Yesterday, I posted this on Twitter:

I meant it, by the way. Not the part about asking for a friend from church who is in a wheelchair; that was just part of my ruse. But the snot part was for real. I’m sick and can’t breathe, and there’s so much pressure in my head that one of my eyelids is swollen and it looks like I can’t stop crying. I guess it’s not very ladylike for me to say any of this, but this is the Internet and where else am I supposed to share my misery?

Speaking of being ladylike, there’s a quote I’ve seen on Facebook that’s been partially misattributed to Marilyn Monroe. From what I can tell, everything after the first two sentences is hers, and the beginning came from some asshole on the Internet:

Yes, I’m a girl. Sometimes I cry for no reason. I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.

I have a lot of problems with this. The first problem is that women treat Marilyn Monroe like some sort of prophet of womanhood, like this undereducated serial marrier/drug addict who slept with the married President of the United States was a fucking genius or something, like she really knew how to deal with life, like her being pretty and – famously, also admittedly – sucking dick to the top is enough to make her girlhood’s guru. Come on, you stupid bitches. I know Eleanor Roosevelt looked like a dude and married a guy in a wheelchair, but you can do better than Marilyn.

Another problem I have is that some of the women in my newsfeed post this every few months or so, as if they either forgot they posted it already or are doing it for reasons of personal empowerment. Some of these women are already perfectly capable adult humans who can keep jobs, raise children, and, presumably, operate the Internet. The others are just people I keep as friends because their statuses are that funny, and by funny I mean batshit crazy and/or clinically retarded. Regardless, I don’t think it should be anyone’s mantra, as you’ll see below.

The third and biggest problem I have with this quote is that it doesn’t represent girls at all. Starting it off with “Yes, I’m a girl” is the first problem. Bitch, please. You being a girl has nothing to do with it. This isn’t about you being a girl, me being a girl, or any of the smart, confident, well-adjusted, responsible girls out there being girls. It doesn’t speak for us as girls. You know who it speaks for? Cunts. Someone who cries for no reason, is selfish, impatient, insecure, mistake-prone, out of control, and hard to handle isn’t necessarily a girl, okay, they are a cunt. Stop acting like being a cunt is okay just because you’re a girl. Treating other people badly is never okay no matter what gender you are. That’s like being a bitch because you’re on your period. You’re not a bitch because you’re on your period. You’re a bitch because you’re a bitch, so stop using that as an excuse. Become a better person and stop making allowances for your terrible behavior.

I get really irritated when I see some girls ruining it for the rest of us. They post stuff like that quote, or they act stupid when they’re really not, or they pretend to be slutty part-time lesbians just to get male attention. Or, in a recent example of someone who went to my high school and thinks that finding Blogger makes her entitled to share her poorly-worded opinion, people who write crappy blogs and call themselves writers. I want more credit than these people are giving me, and, by extension, than the rest of the world gives me because of these people.

I try hard. I hope that what I do has meaning outside of “I don’t know, I’m just a girl!” I don’t cry for no reason or treat people like shit just because I have a uterus. I’m not even mean to Graham when I’m sick. I might send him for takeout later, but that’s only because he already offered, which was probably because he doesn’t want to eat food prepared by someone who publicly professed to dripping snot into her cleavage.