Quodlibets

GAG

A woman who used to work here, at my work, but retired recently, came in today with a bag of her famous caramels.  Now, I've had said caramels before, and they are a wondrous thing, fresh and chewy, buttery smooth, the perfect caramel color, and simply divinely delicious.

I decided to cheat a little on my diet (HA!  a little.  Ask me how my diet's been going lately.) and eat one, and so I snuck into the workroom and took one  I unwrapped it, and noticed a lingering smoke smell, but dismissed it.  I shouldn't have, because when I bit into the caramel, it tasted like a cigarette.  A stale cigarette.  If you think that isn't that gross, think again.  It almost led me to puke up my lunch.

That'll teach me to cheat on the diet.

We are all judgemental, sometimes, but...

Recently, in the Tribune, Dawn Turner Trice wrote a column about a local billboard that was the cause of some outrage on the part of a local women's organization.  I've seen the billboard, and it's not tasteful, and it's a little bit degrading.  I'm not sure that I'm outraged by it, but it doesn't make me happy either.  However, today, Trice has a short follow-up piece posted, with some comments from readers.  Mostly the comments are fine, but the last one nearly made smoke come out of my ears.

The only women I know who ever seem to get offended by racy ads featuring women are women who are not attractive in the slightest. It's petty.

First of all, this comment wasn't written by a man, which is worth noting.  I think.  And here's how I know:

My friends and I often dress up in our sexiest outfits to go out, yet we should be offended when sex is used to sell.

This is a two-pronged bad answer to the question.  The first part is so offensive I want to cry.  Yes, the reason women find that billboard offensive is because they're ugly.  Attractive women couldn't possibly object.  Hence, if you do object, you must be ugly.   And the charge that it's petty?  That strikes me as the lowest form of insult one woman can hurl at another.  I can't even gather my thoughts coherently enough to tell you why this is wrong, except that I know that it is.  Implying that ugly women are bitter trolls who reject any display of hot ladies, simply because they're ugly is so far out there that I don't know how to respond.  Someone help me here. 

And the second part of that comment?  Great, glad to know that you're a hot, sexy woman.  Because clearly, the only way you can show that is to dress in revealing, degrading clothing.  Obviously, this woman sees herself as a commodity, because she needs to show off the goods to a prospective partner before he "buys".  I can't say that I disagree with the idea that women should be allowed to choose to dress as sexy as they want, because they should.  But they should also understand that using themselves to sell something is ugly and wrong, and is contrary to everything that feminism fights for.  We're not something to be bartered or sold, we can't be given or taken (part of my problem with traditional marriage/weddings); we're human beings, just like the men in the marketing departement of that radio station.  Until we stop seeing women's bodies as a commodity, we'll never get gain any sort of gender parity, which is what I assume lots and lots of women are working towards.  In my book, every single woman should be concerned with the way our bodies are used to sell things. 

(For the record, it's just as heinous when it's a man's body; I'm fighting against objectification in general, here.) 

In Comparison

Yesterday, my sister talked about comparing herself to her peers, and the feeling that she is coming up short when she looks closely at accomplishments.  Her question, ultimately, is really a question of how we define accomplishments and success, and I think, how we play the game when our concepts of these things don't match up to everyone else's.  For the record, I struggle everyday with the same issues.  And I'm not sure if it's our generation (I suspect it's not entirely that), or some unique cocktail of things that's produced the same mindset in two sisters.  (It's a little too early to tell if my brother Litty will feel the same.  I suspect he will, but there's no way to really know.)

The truth is, my concept of success, in my head, has nothing to do with my job or with money.  It doesn't even really have anything to do with if I earn another degree (though it's something that I'd love to do, simply because I love love love learning).  It certainly has nothing to do with marriage or kids, because I don't aspire, really, to either of those things.  I know that many, many members of my generation (hell, members of my extended family) consider all those things markers of a successful life.  That I do not (and that Kate does not) makes us exotically different, at times.  (Try explaining to 95% of the population that you are a woman who doesn't want children, and you will get pretty much the same reaction from every single one of them:  you're an oddity and an aberration, and anyway, you reallly do want kids, you just don't know it yet.  You'll have kids, wink wink nudge nudge.  But that's another entry completely.)

So, the question is, if I don't consider any of those aforementioned things to be the definition of success, what do I consider success?  And the answer is, I don't know.  Some days I feel like I'm a success just because I got out of bed.  Other days, I feel like a failure and a loser.  Most days, I just feel lucky that I get to love so many incredible people.  That seems like the highest form of success that I can comprehend, being allowed to have so much love in my life.  If that seems like a saccharine answer, fine.  But it is really how I feel.  I am possibly the least ambitious person ever, simply because I am allowed to be, by dint of who I was born to.  I recognize that, and feel lucky, too, that I am allowed to say that success for me is to be loved and to love.  It's an answer with a certain amount of privilege behind it, and there is simply nothing that I can say to change that except that I am aware of how lucky I am.

At the same time, I would be lying if I said that I don't feel insecure and lame in comparison to some of my peers.  Even though I don't want to measure myself in the same ways they do, I am aware of what some of them must think about my slacker ways.  Most days, I don't care.  Some days, I'm indignant.  And other days, I wonder what it would cost me to try to live my life that way; I wonder if I even could, and feel pangs of sadness.  For them, or for me, I'm not sure.  And I'm not even THAT different.  I have a job, and a steady boyfriend.  I have plans for the future.  It is only because I am keenly aware that this is not the life I want to end up with.  This is not where I want to be in 10 years, and where I want to be in ten years seems to be very far removed from where my peers want to be.  It is perhaps my future that sets me apart.

Little Women -- The Musical

Enh.

I will be sick of ground beef by the end of 2006

I tried a new recipe last night, Cheeseburger and Fries casserole.  It wasn't very good, but mostly because the fries on top didn't quite get done.  Also, it was greasy.  Which is easily explainable.  The meat we used was higher fat, and I don't think I did a good enough job draining it.  Bad me.  Anyhow, it was nothing to rave about, and I'm quite certain I'll never make it again.  I have no idea what new recipe I'm going to try next week except to say that it will most definitely have ground beef in it, since we have seven pounds of ground beef in our freezer right now.  Possibly seven and a half.

In other news, we built a bookcase this morning, so that I can start putting books on shelves again, instead of stuffing them on top of other books.  I mean, it had reached the point that I was going to have to start piling books on the floor, and I think that I can say with utter certainty that by July, the books would have taken over the house.  The new shelf is nice to have.  Also, I'm planning to iron today for the first time ever in my house, due to the generous gift of an iron from my mom--and of course, she bought the accompanying ironing board, because if you don't have an iron, you probably don't have an ironing board.  Frankly, I think she was just getting sick of me bringing all my ironing out to her when I would visit.  Also, it is now harder for me to visit often since I am working a half hour away from my town in the opposite direction from her. 

Tonight, my sister and I are going to see "Little Women--The Musical" because my dad and M decided to go to the Bulls game instead.  However, they are taking us out to dinner beforehand, since they're eating in the Loop, closer to our event than theirs.  On the other hand, my sister and I were just going to go out for a casual meal before, and now the restaurant is more fancy.  Hence the ironing.  I've never been to this restaurant, which makes it exciting, because I love new restaurants.  I'm sure I would never go there if not for this opportunity, so that's nice too.  I do feel a little bad, because S gets to sit at home while I eat a restaurant that he would love, but it's kind of his fault, since he utterly refuses to see any sort of production on stage unless I threaten him with bodily harm.

Anyway.

Friday Random Ten (Is the Weekend Here Yet? Edition)

1. Neighborhood #2 (Laika) -- Arcade Fire
2. In My Place -- Coldplay
3. Short Skirt/Long Jacket -- Cake
4. Drive My Car -- The Beatles
5. Hospital -- Ben Folds Five
6. Angry Any More -- Ani DiFranco
7. Cradle and All (Live) -- Ani DiFranco
8. Path of Thorns (Live) -- Sarah McLachlan
9. Strawberry Fields Forever -- The Beatles
10. Beautiful Stranger -- Madonna

Well, that's pretty representative, but I thought it got a little boring at the end.  Two Beatles songs, and two Ani songs = boring.  Within the last five days, I've added about four hundred songs or so to my iPod, which is only, in this mix, represented by Cake.  I suppose when you're taking 10 out of 3000 (the exact number on my iPod right now!), there are bound to be oddities.

Also, and this isn't reflected here, my iPod seems to love playing the song "Wonderful" by Everclear.  I don't love the song.  I mean, it's okay, but I sure don't want to hear it within the first twenty songs every single time I set my iPod to shuffle. 

Hopefully, by the end of February, I'll have a new, shiny iPod to do this with (since mine has been acting wonky now that I use it for hours and hours and hours every day).

Bonus song (just coming on now, as I finished typing this): Novacaine for the Soul -- The Eels

In which our protagonist battles an addiction

My name is Manogirl and I am addicted to LibraryThing.  I spend every waking moment thinking about my books, trying to remember titles (while I'm sitting at work, and not in front of my bookcases), and mentally assessing and re-assessing how many books I own.  Ballpark right now: 1,000.  Will I eventually clock in under that?  Possibly.  Is it possible that I have more than that?  Absolutely. 

Right now, as far as I can tell, I've done about half of what is in my apartment, maybe slightly less.  I've probably also done, thanks to an earlier cataloguing experiment, about a third of my collection at home.  If that's the case, I will hit my number right around 1,000.  (Not taking into account the books I have on order at Amazon, and the gift certificate I still have from xmas for Amazon.)  Also let it be said that almost NONE of my romance novels will ever get catalogued, because I hardly keep any, instead choosing to pass them to my sister and then my grandmother.  Last week, I read two romance novels that I bought.  Just to give you an idea of how many books I buy that won't show up.

Here's how addicted I am to this thing:  last night, I made S take pictures of the bookshelves in our apartment, so that in my downtime at work, I could catalog the books on them at work.  Seriously.  Not kidding.  He emailed them to me, and that's what I did when I could grab a minute, and during breaks, at work. 

I've always known that I'm some sort of book nerd, so my obsession with cataloguing all my books isn't a surprise to me.  I've long wanted a list of what I own, in case either my mom's house or my apartment goes up in flames.  LibraryThing is such a frigging great way to make that list.  An addictive way to make that list.  Oh, how I love it.  I can't wait until I finish, and then can just enter books as I get them.  Poor S.  I want to spend all my time in the closet now, with my books.  (One of my bookcases at the apartment [of two, soon to be three!] is a short one, in the closet.  All the "read" books are on it.  Well, what could fit, anyway.)

If you're curious about my library, well, go here.

We were there first

Long before Notre Dame ever considered putting on "The Vagina Monologues", its neighbor across the street did.  We did it amid protests and howls from the community, from women on the campus, and with little fanfare from the bigger school across the street.  We did it a second year despite being explicitly banned from doing it.  We did it because we thought, if you can't talk about vaginas at a school for women, where can you?  We believed in academic freedom and the right to direct our own lives as students, as adults.  College isn't supposed to be an extension of high school; the president of the college isn't mommy or daddy, to stop you from seeing big, bad, non-Catholic things.  Learning autonomy is one reason people go away to college.

But am I surprised by this article in the Tribune this morning?  No.  It doesn't surprise me that the male president of Notre Dame is considering banning any further production of The Vagina Monologues, after this year.  It doesn't surprise me that he won't allow money to be collected, and that he won't allow it in a theater.  Notre Dame is a reactionary, conservative college.  It's not a surprise. 

I do hope that for their sakes, the students at Notre Dame remember that seeing the Monologues is a choice, and that everyone should have the right to exercise that choice.  I hope they don't go gently.  We didn't.  We held an unauthorized reading, and passed a bucket around, taking in donations even though we were forbidden.  It's one of the prouder moments of my college career.

Update:  I talked about this issue with Tim for a little while this morning, and all I can think coming out of that discussion is that some colleges seems to be particularly out of touch with the students that enroll in them.  I think our generation is more open than the generation before that, and so on, but I think many policies (official policies on controversial topics) seem to be made with the alumni in mind.  I know it's a money thing, but that doesn't make it less galling. 

Or do I just give my generation more credit for being liberal than they deserve?

"I don't understand the revolution..."

I must've read this essay before, because I have two (two!!) copies of the book that it's in.  But I don't remember reading it, so I just re-read it, and now I think you should go read it too.  Because if you don't, I'm not sure this post will make any sense to you.  And anyway, it's a great piece of writing.  It deserves to be read.

See, the issue never goes away.  You can stuff it in the back closet of your mind, but you inevitably end up going into that closet for a song title, or a phone number or something, and then that issue comes crashing down on your head like junk you just can't get rid of.  It happens every day like that; you're doing something benign like reading the news at work, or looking for a bookcase or whatever, and suddenly you remember, yes, I am overweight and yes, I am dieting.  Or, yes, I do not love myself like I have been told I am supposed to. 

This body image fight is an ugly one, and like I said, not a day goes by that I don't realize that I am somehow at war with my body over how much room it wants to take up, and how much room I want it to take up.  It feels like a battle, a battle to love myself more than my body wants to be loved.  I try really hard to love the way I look, and I only have limited success, as far as my body goes.  I can make no secret of the fact that I would like to lose another 25 pounds.  I would be less than honest if I said any different.

And yet.  I have often, especially in the past few months, looked in a mirror, at my face, and seen it as beautiful.  I recognize that I am a beautiful woman.  I can see that, and I can see that often.  It seems like such a contradiction, to want my body to be different and yet love my face.  How can those two things exist within the same brain?  I have no answer for that; I just know that is what is there.  And yet.  And yet.

I feel like I'm not allowed to say that.  I'm not allowed to say that I find my own face beautiful, because as women, we're taught to not be vain.  We're taught that there is something wrong with us from the minute we come into this world.  It could be no other way.  How to explain the millions of skinny, slim women who constantly decry their fat bodies?  We are aggressively conditioned to hate ourselves.  To hate the wrinkles and the blemishes and the imperfections, so that when I say "I find my own face beautiful" I am meant to feel ashamed that I feel that way.  I am supposed to understand that no woman should ever say that out loud, but only think it.  It's a secret between her and the mirror, and in public she is supposed to decry her figure, her skin, herself.  Every compliment recieves a complaint in return.

But I'm not okay with that, not anymore.  I know I'm beautiful, and from here on out, I'm not afraid to say it.  If I don't admit now that I see a beautiful face in the mirror, then I will never, ever be able to say that I love my body.  And if I can't say that I love my body, I'm not sure I'll ever believe it.  And I think that if we're gonna be a part of the revolution, we have to like who we are doing it. 

Question

Why has no one ever made the book Passing, by Nella Larsen, into a movie?

And furthermore, why has Oprah never talked about Nella Larsen, who, to my mind, is one of the best African-American woman writers? 

I'm not sure if you can still call Larsen an "undiscovered" writer, but she's no Zora Neale Hurston either.  That's a shame, because Passing is one of the books that made the biggest impact on me in college.  I read it, at my small women's college, in no less than two of my classes.  Possibly three.  And yet, the college library I work at doesn't have any of Larsen's books.  It's kind of sad.  More people should read Larsen.