What is the most hurtful part for an SO?

Wow. There are so many hurtful parts, many of them already eloquently expressed in the posts above.

For me, one of the most hurtful parts is this: From the moment we hit puberty and quite often even before, we as women are judged and found "not good enough". Deep inside, we all long to be beautiful. Even as little girls, we twirl around in our tutus and look expectantly at our daddies. "Am I pretty? Am I a princess?"

But the world judges us. Society defines beauty in a very narrow box, and any woman who falls outside that box is not enough. We are not thin enough, beautiful enough, sexy enough, smart enough, good enough. Our bodies in their natural, voluptous, life-giving and nourished states are not enough.

We must be thinner. We must erase heft, size, flesh. We must apologize for taking up space. It is not good enough to be a size 0, now we must strive to be 00--less than nothing.

Our natural breasts are not enough. Now nearly all breasts shown by the media are 'enhanced'. Round, full, and firm breasts are in---soft, fleshy, real ones who have nourished babies must be 'fixed'.

Our natural buttucks are not enough. Now it is not enough to be fit, our behinds have been claimed too saggy, too flat, burdened with too much fat. We need surgery to insert plastic here too. Another way to make us more like dolls and less human.

Our natural state is not enough. We need to shave, wax, and trim numerous body parts every single day.

Our natural skin is not enough. Every image of women we are bombarded with are airbrushed to non-human proportions. No pores, no pimples, no freckles, no blemishes, no stretch marks, no veins, no wrinkles, no undereye shadows, no markers that we are real.

Our natural faces are not enough--we need creams, potions, and serums to plump, freshen, rejuvinate, renew, and erase. We need pastes and stains to color our cheeks and our lips, pencils and liners to make our eyes bigger and brighter. We need powders and blotters to rid our skin of oil or shine.

Our natural hair is not enough. It must be straightened, defrizzed, defined, shined, and tamed.

Everything about us is 'not good enough'. We must have a bathroom stuffed with expensive products that promise to 'fix' whatever is wrong with us. We must undergo painful, risky, and costly surgery to recreate ourselves in the image of 'Barbie", of the "P-Star", the ultimate representation of female beauty---as viewed and valued by a male-driven, male-dominated society.

This is the idealogy pushed by our culture, through magazines, movies, celebrities, models, advertizing, the news, commercials, and music videos.

So here we are, women who are trying to defy the deafening chorus insisting we are "not good enough". But it gets to us. It hurts. It damages us to our cores, if we let ourselves think about it. Everywhere we turn, we are insulted with images of impossible perfection we will never be able to attain.

And then we found you. You were our safe place, our refuge in the storm. You loved us for US, for our strengths, our laugh, our personality and intelligence, for our hearts, our souls, our quirks and also our imperfections, flaws, and weaknesses. So we thought.
We believed we were finally accepted fully, in this one place, by this one man whom we dearly loved. We believed we were cherished and treasured. We believed we were worthy in your eyes. We knew we could never be the most beautiful woman in the world, we knew we could never be that impossible airbrushed perfection the world told us we should be--but we believed we were the most beautiful woman TO YOU. We believed that in your eyes no other woman could hold a candle to us. We trusted that you were fully satisfied with what you had, with what we could offer you. Because our bodies and our beauty are not just a pretty outer shell, they represent our souls. Our bodies are love in action.

And when d-day revealed the horrific reality that we were also "not good enough" for the one person in the world who promised to love us fully--we were devastated.

In one instant my safe place was stolen from me. My refuge from the harsh, critical world was swept away. The knowledge that a man who loves me and knows me so intimately could still judge me and find me wanting breaks my heart.

This, among a hundred other wounds, is one of the ones that hurts the most.