So Effing Cute

You know, Gentle Reader(s), I know I'm cute. Small and squishy and... well, cute. And since I'm so cute, I'm inclined to love other, even cuter things like Grumpy Cat and Bunny Shaming and Freddy Krueger. I also love coffee. I mean, I really love coffee. Really, I should have married coffee. Anyway,  I don't know about you, but I've often thought about what a shame it is that I couldn't combine cuteness with coffee. Well today I despair no-mo because someone has done it.

Check out Kotaku for the scoop (scoop of marshmallow, that is... mmm mmm good).

Also, while we're on the subject of cuteness, are you familiar with "George-ing"? You know the phenomenon of wanting to hug and squeeze something SO cute incredibly tightly? Well beyond Looney Tunes animation, Of Mice and Men, and what my large husband does to me when he comes home after work, there's a scientific name for it other than "George-ing". That name is "cute aggression". Check out the phenomenon of "cute aggression" as explored by Scientific American. Who knew?

The Unrecognizable: Ageing in the Age of the Ageist Rule

Dearest Gentle Reader(s),

If you're in your early twenties and you're reading this, you may not quite be able to relate to what I'm about to present as my brief discourse [rant] of the day. However, if you're a bit more seasoned by the years, say 35 or older, or you're just seasoned by being empathic, then you might be able to relate.

I want you to imagine the following: you're at a yard sale, walking around, browsing the goods, and generally going about your business. A few days later, you get an email from the son of an old acquaintance. The email reads, "I was driving through Fern Street the other day and thought I saw you at that yard sale. Wow, you're unrecognizable." The email contains two attachments. One is a photo of you at the yard sale and the other is a photo of you when you were 20; youthful, thin, fine line-free, and cool looking in a baby-faced sort of way. In other words, you, when you were 20. Obviously the person who wrote you the email did recognize you, somehow, because otherwise they wouldn't have known to email you. Why did they do this? Why would they essentially say that you didn't look like yourself simply because you'd grown up? How would this make you feel? Pretty shitty I'd imagine.

Well that's what happened to Axl Rose, front man for iconic eighties Metal band, Guns N' Roses courtesy of a Huffington Post feature and video clip. At first glance, this may appear to be a non-story; an unimportant blip on the radar. But I welcome any opportunity to become one voice of dissent against an increasingly poisonous attitude concerning ageing peddled by narcissistic media climbers and sycophants.

On one level, as a general Rock fan, I have respect for Guns N' Roses, and then on another level, I don't have any particularly deep love for Axl Rose. But it was painful and awkward to watch a couple of people, who had to have been toddlers at the height of Guns N' Roses, break out with hmming and umming their way through an aesthetic criticism of a man who is 51 years old now and has clearly paid his dues for the price of admission into Rock and Roll bad-ass-dom. Guns N' Roses' heyday was in 1985 thanks to their gritty and groundbreakingly catchy album, Appetite for Destruction. Axl was 23 at the time. So now he gets to be physically compared to the 23 year old version of himself? And the commentators on the Huffington Post clip actually mention the fact that he's using a cane, as if needing a cane is some sort of affront to their ultra cool, Abercrombie and Fitch-esque sensibilities. Oh the horror of needing to use... a cane! Are these people on crack?

Take a good look, because this is what happens when you let the Romper Room kids run the media center. These people are products of a post nip-tuck era where you'd be hard pressed to find one clear example of natural ageing, or the honest face of Rock n Roll 'hard living' in the celebrity pool. Just as parents of young adults are complaining that they fear their children won't be able to appreciate a pair of natural breasts once they grow up, thanks to a contemporary internet porn which is rife with breast implants and genital surgery, those of us who are mature enough to remember how people age naturally have a right to be concerned that young humans who have yet to make any sort mark on the world for their intellectual or creative talents are critiquing others through a skewed lens and devaluing them for failing to appear to be in their twenties anymore.

A few years ago I regularly watched the British version of the television show, The Apprentice. My friends and I started discussing a disturbing trend which was emerging: many contestants, when under threat of being fired in Sir Alan Sugar's "Boardroom" and asked what special attributes they thought they offered, began to repeatedly resort to claiming their youth. "Sir Alan, Sir, I'm only 24" some guy would inevitably snivel at some point. This seemed to happen again and again, eventually to the point where you knew it was coming at least once for every episode. This launched an ongoing discussion amongst my contemporaries, who couldn't understand how youth culture had finally reached this low point of young people speaking about their own youth as if they were privy to a big secret that youth has become some sort of prized currency over savvy, intelligence, and experience in the world of business.

My anecdotal scope only extends back to the mid-twentieth century, but here is my take on the monstrous metamorphosis of youth culture: once a youth culture existed where its members looked forward to being viewed as mature enough to make important decisions and contributions. Then that was replaced by a youth culture whose members sought to be left alone to experiment because they were young and needed to find themselves - they'd eventually grow up, they said, but don't rush us. Then that was replaced with a youth culture whose members viewed their age as totally irrelevant - they felt they had something important to say, and nevermind that they were younger; they had a voice too. Then that seemed to finally be replaced  with a youth culture whose members recognize that youth is the desirable commodity against the backdrop of an increasingly younger power grid, so they exploit the value of youth and use it as bargaining currency. And that would be fine, if that sort of manipulative self-awareness didn't read as slightly sinister like an overly-precocious child actor that you grow to hate, and translate into slamming anything or anybody who isn't young looking, usually thin (and usually white, unless you're a black rapper, because ya know, rappers are sooo cool). The 1990s advent of a decentralized media via the internet created an environment ripe to be taken over by people under 30... which would have been great, if they hadn't been the greedy internet self-starters (my generation), who then groomed the 5.0 version of our youth culture to become youth-aggrandizing, cell-texting, porn-addicted, emotionally void, socially alienated, gentrifying, body fascists who now RUN the media, and broadcast these values to the masses.

I remember how we used to say Rolling Stones guitarist, Keith Richards looked like The Crypt Keeper because he'd done so many hard drugs over the years, but I don't ever remember anyone I knew pulling out an old picture of Keith and exclaiming, "Oh, he's SO unrecognizable!" or anyone handing me an article of a similar sentiment. He was recognizable. He was recognizable as a man who had been rode hard and put out wet, thanks to his Rock n Roll lifestyle. That was all. Now we get to listen to a bunch of baby monkeys in the control room call Axl Rose unrecognizable because he had the nerve to age over a period of nearly thirty years.

In the everyday, pedestrian world it has been generally accepted as natural that young people have always looked at people ten, twenty, and thirty years their seniors and called them old, but it is a sign that our society lacks balance and perspective when the people now at the helm of the media machine are products not of the youthful-but-seasoned crowd, but of the generation which frequently likes to remind itself how young it is and creates daily news slamming people for looking like they're not in their twenties anymore... or looking like they've lived a rockstar's life when they have... or looking drug addicted when they are, and the list goes on.

This wouldn't even have so much effect if what every cultural studies theorist has been saying for the past forty years weren't realistic: that in the post-modern era our work lives, social lives, private lives, and consumer lives have completely merged to the degree that these cultural messages are unavoidable, and translate into how we treat each other. There are plenty of us for whom a bit of hair dye and facial treatments aren't the enemy, but we wish not to have to go under the knife and join the ranks of the plastic people, lest our our attractiveness, our value as humans, and our very identities be weighed against images of ourselves from thirty years earlier. I don't like the idea that our culture is becoming a virtual version of Logan's Run, an ageist, dystopian era where people are eliminated once they're deemed too old. The only thing truly unrecongnizable to these people is what the range of the natural ageing process looks like.

The Lords of Bullsh*t

Warning; big spoilers here: so I saw The Lords of Salem last night. Brandon Trost's cinematography was very good - it saved the film in a lot of ways with its atmospheric and ominous take on the streets of Salem, Massachusetts - but as usual, the work of Rob Zombie was style over substance. The film was admittedly creepy along the way, with the luxury of some odd ghost-witches hovering in corners and spooky hallway stunts but unfortunately, like most of what I've seen from Zombie, the script and story development felt very undercooked, and the subtext was confused at best.

The setup was this: many moons ago, there was a coven of (evil) witches led by Margaret Morgan (played by classic cult, spooky-eyed actress Meg Foster) in Salem and one Reverend Jonathan Hawthorne burned them at the stake. These witches, who were referred to as the Lords of Salem, swore a curse on the female descendants of the town, and on Hawthorne's female descendant in particular, that she should become a sort of Anti-Mary and give birth to the Anti-Christ. Though Zombie doesn't get into characterizing Hawthorne as evil, per se, he includes all sorts of offensive imagery of priest-monsters in Catholic garb doing obscene things throughout the film, and Reverend Hawthorne himself has actually burned six people at the stake so, it is intimated that while the witches are bad news, Christianity ain't no picnic either.

We come into the story during the modern life of Heidi (played, unsurprisingly, by Sheri Moon Zombie), a rock DJ at a local radio station. She and her radio show co-hosts (played by Jeff Daniel Philips and the legendary, cult favorite Ken Foree) are sent a mysterious vinyl record by a group calling themselves The Lords of Salem, and the radio team inevitably decide to play the record on live radio. The results become problematic when Heidi and other women in Salem react strangely to the odd music and, sure enough, everyone accepts the invitation of these mysterious Lords of Salem when news arrives that they will be performing a concert in town shortly. The enchanted album and the fake concert setup is the work of a group of  three elderly witches (led by legendary actress Judy Geeson) who are the modern day representatives charged with the responsibility of raising of the original Lords of Salem and also with the bringing about the birth of the Anti-Christ. They also happen to be Heidi's landladies. Heidi, as it turns out, is the descendant of Reverend Hawthorne and is therefore tagged to be the Anti-Mary and give birth to the Anti-Christ.

So overall, for the sake of 'horror scares' I was willing to allow for the shrivelled, "evil" witches bit, though anyone who knows me knows how I feel about that sort of characterization of witches and the avoidance of serious discourse on the persecution of persons accused of witchcraft and by association, allegiance with evil. I was willing to suspend my political views on the reality of the matter for some quality scares. However, the real problematic lies in the display of Zombie's obvious disdain for Christianity while combined with a reliance on the very woman-as-evil conventions typical of Christian tradition. But okay, if you're going to play that game, then play it full tilt boogie with conviction, is what I say.

If Mary, mother of Jesus, is set up as an untainted virgin - and Mary is mentioned several times in the film - then it stands to reason that a character like Heidi, who will become the mother of the Anti-Christ, should not be set up as a friendly, average dreadlock-donning rock chick with a cute, happy golden retriever. Heidi should have been set up as someone primed for being the vessel of the Anti-Christ; the antithesis of the likes of Mary - and no, creating a vague recovering addict backstory doesn't count as a character having a history which primes them to become the mother of pure evil. Zombie should have set Heidi up as a far more hedonistic, reckless character from the start; a person void of empathy and purity by default, if still unaware of her flaws as precipitating her fate had Zombie wanted to go down that road, especially given that Heidi's the descendant of the murderous Reverend Hawthorne. Alternately, Zombie could have set Heidi up as a good character who really fights and struggles against her inclinations and terrible fate, which would have upped the stakes, created more tension, and made her plight feel more tragic to viewers but, alas, he didn't do that either. But these are all details, compared to the fact that the big payoff is not big at all.

In the end, Heidi falls off the wagon and "does drugs" (dun, dun, dunnn), is rounded up by the three elderly witch ladies who get her all set up to become impregnated by Satan (a sort of tiny, potbellied Rumpelstiltskin mandrake root looking creature), then bring her to the fake concert they've orchestrated where she ascends (or descends as it were) to an audience of thirty Salem women, and gives birth to something that looks like a wagging mandrake root. Her eyes roll back into her head as she floats there, suspended above the variety of lifeless, naked bodies of the 30 Salem women. The whole thing is labeled as a mass suicide with a missing person case trailing behind it, as Heidi is never seen again.

Zombie means to tell us that all this stuff, big, catastrophic stuff like the arrival of the Anti-Christ has been orchestrated... and it ends with the suicide of thirty people and a missing woman? The resolution is way too microcosmic, provincial, pedestrian, and overall inconsequential to be preceded by big concepts like a woman being groomed, then impregnated by Satan, followed by the conception, and then the arrival of the Anti-Christ. Isn't that sort of arrival earthquaking, reality shattering in nature? Has anybody seen The Omen and its sequels (which weren't very good, but you get the point)? Some might argue that Rosemary's Baby presented a pedestrian approach to the arrival of the Anti-Christ, but then again, Polanski didn't choose to have Rosemary hovering above ground, backlit with celestial light, immortalized in an classic religious ecstasy pose as one of the final shots of the film. The setup and the iconographic visions in The Lords of Salem don't fit the anti-climactic and low scale resolution of the story.

I'm calling it like I see it: Rob Zombie is a lazy, lazy filmmaker who lacks broad vision. His only vision is to make sure we all see his scrawny wife naked. That, and to make a stamp for himself in the genre because, you know, bein' a horror director is "cool" and evil stuff is "neat-o". If you want to see an extended music video, then go for it, but if you're looking for a John Carpenter, or even Joss Whedon style apocalyptic payoff, you've come to the wrong place, friend.

Between the poor payoffs and style over substance, I always come out of the Rob Zombie experience - whether it's his films or his concerts - feeling like I've just visited an online rock paraphernalia site or received one of these catalogues through the mail: t-shirts with peace symbols are right there next to SS style lightening bolt pendants and dark angel figurines are right there next to atheist posters; anything goes because all these items fall under one general genre and all rolled together they cancel out all politics because they're trinkets appropriated from previously important social movements, now presented for mass consumption, with no political conviction or meaning anymore. Rob Zombie is like Rock n Roll junk mail to me. And the ultimate problem with Rob Zombie as a director is that the majority of his fans don't seem to have the will to cast a critical enough eye to hold his feet to the fire and tell him to evolve and mature as a director, if directing is what he wants to do. Most of the criticism that he's going to get will be from non-Rocker, nerdy horror genre fans whose genre tastes are stuck in 1983, so that they're primed to dislike virtually anything new or perceivable as too trendy, and Zombie can tell himself that all his critics are simply random, jealous haters and ultimately ignore any potential pressures to creatively evolve. Considering his resources, the crew talent at his disposal, and his apparent affection for the genre, it's a real shame that he can't or won't do better.

My Beef With "Big Country"

Hi there, Gentle Reader(s). I was inspired by reading an editorial on Vice.com titled "I'm Sick of Pretending: I Don't "Get" Beyoncé", linked on Facebook by the amazing sociopolitical commentator, Son of Baldwin. I have some longstanding thoughts on Beyoncé, or "Big Country", as I affectionately call her (because she's big and country, a term historically used by African Americans to describe those perceived as unsophisticated and intellectually simple). And though you guys have probably heard it all before, I'm going to give it to you nonetheless.

I am not a fan of Beyoncé and one reason is because I don't tend to listen to her genre of music very much (I like very little contemporary Pop R & B). But then add to that the fact that I don't particularly like her vocal quality (i.e, the style of her voice), and what's more, I intensely dislike most of what I deem to be her sort of weird 'desperation' dance moves, circa Crazy In Love, where she's scrambling and wiping herself all over some loading dock floor like a human mop. That terrible dancing irks me. Conversely, I did like the Run the World (Girls) video - but then again, I'm a big Mad Max trilogy fan, adore most post-apocalyptic imaginings (and efforts towards the genre), and I also like the Tofo Tofo inspired dance moves featured in the music video. So overall, not a big Beyoncé fan musically, but you know, I can get over all that; I'm flexible. I'm not going to tread into the realm of discourse over her blond weaves. The broaching of that discourse would merit a separate, longer, far more extensive blog entry covering mainstream beauty standards, patriarchy, self-hatred, and whitewashing (no pun intended).

More than any of that, I cringe when I hear Beyoncé speak because she really doesn't seem very bright at all, and as the author of the article mentions, it's pretty awkward. With all the pomp and circumstance and sort of power role play in her performances, I know the truth, but amazingly and stupidly keep expecting over and over that she'll speak and suddenly speak like Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, or hell, even Mariah... or any one of the many relatively intelligent musical 'Divas' of the 20th and 21st centuries. Beyoncé's just not very engaging as a person, her verbal skills seem rudimentary, her elocution fairly poor (still), and I can't figure out how someone who appears to be essentially tabula rasa, could command so much respect and give these so-called powerhouse performances (well, I can figure it out, but my mental answer to the rhetorical question disturbs me).

I find myself expecting 'power' there; the maturity and intellect of a seasoned and well traveled performer. But no matter how many times I hear Beyoncé speak, I don't get anything but a shell with nothing to back up the amaze-balls image. I realize that my standards for entertainers of color are high, and I suppose it's because, as a product of the post-Jim Crow, post-Civil Rights generation, I still fall prey to that collective consciousness representation paradigm where I want to see them do well and do everyone proud. But also, on an even more subjective level, I like musical artists who are thinkers. It's not enough to be extra pretty, dance, sing, and deliver lyrics about empowerment (all be it, light lyrics about empowerment). I always inherently feel that something is missing from the message of a performer's music if that performer is revealed to be more of the puppet than the puppeteer of their image. All that girl power business lacks authenticity when its messenger is about as bright as a bag of wet hammers, speaking as if she was coached, but dropped out of elocution lessons after the second week.

I wish Beyoncé would go back to school - and I'm not suggesting this sarcastically; I honestly wish that she'd take the opportunity to enhance her intellect and verbal communication skills. It would be amazing if she did. Imagine all that elaborate costuming, performace power, hair whipping, hip shaking, empowering messages with a finely tuned intellect to back all it up. But she probably won't further her education. She has enough unconditional support from her fans, and has done enough speaking engagements just as she is for me to assume that she doesn't see any reason to enhance her cognitive and verbal skills. The irony of Run the World (Girls) and its homage to Mad Max, specifically Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome starring Tina Turner, is that for all her long legs, strong thighs and blond tresses, Beyoncé will never be Tina Turner. She hasn't the intellect.

Page WHAT?? International Women's Day and Me

Let's face it, I'm mildly amused and fairly unaffected by International Women's Day. I assure you, I had no intention of writing any blog today (I've got too much other stuff to do) much less a blog pertaining to IWD. What is it for really? There's something about packaging "international" womanhood into an acknowledged day that just smacks of corniness. What are people going to do, bake cakes for us? I haven't gotten a cake or any telephone calls on the matter. But it's all very Hallmark cardy, wrapped up in some ambiguous package of "international" as if by its title it sweeps away all the complexities of class, race, culture and distributions of privilege imbedded in the problematic of what does or should constitute "feminism" and re-brands womanhood into a happy little Google cartoon of cute smooshy pink and brown faces. Solidarity at last. Thanks Google! Have I lost you? If not, read on. I promise I'm coming to a point.

But in all seriousness, perhaps its my own realization of the oceans-deep and continent-wide polarities between what I deem to be my 'woman issues' and the issues of women in the far reaches of other places which makes me want to rebuke what seems like a trivial and superficial celebration of womanhood. I can't get down with articles harping about being treated like a "second class citizen" because you're a single white woman in the West. Really? I just can't, when I know a plethora of things, like the reality that single (young) white womanhood is heralded and exploited by mainstream media as the apex of beauty and freedom, both sexually and socially. I want to crumple that stupid photo of Bridget Jones, with her well-fed hamster cheeks and her pristine white sheet set, then shake the author of that article and yell, Oh YOU'RE treated like a second class citizen?? Try being a 60 year old black woman in America like my mother, you gormless mouthbreather! Or better yet, try being a single woman in Iran, you idiot! And in a way, even as I write this I seem to be writing my way out of addressing one issue that struck me this morning, in favor of dismissing it as negligible as I weigh it against the legitimate and systematic suffering of so many women and girls throughout the world. But I'm determined to convince myself that simply working on your own microcosm represents some sort of effort towards progress, so here I go.

When I first moved to Britain from the US in 2004, I had an opportunity to make a lot of new and interesting friends, many of whom, at least on paper, represented demographics that I might not have been likely to connect with in my home country. Moving abroad is good that way; because you're a stranger to the culture, you're often able to travel through networks of people, unfettered by that culture's views or rules of social categorization which function along lines like class or ethnicity. This can free you up to meet all sorts of interesting people. One such friendship I made early was with a working class rock and roller who works for the London Underground. To be fair, I actually befriended his partner first. She was a monolithic, towering Metal Head Goth of a woman who worked as a civil servant (now as a very popular Metal DJ), and we became fast friends at an annual local film festival.

I can't remember whether it was the time I got my labret piercing and my friend's boyfriend pampered me with milkshakes because that's all I could eat with the swelling, or one of those times when I'd stayed over their house and we were left to scrounge up coffee and breakfast on our own because the Iron Maiden of the house had to head to work early. But on one of those mornings, over either chocolate milkshakes or coffee and cold pizza, I discovered Page 3. All the Brits will now start laughing and most of the Americans will now shrug in confusion over my mention of the infamous Page 3.

My friend - the male half of the partnership, that is - often brought home various newspapers from his long hours at work. If you spend five minutes in Britain you'll notice their impressive collection of a variety of newspaper publications. Many of these newspapers are reputable and many of these are not. Regardless, it is a commonly practiced pastime to read newspapers on the London Underground. Everyone, from the passengers to the Underground employees, obsessively reads newspapers, sometimes indiscriminately because, after all, in the view of many here it's better to read anything than to read nothing at all. So I grabbed one of his newspaper selections from the day before, The Sun, which was sitting on my buddy's coffee table. It was easy to see from the cover, with its bold red header and salacious headlines, that this newspaper was going to be trashy. But what I was not prepared for what met me on the third page. There, covering most of that page, was a pleasantly smiling young woman with nicely styled hair (probably extensions), totally bare-breasted and wearing nothing other than underpants, with giant boobs like headlights designed to mesmerize. Boiiiing! And mesmerize, they did, for a moment before I went into shock and squawked, "What the hell is this? What the fuuuck?"

My friend looked up from his own newspaper, saw which paper I had in my hands, flashed me a knowing smirk, and replied casually, "Page 3". Once he logged my total confusion he repeated, "Page 3," and then, man of few words that he is, added his version of breaking things down with something like, "It's in every issue of The Sun". I was shocked, then fascinated and mortified at the same time. I just kept staring at it, thinking of how many times I'd seen working guys on the train reading The Sun, how many times I'd spotted this newspaper in the supermarket, and everywhere else. How could this be? my tiny, puritanical American brain pondered over and over. These fucking pervert British fuckers, I thought to myself, more fascinated than angry over the fact that this was a very stark example of how sexiness, actual, real live nudity in fact, was being placed right smack dab in the middle of ordinary, pedestrian life. This newspaper was on people's breakfast tables and on the morning commuter trains, totally out in the open and totally okay with regular folks. I tried to reconcile my dawning horror that children would be regularly exposed to this sort of casual-but-bold objectification of women, with a rationalization of de-shaming nudity.

But as I continued to process the prominence of Page 3, what got me then and continued to plague me was this idea of setting bold, daily female objectification as a public, normative activity. Now I don't think I even come close to looking like a breast implanted, weave wearing, orange tanned Page 3 'beauty', but as a woman living in this society I can't help associating the mainstreaming of young, female nudity with comments like, "looking beautiful, love" from my refrigerator delivery men, and getting whistled at and complimented for my "great tits" by dudes in white work vans. Obviously other people have made the connection and worry about the harm of everyday presentations like Page 3, since articles have been written and lines have been drawn, like Lucy Holmes's petition on the matter, which has had a lot of support and publicity.

So today I read yet another article on the subject from the perspective of a woman who grew up in Britain in the shadow of Page 3. Her points about her subsequent body neurosis were well taken, but more importantly, her simple re-imagining of society with a Page 4, a page featuring the bodies of young, attractive men with their bare tackle on display for casual conversation at the breakfast table really spoke to me, and cuts to the heart of the matter. If there's nothing wrong with nudity (and I agree), and there's nothing wrong with the admiration of beautiful bodies, then why aren't nude men on display? There are plenty of people who would be more than happy to be able to sip their morning beverage of choice while casually scanning a fresh, new young Adonis every day. Why? Why don't we get to ogle the beautiful, naked bodies of men in the public arena? Why are images of male genitalia protected from the casual view to the degree that you still won't see prolonged male nudity in mainstream films and magazines? Because this is one of the ways the culture sends messages about what parts of ourselves are important according to gender, that's why.

Consider this: at this point, the importance of women's bodies; how our breasts are shaped (or need to be shaped), how our butts and stomachs are (or should be), whether we should or shouldn't have pubic hair- which used to be the personal choices of women themselves, and even how our vaginas look (or should look) is mostly decided and mediated by media conglomerates mostly run by men, not some invisible Gay Mafia, as so many straight men have pointed out when discussing the fashion industry. Meanwhile, some of us women speak as if we're so liberated now because (some) of us throughout the world now enjoy a choice of occupations, and are allowed involvement and choice in who we wish to marry, whether we'd like to get married at all, and if and when we'd like to have children.

But I am also often drawn to consider that many of us once lived during a time where a woman could present herself to a man intimately and he'd roll with the punches, and often be happy for what he was getting. Women didn't have to worry about men complaining that they had too much pubic hair, that their breasts were the 'wrong' size, or that their very vaginas were shaped the 'wrong' way. It didn't matter if you didn't have an apple bottom or large inner labia.

Now, media-reinforced expectations and dictations by a handful of men have polluted the idea and acceptance of natural variety. Now when it comes to women's bodies, nothing is sacred anymore, while what we're shown publicly tends to represents one kind of norm. Granted, there may never be an occasion for Page 3 to present the picture of a perfect inner labia, but to drive the point home, can you imagine a very dark-skinned, B cup Page 3 model with short hair? It won't happen. There are plenty of dark-skinned, small breasted, short haired foxy ladies out there - I've seen many - but it won't happen. Therefore women and girls in this society get to wake up every day faced with what a supposedly average Joe's picture of beauty should be, breasts and all - and consequently face a level of anxiety and self loathing that men and boys do not face today. When I suggest that men's bodies should also be on display, I am aware that we'd be running the risk of objectifying them in the way women continue to be objectified. Yes, and the silver lining could be that there might be a backlash once men get a true taste of what it feels like to be valued most for their bodies and compared with a very narrow standard of beauty from the time they sprout peach fuzz and first grow a pair.

No Apologies

Being raised a spiritual person, I was raised to believe that I should look for lessons in daily life and signs that the Universe is pushing me towards something better. Seven months ago I lost my baby, Jack, because of hospital negligence. Two weeks ago I had an early miscarriage, as I had before I got pregnant with Jack. Now at two miscarriages and a late loss, for the first time in my life I'm unable to muster the generosity of spirit so characteristic of me in my former life. I have friends who think I'm okay now because it's easier for them if they don't have to speak with me about it, aquaintances, many of whom are parents, who haven't bothered to get in touch while they fuss over other aquantences who have been blesses with new babies, social network contacts who convince themselves and want to remind everyone that parenthood represents the apex of spiritual enlightenment and fulfullment, and a mother - a midwife of all things - who thinks I should manage to be happy for other people (because that's how the old me would operate and because that's how I was raised). The other day, I felt the Universe was trying to push me towards something, and I am pissed off about it. All of these 'messages' from the Universe occurred in one day and it was all too much. Last night I wrote scrambled prose, for myself and for you, girl who understands. You know who you are.


 For All That Happened Today With No Apologies


No, I didn't want to hold him on the bus while you adjusted his stroller and talked about how difficult it was having no free hands. I don't know you and you don't know me, or the fact that I should be holding my own baby right now. I'm sure such an idea wouldn't have occurred to you before asking this stranger to hold your baby.

It wouldn't occur to you because you don't know what difficult is.

No it isn't so great, it was luck. You were a 50 year old virgin last year and this year you're suddenly a father. I've taken many years of risks and opened my heart enough to plan and concieve my baby. I didn't live like a sexual eunuch who suddenly grew a pair, lucked up, and popped one out on the first try. People who haven't bothered to mutter one condolence my way are stepping up to congratulate you on becoming a parent as if you've achieved anything other than being lucky.

So no, I don't think it's so great.

No, our situations are not the same. You complain about the insensitivity of others and your biological clock before mentioning your other two surviving children to a person who has no surviving children and is six years older than you.

You're insensitive.

No, not all of us can identify with the mushy quotes and slogans superimposed over dreamy stock photos of parents and their children that you keep posting online. Not everyone accidentally gets knocked up and then later becomes philosophical about the joys of parenthood. We planned our baby and wished him into existence, but didn't get to keep him.

Ponder being philosophical about that.

No, I haven't moved on yet. You try going through this and see how quickly you move on.

No I'm not yet ready to be a matron; the auntie who couldn't have her own so she's content to coo over the preciousness of everyone else's. I'm still fighting to become a mother again.

No, Universe, today I can't be grateful.

No, Universe, today I can't be happy for them.

And you can't make me.

A Promise Kept

The title isn't meant to suggest anything deep and meaningful, Gentle Reader(s), but a promise is a promise and I intend to keep mine. I've been busy in ways that I can't even begin to describe yet (or maybe I'm just not ready to), but remember how all those weeks (okay, months) ago I promised to post a link to my essay on the development of artist Mare Tralla's Protected series? Well better late than never, so here you go if you're interested in artsy fartsy jazz or if you're just curious to see how long it takes you to start zoning out while reading academic material. Allow me to present, The Cultural Amalgamation Which Produced Mare Tralla's Protected.