Anyway the site would still be silent but for an angel named Shawn who swooped in to save the day! Thank you kind sir. I've always depended on the kindness of strangers.

So, glad to be back, to have a placed to rant, and to have foiled the evil Trojan Horse implanting hacker!

Ha!

xoxo

dyb

Our Dorothy, a radiant young friend of mine, cut out early, before the costume contest. I felt a moment of panic--what's the cast of the Wizard of Oz without Ms Gale? But this problem was quickly solved: another Dorothy was at hand. She too was dressed in blue and white checked gingham. She too had put her hair in pigtails. She would definitely do. There was, however, one fundamental difference between her rendition of this character and ours.

She was Slutty Dorothy.

Now this was an adult dance. And I am certainly no prude. We took first prize and were wildly popular, Slutty Dorothy or no. But it did lead me to ruminate one more time on the bizarre turn that Halloween has taken. I don't mean the by now accepted fact that women feel free to express themselves in erotic ways on this holiday. I mean the unaccountable tarting up of characters that don't have any association with sexuality. Like the tin man for example. As I was cruising the internet for ideas, I was dismayed and perplexed when I ran across a Slutty Tin Man costume. Huh? No, it wasn't even for men, the MAN in Tin Man notwithstanding. The outfit consisted of a tiny tin tube, allowing for maximum exposure of female flesh. I'm sorry, this is just weird.

I've seen Slutty Bumblebees, Slutty Raggedy Anns, Slutty Cowboys--the list goes on and on. In fact, Christa Getz, the purchasing director of Buycostumes.com says that 90-95% of all female costumes send a sexual message. The company has had to break their "sexy" category into three divisions this year just to accommodate all the erotica!

Isn't it lovely to think that women are getting in touch with our sexuality? Isn't it hard to believe that this is what the corporate co-opting and commodification of Halloween means? Yep it is. I believe that this show of flesh is less a sign that we are free than proof that we remain trapped in limited definitions of what it means to be a woman. What if we weren't attracting male attention? What if we expressed ourselves in non-sexual ways? What if, what if, what if?

I'll tell you what if. We'd be having an amazing time. How do I know? Because this is exactly what I have been doing for the last few years. I have gone on Slutty Strike. Let other women convince you that they want to be your Slutty Cavegirl. I would rather please myself than you. And the results are marvelous.

It started last year when my friend Jan and I decided to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat. This decision directly assaulted the unspoken but pervasive dictate that we signal our sexual attractiveness in extreme ways on Halloween. As I dressed for the evening, in an enormous red bag, with a blue fright wig and whiteface, I was unsure how it would feel to mingle with a roomful of sexy women and the men they were trying to attract. Well, it felt great! I'd never danced so freely, I'd never felt so free, I'd never been as free. It was one of the best nights of my life.

Oh yeah and we attracted a lot of attention and won the costume contest.

But the victory for me was an internal one. I don't have to make you think that I am hot to feel valuable or special or deserving. YAY! Let me repeat that. YAY!

And lest you think that one middle-aged woman's personal victory over her own internalized sexism is a private matter, please note that the sexualization of Halloween costumes for women has now extended itself down into the girl category, with elementary school aged females feeling pressured to be sexy on Halloween. Yes, you read that right. According to GenderPac, "The traditional pirate, witch, and school teacher costumes for girls now have a sexy or vixen undertone to them. Costumes are outfitted with miniskirts, leather high-heel boots, shirts that expose the mid drift, low-cut corsets, and other overtly sexualized accessories."

I look back on my childhood Halloweens, when I was an old man (with a full beard my wonderful brother Pete, a theater major, affixed hair by hair), a pair of dice (with my friend James), a hippie (with a sign that said "don't trust anyone over 8). I was free to let my imagination run wild and I did. I was whatever clever thing I could think of. What I wasn't was Slutty. How lovely to come full circle, to get to play with the freedom of a child and hand this sexist culture back its imperative that I define myself--and our girl children--as objects of sexual desire.

Won't you join me next year?

And they made way for lots of hate.

I know everyone doesn't think like I do, doesn't share my belief in freedom for women, in equality for homosexuals, in peace not war. Still, I have to admit I have been shocked by the signs that have popped up in my neighborhood advocating a ban on gay marriage and advocating the election of conservative John McCain and his anti-female female running mate. Their houses look so cute. How can the ideas propounded therein be so ugly?

I already knew weird religious people lived on my street because every single morning I pass the signs in their window that call me a murderer for having elected to exercise my right to safe and legal abortion. Sometimes I feel hurt, sometimes I feel angry, sometimes I feel compassion, sometimes I feel nothing. But always I wonder why they think they know better than I do about what I am capable of handling, and I also wonder why their religion promotes self-righteousness instead of love of neighbor.

Still as I have grown used to this omnipresent scold, I deluded myself into thinking that they were some kind of exception, that all the other pretty bungalows were filled with people who understand that the fundamental freedoms we enjoy in this country are indeed what makes America great and that trying to erode them would be tantamount to trying to destroy our very nation.

Well I was wrong and they are trying.

So what can I do besides voting my conscience? It occurred to me that I could take pictures of these signs with me in the photo and blog about the consternation I feel every time I pass a house filled with people who want to take away my self-determination and that of my gay friends. And so I am.

The other Dr Blaine agreed to act as photog for the mission, so we set out on this picture-perfect day through our beautiful neighborhood filled with flowers and trees and birds and.... anti-woman, anti-peace and anti-gay messages. First stop I knew would be that house on the corner, the one I pass every single day with the huge message ABORTION IS HOMICIDE. I often feel impotent looking at the sign, as I know I have no intention of going to them and saying the various things I think of saying, some asking for understanding, some sarcastic, some flat-out mean.

Finally today I got to "do" something about it. I got to get my picture taken in front of their house in my "this is what a feminist looks like" tee-shirt. And I got to hold up a sign that says "thanks for hating." It felt real good.

We moved on to the Yes on 8 house that I see when I come home from Target. It has little stick figures of a happy family, clearly one that doesn't include abortion-loving feminists or their fag friends. I smiled real pretty for this one, holding up my Thanks for Hating sign. Finally I was starting to feel ok about things.

The last stop was a double-winner, both Yes on 8 and McCain/Palin. But this one didn't go as smoothly as had the other two. The minute I stepped onto the lawn (which I knew was trespassing btw), a man shot out of the house and demanded to know what I was doing. I was prepared for this. I smiled sweetly and said "taking a picture of your sign for my blog." By now wife had joined him, holding baby (not aborted and one hopes for her sake not gay). Wife screamed "get off our property." "Of course," I said, complying immediately. Like I said I knew stepping on someone's grass was indefensible, so I hopped to the curb.

I pointed out to my hubby that we could easily still take the picture from the sidewalk. This is where it gets fun. As soon as I said that the man demanded that we leave that spot as well. We nicely said that he doesn't own the sidewalk. Well, that was news to this anti-gay marriage pro-republican La Verne homeowner! "Yes I do," he screamed. "You can't just go around taking pictures of anything!" And the wife added "you are the ones who are hating!" (Apparently she had noticed my sign. Sheepish smile....)

Anyway by now we had our photo and were headed to the car, but we also kept calmly repeating "it's still a free country." The irony is not lost on me, and I hope it's not lost on you either. These people want to determine who can marry, who can abort, and who we should kill overseas. So why should they stop there? They also want to prevent people standing on public property from taking pictures of signs posted in the public sphere.

Maybe they can get that measure on the ballot as well.

My husband calls them the weird religious people, as in "the weird religious people dropped off some avocados today." (They were delicious.)

But what I don't get is why films that aren't being made by the religious right represent abortion as some unthinkable disgusting procedure. In the case of "Knocked Up," in fact, it's treated as just about unmentionable. When someone does suggest to this loser, stoner, porn-website-producer dude that he and the woman who got impregnated during their drunken one-night stand not carry this hapless fetus to term, a GREAT idea, he cannot even use the word. He says "smu-smor-shion." I am not kidding. We are supposed to believe that a group of guys who pride themselves on hyper-frat-boy behavior--flaunting every disgusting bodily afflatus and sexual obsession--are too delicate to say the word ABORTION. Are you kidding me? Seriously. What is up with that?

Later in the film the woman's mother suggests, with wonderful vision, that the daughter "take care of it." Well, this is slightly less juvenile than saying "smu-smor-shion," but it remains absuredly euphemistic. And, even more absurd, the daughter refuses--for no good reason. She just says "no." Huh, ok.

Now of course the plot required that she not get a "smu-smor-shion," since we're supposed to delight in the romantic dynamic of the shlubby guy scoring the hottest of hot chicks (was it just me or did this seem a tad like male wish fulfillment?), but nonetheless the way it was represented seemed quite ominous. There was no attempt to explain why carrying an unwanted fetus to term was the default position. And since this film, from "liberal" Hollywood, sets the tone for a new generation, I've got to wonder what role models young women have that let them know they aren't moral cripples if they make the wonderful life affirming decision to abort an unwanted pregnancy.

Certainly they don't get it from "Juno." I wanted to like this film, and in some ways I did. I mean has anything coming out of Hollywood lately tried harder to be charming? Maybe that's what I also found kind of off-putting about it. Too many one-liners. The whole thing felt, well, scripted. But that 's not the issue for me. No, it was the representation of abortion. Here's a girl who gets pregnant in high school and decides to terminate the pregnancy but changes her mind because everyone in the clinic is on her nerves and the fundamentalist girl in the parking lot told her her fetus had fingernails. Seriously? That's it? Fingernails. Geez it also had lungs and a spleen. What about those more complex organs? Shouldn't they be more moving than fingernails?

Nope it was sentimental hogwash, plain and simple. Since this fetus has fingernails, and the adults in the waiting room were chewing theirs, Juno decides to have a baby even though she doesn't want to parent. Sure. Makes all the sense in the world. Glad the topic of abortion was considered seriously. And don't worry, there's a rich, straight, white lady obsessed with class and status who cannot wait to possess the child like another set of Eddie Bauer sheets. What a relief!

Times have certainly changed. And not for the better. When I was being socialized, the popular film "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" represented abortion as the logical choice for the unwed teenaged mother. After she gets pregnant, her erstwhile boyfriend stands her up for the surgery appointment so she gets a ride from her brother. He realizes where she's actually going, and waits for her. Sweet. When she comes out, he says "you ok?" She says "Ya." He asks if she's hungry. She is. Off they go to get something to eat. No horrible consequences, no grave side effects, no psychological trauma. Just a young woman taking advantage of her right to safe, legal abortion in a country that prides itself on the freedom of its citizens. Ahh, those were the days. Glad I was raised in them.

Link to interview

Wow.

What to do with this information? At this moment, all I can do is shake my head in bewilderment. It's not that I don't know where I live. The United States is a Christian nation historically and putatively. It's just that I wonder how someone with an education like his can truly wrap his head around the idea that there's a human sacrifice in the past that was mandated by an omnipotent (and loving???) deity which absolves all of us from our alleged limitations. I'm still shaking my head.

First of all why on earth would you subscribe to a doctrine of original sin? I don't care to define myself as fatally flawed, permanently stained, shameful and broken; nor do I care to define myself as having benefited from the torture of a man who lived a long time ago and certainly bears no responsibility for any of my actions, immoral or otherwise. Crucifixion is a mind-numbingly abysmal way to die. After hours of agony, the body ultimately crushes under its own weight and the victim suffocates. And the knowledge of this having happened to someone is supposed to make me feel better about myself? Are you kidding?

Shaking my head again.

Second of all, how on earth can anyone believe the bible's historical veracity given what we know now about the origins of the universe? I am off to the Creation Museum in Kentucky this weekend. There I expect to cringe and guffaw at the naifs who need to cling to a fable that absolves them from independent self-definition and promotes the fantasy of eternal life. BUT I DON'T EXPECT ANY OF THEM TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Another head shake.

I don't know everything. That is the one thing I do know for sure. But I also know, deep in my soul, that limiting myself to a single metanarrative so convoluted and rife with dismal assumptions, befuddling paradoxes and outright hypocrisies violates every concept I have regarding human potential and the wonders of this astounding existence we enjoy. "Figure it out" at your peril, religious folks. I refuse to be so close-minded.

And when I die, please don't say I am in a better place. I like this one just fine.

The service was performed by another dear friend, Sharon, a woman I admire for her courage and strength and love. When I spoke to her later about how well I thought she'd done, she said "you should do this." "Do what," I replied, genuinely confused. "Perform weddings, be an officiant." I truly thought she was kidding, so far was this from any concept of myself that I have ever had across a lifetime of living fantasy existences in my head. "Why?" Sharon replied: "Because you have such a strong connection to the universe. You'd bring something to this that I don't."

Wow. Me? A strong connection to the universe? Well, yes, I had to admit that I knew what she meant. In spite of a life dedicated to rigorous study and skepticism in the best Enlightenment rational tradition, I've ended up experiencing things that simply belie human explanation. And I accept that. And I embrace them. And I refuse to name or dogmatize them. Closest I will get is to saying that I worship the Moon Goddess. Is there really one? Don't know. Does that matter? No. I am an atheist who prays. Upon hearing that, an incredulous man once said "how does that work?" "I haven't the faintest idea," I replied. "But it does."

Anyway I got a good laugh out of what she had said and mostly disregarded it, although part of my "religion" if you will is being open to what comes, open minded, open to change, open to personal growth. I'd forgotten about it until recently when another friend approached me and asked if I had been ordained yet. "Huh?" I was puzzled. "You know, so you can perform weddings." "Is someone getting married?" "Yes, my daughter Rachel. And I told her you could do the service. She'd like that."

I've known this friend for 13 years. We've seen each other through all kinds of joy and pain. She knows me inside and out. And she wants me--ME--to marry her kid! I was humbled, amused, and only slightly afraid. Who am I to tell this friend, and Sharon as well for that matter, that they are wrong about me? Instead I choose to take it as a sign that I can be of service in a way I'd not yet dreamed of in my wildest ones.

So I got ordained. Yep, the Right Reverend Bip. High Priestess Diana. Minister of Moon Goddessness. And on April 19, with passover beginning at sundown, I will take my place before an excited couple and tell them that the universe loves them. And I will be right.

http://www.caddychicks.com/

Let them know what you think. I did.

yourlatv@gmail.com
http://www.caddychicks.com/Contact

One image occasioned much discussion, as it always does. Supposedly a fashion spread on lingerie, the feature actually functions as an advertisement. (Most of the copy in women's magazines does this, pretending to be something other than it is: a craven attempt to manipulate the reader into spending money.) In this article/advertisement, a young woman stands in front of the camera, arms at her sides, eyes half-shut, face turned slightly sideways and upwards just enough to expose her jugular. She's underweight, with a visible pelvic girdle and sharp collar and chest bones protruding. The overall effect mixes concentration camp victim with, well, fashion model chic. She looks like she's dying and waiting for--begging--us to finish her off.

Is the result sexy?

Of course. Sex is the point of the image. While today I see an underweight young woman photo-shopped to appear even weaker and more helpless than she actually is, I know the overall effect has been manipulated so that we have an erotic response to the image. After all, she's largely naked, covered only on the parts that our culture deems erotic--breasts and genitals. Hiding them evokes titillation. Also she stands there exposed, clearly marked as the object of our gaze. We have been taught to respond as voyeurs, enjoying the feeling of power over someone helpless, so her very position as powerless is what codes this picture as erotic. And she fits our definition of ideal beauty, thin, young, white, and female.

As we discussed the advertisement, oops, I mean article, considering when and why our culture began to idealize the underweight white female, one student mentioned that she works in an agency where teenagers come in every day to present their modeling portfolios. She said that at this place of business the floorboards have a small space between them, and often the prospective models get their stiletto heels caught in the gap. No big deal, except that when these girls turn their foot after having gotten stuck in the floor, sometimes their ankles break.

Sometimes their ankles break. Just from turning them.

If you don't feel anything when you read this, check yourself. The culture has stolen something precious from you, promising in its most seductive voice that if you simply cut yourself off from human compassion you will get lots of shiny stuff in return. But there aren't enough material objects in the world to fill the gap in our souls that results from living in such toxicity. It's simply not good enough. We are not doing good enough. Our land of abundance trains young women to starve themselves, prominently features their images when they do so, and then turns away and hurls accusations at them when their bodies begin to deteriorate in their teens.

Snap!

But nooooooooo. Our "fair" jurists have made it quite clear that their interpretation of the constitution falls heavily towards control. Can a high school kid say whatever he wants? No, not if it's a joke about Jesus and pot. Can a woman control her body? No, not if it's a type of abortion that some people find yucky. Can women sue for wage discrimination? No, not if their attempt falls outside of a narrow time window. Can taxpayers be protected from having their money spent to support religious indoctrination? No, not since Bush renamed their conversion attempts "charitable." Can individuals defend themselves from large corporations? No, the court has made it clear they're pro-business not pro-people.

When I say "the court," however, it is important to understand that while the majority rules, there are dissenting opinions. I want to thank Stevens, Souter and Ginsberg for believing that teenagers should not be silenced simply because their message makes people uncomfortable. The kid was standing on a public sidewalk with a banner reading "bong tokes 4 Jesus." His principal made him remove it and he sued, saying his freedom of speech was being curtailed. Obviously it was. But not so obviously if you're sitting on today's conservative Supreme Court who just ruled against him in a split decision.

The paradox is obvious: "no," the conservatives thunder, "you can't get an abortion because that's an individual in your belly!" But as soon as that "individual" is born, she begins losing all of her rights. Control children, control women, control employees, control dissenters. It's all happening right in front of our eyes.

And I will show you where we are headed. I belong to a community service organization in which some members recently tried to convince us that we should all say the Lord's Prayer at the end of our meetings. Obviously this would be inappropriate as we are not a religious organization nor are all of us Christians. But this didn't stop some people from arguing vociferously that they were being discriminated against if we did not agree to say their prayer. Seriously. Discriminated against.

One woman gave a canned speech which I am quite sure her church has devised to try and force all of us to adhere to its theology in the public sphere, where I quite happily exist without religion. She said that any time people excluded monotheism, they were imposing polytheism (!), thus oppressing the poor wretched monotheists. Sigh. The fact that it is those of us who do not profess christianity who are in the minority seems lost on people like her as their need to grab and retain power persists unabated. While they won't admit it, they are the enemies of freedom, clothing themselves as the opposite, torturing logic in the interests of imposing a religious agenda on a nation which was founded by people who worked adamantly to avoid just such a theocracy, having lived under one and endured its injustices.

And now they have the Supreme Court on their side.

We do this in order to carve out some degree of self-respect, because hearing over and over how horrible, say, women are, for example, hardly causes me as a woman to want to identify with "them." So I do the opposite, identify with men against women, in effect identifying against myself but deriving a modicum of respectability for doing so.

How do I know this? Because I myself often used to say "I don't like women." Heck, I applied to a men's college, and as a 15-year-old girl, it wasn't because I wanted to "go wild." No, I wanted to be where the power and prestige was, and as I had learned and learned well growing up, that was where the men were (and still are).

It wasn't until I read feminist theory that I realized I had internalized a sexist culture's loathing of females and what we represent. Until then I had simply sided with the patriarchy, detesting weakness, vulnerability, and passivity, all of which we connect with women. In order to believe that women are weak, vulnerable, and passive, we must pretend men are not, which is where James Bond fits in. I saw Casino Royale the other night, and watching 007 get his balls repeatedly whacked only to beg for more caused me to snort in derision. Yeah, right. With only one whack to the balls, he'd have balled like, well, a "bitch." Get the idea how we artificially separate out human characteristics, rigidly associate them with either of the two sexes, and then revile those attached to females and femininity?

Which leads me to homosexuality. One of my brilliant students who identifies as a gay man disagreed with me when I said that marginalized groups internalize prejudice, leading to self loathing, which is then expressed as hatred towards the group as a whole. He felt strongly that his dislike of "gays" as he had recently seen them literally on parade during Pride festivities was generated by "their" behavior, which he found stereotypical and damaging to the cause of civil rights.

He explained that he did not act like "they" did, that members of his fraternity wouldn't know that he was gay unless he told them. Another student added that one does not have to be "fabulous" to be gay.

"What," I queried, "is wrong with being fabulous?"

Now of course I understand the point. I am not a "typical" (straight white middle class) female either. Don't lump me in with women. Why I am strong, smart, rational, coordinated, independent, etc etc etc. Those beauty pageant queens, they must be some other brand of woman than I am. They're not strong, smart, rational, coordinated, independent, etc, are they?

Are they???

Why, of course they are, come to think of it. Competition like that requires real grit. So why on earth would they choose to behave in ways that seem so demeaning, parading around trying to get power through male attention, trying to be the Queen of the whole country or even universe?

Hmm. When I put it that way, it seems kinda obvious, doesn't it? Because they are striving to achieve in one of the limited ways that women have been traditionally been allowed to achieve. They are striving for excellence in one of the traditional ways that women have been allowed to strive for excellence: as the objects of male desire.

So why am I mad at them for doing something perfectly logical given the limited circumstances of female existence? So why aren't I pissed at the patriarchy? Why am I not mad at sexism?

I am.

And it's that exact same sexism that forces my wonderful young students to identify against their own group, those fabulous, fey, exuberant men marching in the Gay Pride Parade, and with the very institution, that heteronormative fraternity system, which makes them cringe at the sight of every fairy. Why not be pissed at the Greeks? They are the ones who say that if you don't conform to rigid norms of heterosexual masculinity then you will be stomped.

The answer, as the word "stomped" suggests, is fear. It's a lot easier to stay huddled in the protection of the dominant group's shade, why some white women stay allied with white men rather than our sisters of color; why some men of color align themselves with white men rather than their sisters of color; why some gays align themselves with the straight world rather than with their homosexual brethren. What do the non-privileged peoples have to offer in the way of protection, resources, respectability? Nada.

This is why comprehensive civil rights movements take real courage.

As to what straight white men can get out of joining us in our drive to eliminate oppression, which is another good question that came up in class this week, well let's just say that constructions of masculinity today are so limiting that if I were a straight white man I would be SCREAMING for some fabulousness. (Perhaps this accounts for that bizarre Queer Eye show, but of course it just reinforces that false us/them binary that makes it hard for gay men to construct a self they can be comfortable with. That program is more about mandatory consumption patterns than sexual identity.)

Carl's Jr has a new commercial which shows said straight white male gulping down cocktails and chomping on the fruit that comes in his drink while clearly ogling "babes." The point of the ad is that "real" men cannot, do not, will not, don't, eat "fruit" (funny coincidence this is a derogatory term for gays) unless it comes lassoed to liquor.

If I were a "real" man I would be livid. How dare they try to peddle death, which is what you're asking for if you regularly consume that garbage, under the guise of masculinity? How dare they discourage "real" men from enjoying the foods that real men have been eating for millenia? And it's not just Carl's Jr. that discourages male self-preservation. Mitchum deodorant packaging actually anoints you a Mitchum man "if you don't go to the doctor until it's broken" or "if you consider mowing your lawn as cardio."

So here's my wonderful brilliant gay male students being pressured to identify with that sick world, one that pretends to represent power but actually encourages weakness, denial and death. So here's my wonderful brilliant straight male students being pressured to identify with that sick world, one that pretends to represent power but actually encourages weakness, denial and death.

Given these two options, I'd choose fabulous in a heartbeat. And proudly act to keep that heart healthy, eating fruit and getting lots of true exercise.

It's called self-love. And we could use a whole lot more of it in this supposedly self-centered society where we're all supposed to emulate and pander to this most life-denying, soul-sucking, toxic construction of straight white masculinity. No thanks.

I didn't even realize what was happening. Monday, the day itself, I drove down to see my mom's sister in Laguna. She's just lost her husband of over 60 years and had to relocate to a more user-friendly senior center, a nice place where sometimes there's not quite enough room in the hallway for everyone to pass by easily with his walker. Driving down there, I reflected upon when my grandmother relocated from Encino to Leisure World in 1977. She was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, and the move was in order for her to die. Or at least that was my youthful comprehension of the event.

So as I got off the 5 freeway I reminded myself that this was a powerful journey I was making and that I needed to give myself space to feel. I have had to learn to do this, feel that is, because I come from a family and from a culture that tends to do everything else but. Feel, that is. Instead I learned to "use" when I was uncomfortable, whether food, shopping, people, substances, or, when nothing else was available, plain old delusional thinking. "This isn't happening," I can tell myself. "I am not feeling this." "They didn't mean that." "I don't mind this."

How else can assure we are living in the Happiest Place on Earth?

The other day an affable young fellow came over to fix my stove. He and I chatted about cars and houses and, oh stoves, too, of course. When he left, I mentioned to my husband how much I had enjoyed talking with him and how nice he seemed. Wise spouse replied that the man was a classic American, friendly, gregarious, familiar. "The English would hate it," he added.

I felt a stab of shame. Now first of all what's lovely today is that I am actually aware of what I am feeling. I used to plunge through life unconsciously, asking my poor body to take the psychic blows I was too vulnerable--in my fantasized invulnerability--to process. It's not like that today. Instead I noticed the shame, felt it, and then asked myself why it was there. I realized I have always felt inferior to the Brits, who with their "stiff upper lip" have made a virtue of repression.

Why is repression a virtue? I don't have to be ashamed of the American thirst for openness and honesty. What a refreshing realization! I like it this way, not having to feel that shame all the time, the one that keeps us repressed.

And yet, it occurs to me, that the same America which touts openness and honesty is also the same America into which I was socialized not to feel. It is also the same America which has stopped mourning death, eliminating almost every visible aspect of grief from our cultural scene, expects people to "get over it" by the time the funeral draws to a close.

After all, "she's in a better place."

No phrase could be more perfectly designed to force one to stuff her grief. How dare I feel bad that mom's dead if she's tripping the light fantastic somewhere in the sky? What's my problem?

Well first of all, I have absolutely no idea where my mother is, except for the certainty that her corpse lies in Oak Park Cemetery in Claremont. Pop's ashes do too, I might add. As to the rest of the, oh I want to say blarney, about heaven and such, well, suffice to say I just don't know what happens after we die, but I am not strongly compelled to believe any of the accounts that humans have come up with, religious or otherwise.

So I have had to fight for the right to grieve, battling both personal predilection, familial indoctrination, cultural theology and social ideology. Yep, that requires real mettle, taking all of those on. And every bit of it has been worth it, for when I look around at the alternatives, I see compulsive consumption--of food, material goods, relationships, and worry. Don't want to be like that any more. Life is too short and too beautiful.

And I have made progress. While we were sitting in the dining room of her assisted living apartment, Posy asked me when my mother--her sister--died. "1997," I replied. "June 24, 1997." Then I thought to myself, why, no, it was dad who died on May 24th of last year. Mom's death day must be the 21st or..... I dropped it, suddenly unable to recall a date stamped on my soul, the day my mother died, the day my best friend died, the day my biggest champion died, the day one of the coolest people I have ever met died.

After I got home I watched a Doctor Phil about obesity. As usual he was berating someone for being sick, in this case a 500 lb young woman who uses food to medicate her desire for love and acceptance. Of course the bigger she gets, the less acceptance she gets, particularly from her mom, who was sitting there angry as she has been ever since the kid got fat in junior high and came home crying and ashamed. Suck it up, her mom tells her. Harden up. Tough it out.

Man could I relate. I too could not get full that Monday. I too ate things I did not need for their nutritional value or energy contribution both at the Senior dining hall and then when I got home. Cookies, nuts, almond butter, where's the cheese? I could see myself doing it, but did not know why. Instead of remembering that I had been taught to stuff feelings and something was clearly going on, I found myself starting to drown in self-loathing. Why can't I exert control over self? Why can't I be thin and beautiful? Only then will everyone love me and I won't have to feel this pain.

Old tapes.

Fortunately just then my wonderful husband came home from the store. I told him how I was feeling, said I was trapped by food, starving and yet already having heartburn from one macadamia nut too many. Maybe it's because I went and saw Posy, I wondered aloud, knowing that seeing her in her new apartment was also seeing her closer to the end of her life.

Marty said "Well you know today's the day your mother died."

oh.

How amazing that I could not face this fact alone. How gentle is my universal guide, giving me people in my life to help me face things I cannot face alone. How wonderful is my progress which will never be perfect but is good enough today that I can eventually face what I need to face and so don't have to walk around filled with toxic waste! Beautiful.

I'm tearing up writing this, still filled with feelings, I want to say "all these days later," when really it's "all these years later." Monday I got to feel, gave myself permission to still be sad, to still miss mom, even a decade after her demise. Later that night, after communing with lovely friends who cemented my right to grieve rather than telling me to suck it up, I got out the funeral program and obit to put on my altar; seeing these two artifacts opened a stunning floodgate of emotion. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, sitting there on the floor of my bedroom, clutching the little stuffed, er, thing, that I made for my mom when I was a little girl and she kept the entire rest of her life in a drawer right beside her bed.

The tears rolling down my face were so big and hot that I wondered if they came from a different place than usual. My cries were so anguished I wondered if the neighbors could hear. But I didn't care. My mom's dead. I love her. That hurts. It should.

The next day I went to teach my Feminist Theory class feeling like I had run a marathon the day before. In effect I had, getting to the most painful emotional place humans go, full blown acceptance of loss. I knew from previous experience that I would be compromised, so I treated myself gently. I shared what I was going through with my class, told them I was not operating on full steam. No more stiff upper lips for me. I am human, vulnerable, imperfect, emotional.

And I loved my mommy.

Now, though, there's no "off" to tv. It's "on" all the time. And not only is it "on," there's more of "it" in the form of hundreds of channels. So, the need has arisen to fill airtime, all the time, with whatever. I experienced this myself last May when three photos I had posted on my Flickr site were actually deemed worthy of headlining the 5 o'clock news in the huge Los Angeles market. They ran for days on end, and I was contacted by media outlets and individuals all over the world. My sides have only recently stopped aching from how hard I laughed at the earnest assertion that three pictures of me legitimately constituted "news."

But since I have been teaching feminist theory for nearly two decades, I was actually well able to understand why these pics were deemed newsworthy. And I was able to write about it. And I was able to explain all of this to a number of reporters who wanted to talk to me about it. So I was in the rather bizarre position of both being the body talked about and the talking head talking about the body in question. No problem. I can handle it.

However I am sorry to say that it is rare to see someone like me well versed in gender theory holding forth on the news. For instance, this morning Fox ran a piece about some blogger who posted a picture of a young athlete from Southern California. The man who put her picture on his website wasn't interested in athletics; he wanted to turn her into a sexual object and share that object with the other men who visited his blog.

And now a high school pole vaulter finds herself in the unwanted position of being the focus of worldwide attention, not for what she can do, but for what she looks like.

We've come a long way, baby.

As Fox introduced the various experts they'd corralled to discuss this issue, I eagerly waited to see which one had expertise in feminist theory. Answer? None. Well, why expect a feminist to be asked to explain the dynamics of sexual objectification, right? No, much better to have a male therapist and some woman who hopes that this young woman athlete "leverages" the attention into celebrity.

None of them could explain the fundamental problem, one which comes right out of Feminism 101. Athletes are valued for being active, strong, independent, individuals. We associate these characteristics with men because we operate on a fictive binary which relegates human females and males to opposite sides and claims that the two do not share the same abilities (or "dis"-abilities as in the case of women). Of course an athlete like this one immediately exposes the false nature of this dichotomy. She is an active, strong, independent individual. And a woman.

Under the male gaze, however, she becomes relegated to the role of passive object. Our sexist patriarchy understands females primarily as accoutrement to men. How is this female useful to males? Ah, as a pleasing, passive object of desire. Let the dehumanization begin!

The victim of this unwanted sexualization probably doesn't identify as feminist. Most young women today do not. Yet feminism has made inroads: she knows what is happening to her feels "demeaning." That's because it is. Would that we educated our children about the way institutionalized sexism functions. Then they would not be forced to apprehend a world which works in certain ways without having the tools to understand--and resist--those ways. Seems obvious. Yet this enforced ignorance about feminist theory is ideologically useful, for without it, men would have to justify having a world which grants them unearned privilege and asks those of us who are not like them to enjoy and appreciate being called inferior.

And to enjoy their enjoyment of our bodies rather than our own.

So the discussion about this pole vaulter is stuck in whether or not it was "legal" to reprint her photo; whether or not there's such a thing as "privacy" anymore with the internet; whether or not she can actually use this to her advantage, in spite of being sickened and frightened by the attention.

As to the gender implications, the "why did this happen?": silence.

I remember walking through the LA County Museum of Art when I was a little girl, looking at all the paintings of naked ladies. My young mind struggled to make sense of the world into which I was being socialized, and, so, faced with the images of so many nude females, I thought "I guess that's what people paint." It's not much of an explanation, though it is the simplest one. Aren't such parsimonious theories best?

No. Indeed naked ladies are "just" what "people" paint. Yet there's much more to be said about who those "people" are; they are men. And why they do it: most of the images of women we see in our world come from the "male gaze," a view of the female as a passive object designed for male pleasure. This designation comes at the expense of female autonomy and the erasure of female subjectivity, as young Stokke has found out. "No one really sees me," she says, in spite of the fact that tens of thousands of people are looking at her image plucked out of its athletic context and handed over to men so that they can continue to feel superior. In this worldview, there is no female "self" to see.

Simple? Yes. Simply unacceptable.

It's delusional to think that the length of your eyelashes determines the quality of your life.

Why did this sentence pop into my head this morning, fully formed and waiting to be shared? Two reasons. One, I am partying this weekend, celebrating life and love and freedom; death, and grief and loss. And so at one of the fiestas, I am dressing like Nancy Sinatra in order to sing These Boots are Made for Walking. False eyelashes seem to be a part of the period costume look, so I have been cruising them at drug stores, thinking about buying some, wondering if I will be able to put them on if I do.

I've never worn any, never tried, at least not that I can recall. The whole process intimidates me, from which kind to buy to how to get the little rascals seated on the lid. There was a time I would have thought this meant that something was wrong with me, that all women "knew" how to do this and therefore even though I looked all woman in the mirror, I was in some way broken.

Today I know it's not nature that gives gals the goods when it comes to femming up. In fact, something opposite to nature actually occurs anytime anyone heads towards her eye with a little furry caterpillar, determined to glue it on. This fact explains why men are just as good as women at doing this kind of stuff, and are even hired to teach us to do it, as in the case of Willy Ninja--gosh I think that's his name--who teaches the candidates to sway when they walk on America's Next Top Model.

Speaking of teaching us to walk, something you would have expected evolution to perfect, this month's Cosmopolitan magazine has a helpful article on how to stand our body shape in spite of the fact that we all know that Barbie is the only one who gets it right every time and deserves to be comfortable in her own--er--plastic coating. Women of my body type, according to Cosmo, should swing our hips when we walk. Oh wait, that might have been another body type. Argh, I forget! There I go failing the femme test again!

I was reading Cosmo in order to prepare for the first day lecture in Introduction to Feminist Theory. That's the only reason I purchase this toxic rag anymore. That I used to read it for "fun" and to "relax" simply blows my mind. There's nothing fun or relaxing about finding out that our world revolves around men and keeping them happy is our only hope for fulfillment. We're even supposed to watch them sleep to find out what feelings are revealed in their various nocturnal postures. Presumably we underlings can then use this information to gain favor with our superiors.

Myself, I wear a sleep mask.

Cosmo's also full of eyelash ads, mascara ads actually, each one promising more EXTREME lashes than the next. I'm starting to wonder if we've not reached critical mass, lash-wise, that they simply cannot get any bigger or longer or stronger or sexier. And so then what? Where will we have to go from there? Surely no man will want a girl with mere EXTREME eyelashes, perhaps turning to the more ocularly hirsute vicuna in desperation. (Those sexy beasts have some limpid come hither stares, I tell you what. I saw them all over Peru. Lucky country!)

Nope I don't really think that knowing how to maximize my lashes or my body type or my man's-sleeping-posture-interpretation skills will do me one bit of good, not in any way that really matters. To thine own self be true. Not to some guy's self be true. Polonius only gave this advice to his son Laertes, telling his daugher Ophelia to think herself a baby. But I am swiping it for me. To think own self be true.

And I know for a fact some time tomorrow night as I dance and sing under the moon and stars, those fake eyelashes will be torn off and trashed.

That is if I can even get them on to begin with.