I am not a commodity.

Facebook holds 879 tagged pictures of me. Spread out through 45 albums, I have added over 2000 pictures.  These are pictures of me having fun.  Pictures of vacations and parties and weddings and days at home.  Pictures of my child, my husband, my family and friends.  They are snapshots of a life filled with love and fun.  Not all of these pictures are flattering.  I'm fine with that.  I've never had concerns about sharing them with anyone I choose to associate with on Facebook.

Then, Saturday night, this happened.

Moving past the fact that the picture in question is from 2008, and that this person had to crawl through plenty of other pictures of me and my family and my life to find it, I now refuse to have concerns about the pictures I have out there.

I have spent way too much time being uncomfortable with my body, and with my face.  I have spent too many years trying to deny that I can be found attractive.  I worried that these things didn't reflect the person that I am, and that they detracted from that. I worried that I needed to be nice to people who made me uncomfortable when they made comments about my ass, or my tits, or my body in general, because I didn't mean to be noticed like that.  So if I was noticed in that way it was probably my fault, and I needed to make it ok. I needed to be nice, because they meant it as a compliment.

FUCK.

THAT.

I'm most upset with myself that I STILL told him it was ok, and I would take it as a compliment.  I know full fucking well that it isn't.  That conversation has NOTHING to do with me as a person, and everything to do with my body as a commodity.

Nothing about me is a commodity.  

This is true for every single person on the planet.  

This was verbal sexual attack.  This happened because someone I know, someone I have spent time with and chatted with and smiled at, chose to view me as an object, and more importantly, thought that this was fine.  

This is not fine. I fight every day to be respected as a person.  I work every day to be a good one.  I have to live every day knowing that any number of people will discount all of that, and only see a sex object.  This will be the case no matter how I dress, or what pictures I choose to share.  This will be the case for every woman I know.  

This makes me really angry.  There isn't a lot that I can do about it, but I know that I will NEVER apologize for it again.  I will never say it's ok, and I will never again categorize it as a compliment.

This is the picture in question.  

These are my lips.  This is my mouth.  I will not be ashamed of them, and I will use them to speak up for myself.