I am told I must be genuine but must be quiet and nice. I am told I can do anything but how many "experts" are women? (I will now seek to read more female authors). I am told that I am perfect just the way I am; so-long as I am "sweet" and resemble someone on a hiatus in an internment camp.
This makes me angry.
I am told I am not a sex object but I have been grabbed at and objectified from a very young age.
This makes me sad.
I pick up a magazine and not one article tells me I should think for myself or have hobbies; only touts the technique for the perfect blow job. I can read about a thousand ways to degrade myself in bed but no one is going to tell me how to figure out who I was before I was "socialized."
Okay...
It's not okay.
So how do we make sense of the mixed messages?
The Constitution guarantees certain unalienable rights to men.
So what about women? We've done a bit more than stitch the flag in the sewing circle for the past several hundred years.
This is what bothers me--we may need an amendment to guarantee rights to women.
Awesome.
It's as though we were just allowed to read and vote; but rights?
*Cut to: a boardroom somewhere
Guy in a Fitted Shirt: We have failed at brainwashing the female gender.
Guy in Italian Leather Shoes: What do you expect? You gave them the proper propaganda. You initiated the plan but some of them developed an alcohol tolerance and not many of them wanted to take the pills. You can't shut them up.
Shirt guy: But we encouraged everyone to debase them from a very young age.
Shoes guy: Some of them are strong-willed.
Shirt guy: And you couldn't break them?
Shoes guy: We couldn't break them. They were too clever and very angry at how they had been repressed.
Shirt guy: What about the diet pills?
Shoes guy: We've already tried that. They caught on.
Shirt guy: What about fashion?
Shoes guy: We've tried that but some of them don't want to conform to the uniform.
Shirt guy: How about turning them against each other?
Shoes guy: Don't you think that we've thought of that already? We teach distrust of their own gender, create elite social groups and pit them against each other to earn the affection of men; but some of them will not conform.
Shirt guy: We may have to resort to Plan B.
Shoes guy: We've performed some preliminary experiments with Class C level degradation and the studies show that the human spirit becomes stronger.
Shirt guy: Fascinating.
Shoes guy: So some of these women will willingly become slaves to fashion, ideals, marriage, sexism, and some of our more unsavory tactics, but when we implement violence, they become stronger?
Shirt guy: Yes. In fact, some of them become quite irreverent.
Shoes guy: Any suggestions?
Shirt guy: We have think tanks working on the issue; however, we have exhausted all of our current tactics. I need chocolate.
Shoes guy: Now you sound like one of "them."
*****
What I am trying to illustrate is that society creates certain contradictions that women are told they must abide by.
We are given an illusion; a promise of security, so-long as we can meet the standards posed to us.
We have the right to remain silent. More accurately, we are encouraged to remain silent; lest our opinion should matter. We have ownership of our own bodies, but our bodies should meet certain standards of conformity. We have certain unalienable rights, but since we are not "man," we require a judgment or amendment to guarantee those rights.
As far as I am concerned, the only biological difference between me, Napoleon, and the framers of the Constitution lies in a jar in a museum somewhere and is dedicated to the beloved Josephine, and, is infamously small in nature.
I do not delight in pissing contests. I do not believe that the world is against me. It's just the way it has operated for a very long time.
I bet no one would tell Michelle Obama she "can't."
I bet no one would tell a female Supreme Court justice what to say.
No one would say it out loud but it is understood that we are the "weaker" sex.
If you knew my family, you would disagree. I come from a long line of feared women. The men in my family sometimes sigh and sometimes shrug off our opinions, airs and tempers.
Sometimes I think my grandfather loves to fight with my grandmother as much as he loves to kiss her. I don't think she'd be the same if she didn't put up a fight. Her name may be Barbie but there is nothing plastic about her.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Time Capsules
I never realized that writing could be so heartbreaking. I box away and compartmentalize articles of indiscretion.
I open the time capsule a few years later, when I get around to cleaning, and find what I wanted to forget. It is, at first, difficult to look at the pictures of the past; the love notes, the mixed tapes and the mixed bag of misery I was once attached to.
There are always mixed emotions. First, remembering, in hazy detail, the actions performed in the dark--the sweetness, the sweat and the horrible karaoke. Hopefully, no one else remembers the karaoke.
Then something odd happens. Old feelings emerge from a forgotten place. There is the urge to forget; but, as a writer, I delve deeper and it gets a little wild. I remember every emotion, every action, every grievance, every transgression, every intent and stare at them suspiciously.
I wonder how things ever happened the way they did and wonder why in the hell I ever did those things in the first place and why any rational being would ever enter a banana eating contest at a bar and why there was only one banana. I am going to assign a little blame to the bartender in this particular case, your honor.
Perhaps it is hard to laugh at our own folly, but it is necessary and it gives levity.
So here goes nothing.
I hope that I can accept all of the ugly bits and I hope that I can make them funny. The naughty bits are certainly the most fun and the most forbidden, but I can't undo a doing. I chalk it up to experience and hope that everyone will laugh when they learn later on, in my golden years, that I fell backwards into the president of the university on the dancefloor of the campus watering hole. Blame it on the pinot grigio, the stillettos, the birthday celebration, but above all..blame the bartender. I will be sure to make it a cautionary tale and leave no details to be questioned, because the reader is both the judge and the jury.
I will, above all, laugh. I will laugh when I recount the nights that will live forever in infamy and remember that I am now a changed person, and there is forgiveness in nostalgia. For there are no saints; only reformed drunks and liars. Make no mistake; we are all liars, if only to ourselves.
I will now tell a lie and that lie will recount my former life as a rogue restaurant worker, bartender and drunk. The names and scenarios will be changed to protect the innocent and it will be greatly embellished. I will even take it to the furthest scope of your imagination. I will tell you a tall tale, but I promise you that somewhere beneath all those veils and layers, there is some truth. Pardon me while I forgive myself for my transgressions and I hope that you can forgive me too.
Love and stardust,
Kara
I open the time capsule a few years later, when I get around to cleaning, and find what I wanted to forget. It is, at first, difficult to look at the pictures of the past; the love notes, the mixed tapes and the mixed bag of misery I was once attached to.
There are always mixed emotions. First, remembering, in hazy detail, the actions performed in the dark--the sweetness, the sweat and the horrible karaoke. Hopefully, no one else remembers the karaoke.
Then something odd happens. Old feelings emerge from a forgotten place. There is the urge to forget; but, as a writer, I delve deeper and it gets a little wild. I remember every emotion, every action, every grievance, every transgression, every intent and stare at them suspiciously.
I wonder how things ever happened the way they did and wonder why in the hell I ever did those things in the first place and why any rational being would ever enter a banana eating contest at a bar and why there was only one banana. I am going to assign a little blame to the bartender in this particular case, your honor.
Perhaps it is hard to laugh at our own folly, but it is necessary and it gives levity.
So here goes nothing.
I hope that I can accept all of the ugly bits and I hope that I can make them funny. The naughty bits are certainly the most fun and the most forbidden, but I can't undo a doing. I chalk it up to experience and hope that everyone will laugh when they learn later on, in my golden years, that I fell backwards into the president of the university on the dancefloor of the campus watering hole. Blame it on the pinot grigio, the stillettos, the birthday celebration, but above all..blame the bartender. I will be sure to make it a cautionary tale and leave no details to be questioned, because the reader is both the judge and the jury.
I will, above all, laugh. I will laugh when I recount the nights that will live forever in infamy and remember that I am now a changed person, and there is forgiveness in nostalgia. For there are no saints; only reformed drunks and liars. Make no mistake; we are all liars, if only to ourselves.
I will now tell a lie and that lie will recount my former life as a rogue restaurant worker, bartender and drunk. The names and scenarios will be changed to protect the innocent and it will be greatly embellished. I will even take it to the furthest scope of your imagination. I will tell you a tall tale, but I promise you that somewhere beneath all those veils and layers, there is some truth. Pardon me while I forgive myself for my transgressions and I hope that you can forgive me too.
Love and stardust,
Kara
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