAUTIFUL!

Oh. Hi there. I'm back. Thanks for noticing.

I visited my little niece and she is perfect. I also helped my aunt through an eye surgery, which was successful. All around a trip well spent. And one which gave me a chance to get a little inspiration for blogging.

You see, I have XM radio in my personal car here in Austin. As such, I can pretty carefully listen to whatever I'd like on the radio. But in Indy, driving my aunt's car, I had to listen to normal radio (yes I'm a radio snob.) And I heard this song by One Direction.

It's called "What Makes You Beautiful" and it made me FUME.

Here's the part I'm particularly stuck on:

You don't know you're beautiful!
If only you saw what I could see
you'd understand why I want you so desperatley
Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe
...You don't know you're beautiful!
...That's what makes you beautiful!

(Emphasis mine and I cut out some silly "ohs" and stuff--you get the gist.)

(*&@$(*&@#$(#*$)#($

I mean--here's this guy dating a girl with a self-esteem problem and he wants her to see what he can see in her, except why would she want to do that because the very thing that makes her beautiful, according to him, is the fact that she's oblivious to her own beauty.

Wait...wait... this theme sounds familiar. Bruno Mars, can you help me out?

Yeah, I know, I know, when I compliment her she won't believe me
And it's so, it's so, sad to think that she don't see what I see

 ...Her lips, her lips, I could kiss them all day if she let me
Her laugh, her laugh, she hates but I think it's so sexy

Hey are you guys dating the same girl? No?! You mean there's a whole crop of young women with self esteem issues?

Shocker.

I've written countless times about the many ways that our society tells women and girls they aren't good enough, but here we have some of today's biggest male pop stars actually glorifying low self-esteem. The whole thing is just so awful. On the off chance that a girl does come up in this world thinking she's pretty, we now have an extra level of soul-crushing messages telling her that it's also a problem to have confidence.

I mean, I'm not in favor of vanity or cockiness, but seriously?! There's no need to tell me low confidence is beautiful.

Sigh.