If you spent $20,000 to turn yourself into a fetish, you didn’t choose power—you chose performance.
And that’s not judgment. That’s a mirror.

▶️ [Listen to the Podcast Episode]

📥 [Download the B.R.U.T.A.L. Self-Inventory Workbook]

I still remember the first time I saw the Kim Kardashian tape. My brain short-circuited as I tried to process her proportions. I wasn’t even judging her—I was just confused. She didn’t look real. I honestly thought, “Is she… a little person?” Not in a derogatory way—just logistically. The ratio of limbs to hips to waist to the furniture in the room? It didn’t line up.

And now? That same silhouette has become the blueprint for what’s hot.
It’s not even rooted in ethnicity, fertility, or natural variation anymore.
It’s this… Frankenstein of beauty standards—stitched together from dwarfism, porn, post-op swelling, Photoshop, and whatever AI thinks “sexy” is.
The rise of the sex-doll body didn’t just happen—it was engineered. Sculpted. Sold. And now it’s self-replicating.

Women didn’t just wake up and decide to be blow-up dolls.
We were marketed into madness, taught that reshaping our bodies into this cartoonish, siliconized fantasy was a fast-track to desirability and dominance.

But here’s the catch: if your “power” still hinges on male approval… is it really power?
It’s not about the curves. It’s about what they cost you.
BBLs don’t come with healing. Lip filler doesn’t come with clarity.
And all that performance? It doesn’t quite the voice that says:
“Do they like me—or the version I paid for?”
If you’re finding yourself in this spiral—reset your compass.

What we’re dealing with isn’t just body dysmorphia. It’s emotional starvation.
We traded food addiction for surgical addiction—and called it glow-up culture.
But let’s be honest. BBLs don’t last. Neither do the high-fives from men who fetishize you.
The saddest part? We’ve become better dressed products in a consumer pipeline of desire.
Built to be wanted, not known.

Stretched and stuffed into a fantasy someone else profits from.
If we don’t start building beauty boundaries—protecting our bodies from being billboards—we’ll keep reshaping ourselves until we disappear.
I’m not saying you can’t want to feel sexy. I’m saying if your sexiness only exists in a man’s imagination, then it was never really yours to begin with.

Empowerment isn’t loud lashes and a loud ass. It’s not lip filler and lace fronts. It’s not just owning the fantasy you bought into—it’s questioning who sold it to you in the first place. And I’m not just talking about women here. Because the more I look around, the more I realize: men are falling into the same damn trap. They’re not immune. They’re not above it. They’re in it with us now—taking cheek fat out, getting “ab etching,” doing body contouring and sculpting their jaws to look like something out of a 3D-rendered romance novel.
I saw a guy on TikTok bragging about removing the buccal fat in his face to look more chiseled—and I just sat there thinking… this is it. This is how it spreads. The same systems that told women to get smaller are now telling men to get sharper. And we’re all buying it because we think if we look the part, we’ll finally be lovable. But the truth is, a six-pack doesn’t fix a bruised heart. And a snatched waist won’t heal chronic loneliness.
Let’s be honest:
This isn’t empowerment. This is cosmetic conformity. It’s performance wrapped in “self-care” packaging.
True empowerment? It’s being healthy. Mentally. Emotionally. Physically.
It’s knowing your worth doesn’t live in your waistline, jawline, or booty-to-thigh ratio. It’s choosing validation from within—not from views, likes, or lust. It’s boundaries. Around your beauty. Around your body. Around your peace. Because if you don’t create them, the world will carve them out of you—one surgery, one filter, one payment plan at a time.
And look, I get it. We all want to feel attractive. We all want to feel wanted. But the answer isn’t more procedures—it’s more presence.
It’s more healing, more care and more clarity.

The truth is, I didn’t need another dating app. I needed a reset.  Not the kind that costs $20K and a surgical table—but the kind that costs some silence, sweat, and a willingness to rebuild from the inside out.

The truth is, I didn’t need another dating app. I needed a mirror that didn’t judge me. I needed a routine that didn’t punish me. I needed me—without the filters, the pressure, or the fantasy I thought I had to live up to. So I started small. Walking to clear my mind. Drinking more water not to shrink, but to stop feeling foggy. Swapping anxiety scrolls for yoga videos, I could cry through without judgment. Choosing foods that made my body feel less like a battlefield and more like a home. And in those tiny choices? I found a glow-up that no surgeon could sell.

You were never meant to be someone’s porn folder fantasy. You were never meant to be “curated” into an hourglass to be consumed. You’re not a highlight reel. You’re a whole human. This isn’t about hating on surgery. It’s about asking what you want before the world tells you who to become. You can be beautiful. You can be sensual. You can be sexy as hell. But you don’t have to be a performance. You don’t have to be a fetish to be worthy of love.

This isn’t motivation—it’s reclamation.  In the debut episode of Honest Pursuits, Cate Brown stops performing for approval and starts designing life on her own terms. She dismantles the myth of “having it all,” calls out success theater for what it is, and lays out the real framework that saved her sanity: B.R.U.T.A.L. = Boundaries, Reinvention, Unlearning, Truth, Accountability, Liberation.
It’s not therapy; it’s a strategy for people who are done shrinking.
Bold, funny, and brutally self-aware—this is your permission slip to stop asking for one.
🎧 Listen now and take your power back.

These aren’t sponsored (yet). They’re survival tools. The emotional duct tape that kept me from throwing my laptop into traffic.

💡 Mentioned in This Episode:

• 🧠 Notion — because apparently “organize your breakdowns” is a productivity hack now.

• 💬 BetterHelp — when you need therapy without the small talk or the pants.

• 📘 Atomic Habits by James Clear — because you can’t manifest your way out of bad habits.

• 🕯️ $6 Lavender Candle (Target) — practically aromatherapy therapy.

We all have one brutal truth we’ve been avoiding. Mine became a podcast. Yours deserves a mic too.

📲 Confess your Brutal Truth.
Slide into the DMs on Instagram @honest.pursuits and drop your confession (anonymous if you want).
We might feature it on the next “Hot Seat Story Night” episode. No judgment. Just honesty with Wi-Fi.

Get Brutal With Yourself →

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