My brain has been chewing on this subject for a while now--maybe even years subconsciously. So maybe it's time to write about it. This is another one of those "perhaps I shouldn't publish these particular thoughts" kind of topics. But, heck, what good is totally obscurity if you can't ramble on the internet about the stuff that bugs you?
A story. I had my first period when I was 13, at the beginning of eighth grade. I'm pretty sure I just lost at least half of my audience with that sentence, so to the three of you that are left--thanks for hanging in there with me. Anyway, the very first day of my very first period in eighth grade, I was walking to class in an utterly suffocating hallway when out of the chaos of teenaged limbs, some idiot grabbed my ass and gave it a serious squeeze. I have no idea who it was, and honestly, it wasn't the first time some stranger had inappropriately accessed my hindquarters. (Sidenote: to those of you who are thinking how awful it is that thirteen year old girls get treated this way by strangers-um, yeah. No kidding. And my experience is on the way, way, way mild end of the violations suffered by women. Sometimes little girls.) It wasn't an accident--not someone just brushing by that I interpreted wrongly; some stranger grabbed my butt.
That's never fun, but on this particular day it was doubly painful. My life had very recently changed--my body had changed and I was barely beginning to adjust to those changes and adapt to my new reality. Now, in addition to the humiliation of having someone take uninvited liberties with my body, I was consumed by fears of what I was doing wrong. Had I leaked? Had my maxi pad shifted in some visible and shameful way? Did he somehow know that I was on the rag, and this was my punishment for becoming a woman?
Because in my experience, women get punished for being women. We are punished for having women's bodies. I don't want anyone to misunderstand. This post--this complaint, I guess you could call it--is not a girls versus boys thing. I don't think men are to blame, or women, or really any individual or group. We just have this long history of devaluing women, specifically women's bodies, and it's so deeply embedded and subconscious that few of us escape it very well. And it hurts us--both men and women--when we systemically violate the sanctity of a human body simply because it has two x chromosomes.
It's not just the physical violations, either. It's been the psychological attacks on my female body that have done the most damage over the years. Women have a hard time winning--either you are too pretty, wherein your flesh becomes an object of desire, gratification or envy, or you are not pretty enough and yours is an object of derision and shame. Either way, you are not a person anymore--you are just an object.
I'm on the not pretty enough end of the bargain. I've struggled with my weight all my life, and I imagine that battle will not end until I lay this mortal by. I'm always the fat friend--the smart, nice girl who everyone thinks would make a great wife--for someone else. That's okay. Those are issues of my own making, admittedly (though not made in a vaccuum), but here's what drives me crazy, and what I think (I hope) is cogent to this particular subject. A few years ago I got serious about my health, and I lost a lot of weight. People, both men and women, started looking at me differently. Friends, family, people with whom I have close, loving relationships, praised me and I appreciated their praise. Casual acquaintances and even strangers also made comments, ones that I believe they meant to be kind, and I tried to accept with all the grace I could muster, but they weren't really kind. Here's the difference. The acquaintances and the strangers were simply judging my flesh. They don't know me, they don't know any part of me beneath what they see. And what they see should not be fodder for comment or judgement. My family and friends, the people who know me, when they would complement me, it wasn't just about how I looked--how they judged my body. They knew how I worked, how I strived, how I changed not just my flesh, but my mind and my spirit, to accomplish my goals. They were not planting their flag in my flesh. They weren't colonizing; they were celebrating my independence.
At Christmastime, I saw someone who has known me for many years--since we were children. We see each other maybe every few years, and it had been several since he saw me. He hardly recognized me. He couldn't stop going on and on about how much I had changed. About 15 years ago, he used to come in to the place I worked. It was my first real job out of high school--I was eighteen. And he could not believe that I was the same person as that pudgy teenager from way back when. I smiled, accepted the congratulations on my weight loss (isn't there a statute of limitations on that kind of thing--good lord, it's been years!), but fumed inwardly. Because honestly--the way my body has changed in the last fifteen years is nobody's business. The way it changes in the next fifteen or thirty or 50, well that's nobody's business either. This body is sovereign territory, and the ruling party does not take kindly to uninvited interference.
See, the thing is, my body is grand. It can create, and love and rage and think. It can sing and dance (awkwardly, admittedly)and climb. It astonishes me the more I get to know it, how glorious a thing this bag of bones and muscles and fat and blood and nerves is. Anytime some casual gaze falls upon it, or some horny adolescent of any age grabs it, physically or psychologically, it makes it a little harder for me to honor it the way it deserves. Why, in a world that is hard enough the moment we enter it, do we feel the need to make it any harder for someone else?
So, my suggestion is we stop gazing, grabbing and colonizing women's bodies--including the women who make their living on runways, ad campaigns and screens. They might not be above it, but we can be. I'm not suggesting we ignore beauty--go on and admire your wife's backside along with her wit--but leave Kate Winslet's alone.
I'm not entirely sure I'm right about any of this, or even that what I've written is an accurate reflection of what I think and feel. I'm still working out what I think and feel on this one. I'm also curious about other's experiences, especially men. I wonder a great deal if there is some analogous male experience--some way they feel colonized. So dear readers, if any of you made it to the end of this post (poor things...) please comment. But be nice. You can disagree, but try not to hurt anyone's feelings.
By the way, the irony of this post, when read in concert with the previous post about the differences between objectively and subjectively handsome men, does not escape me. I didn't say I was perfect! I just said everyone else should be! Ha ha ha....
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Let's have a chat about books...
So, I read quite a bit, and I write reviews for work every once in a while, so I thought maybe I'd share a few with the blogosphere. I don't like every book I read,
so some reviews are critical. I think that's a good thing though, whether you agree with me or not. I read some book reviewers and movie critics because I know what they like I won't, and what they don't like, I will probably enjoy. I think we should have an anti-staff picks shelf at the library. It would be fun and useful!
So, with that said--the inaugural "Gently Down the Stream" book reviews.
Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King (2011 Printz Honor)
There are going to be some people who have objections to this book, which is really too bad. King’s characters are the kind of kids who don’t get any breaks; in fact, they’re lucky if they don’t get broken. Her heroine is Vera Dietz, a bright high school senior growing up in less-than-stellar circumstances. Her parents were teenagers when they had her—an eighteen-year old alcoholic and a stripper who eventually decided that motherhood was not for her and took off with her lover to Vegas. Vera’s dad is now a recovering alcoholic and a reasonably successful accountant, but in their economically depressed town, Vera needs her pizza delivery job and the local thrift stores. She’s mourning the loss of her childhood friend Charlie who died under mysterious circumstances months before. Charlie, the son of a wife-beater and a doormat, had been drifting into a failing life of drugs, sex and trouble with the local “detentionheads”. He’d been drifting away from Vera in the months before his death, and Vera’s feelings for him have swung between loving and loathing. Now, nearly nine months after his death, Vera is unsure whether she should keep her head down and just survive, or whether she should speak what she knows and clear Charlie’s name.
There’s drinking, sex, and cussing, but none of it is gratuitous in any way. Kids who relate to Vera and Charlie’s circumstances need to see characters like Vera who, though flawed, is striving to take control of her own life and destiny. And kids who never have to face the kind of troubles in this book can gain some much needed empathy toward their less fortunate peers. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s an honest one, and I appreciate it.
Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy (2011 Morris YA Debut honor)
This fits into the category of great opportunity ultimately squandered by poor execution. The YA market is currently (still….) dominated by heroines of various stripes who fall in love with a supernatural creature and are thrust into some monumental battle between good and evil. Healy, a New Zealander herself, roots her version in Maori cosmology. Her heroine, Ellie Spencer, is seventeen and away at boarding school while her parents are traveling the world in a post-cancer scare long-term vacation. (Who does this? Drop your life and your kid for a year while you gallivant? Odd.) Ellie’s best friend Kevin (platonic) has wrangled her into helping another classmate with a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the local University. Ellie’s mysterious crush Mark seems to have some interest in her, and it turns out that he’s not just mysterious, he’s supernatural. He’s part of an ancient race of New Zealand fairy-like folks, and he’s trying to protect Ellie and her friends from his ravenous mom and other paranormal powers that would do them harm. Of course, it turns out Ellie has some latent powers of her own.
Admittedly, I was tired of this genre about ten seconds into reading Twilight, but I can’t understand how it hasn’t worn out its welcome in the publishing world. I think Healy has potential--this was an opportunity to do something really unique, but it just buzzes along in first gear. It never really soars, you know? Too bad. Next!
And here's a few for when you want to read "grown-up" stuff
All the Little Live Things and The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
Stegner never fails to amaze me. Of the two, All the Little Live Things impressed me more. It’s probably the best thing I’ve read in years—devastating and beautiful. After a somewhat slow build of tension, Stegner blew the top of my head off with the ending. This novel finds Joe Allston, a somewhat curmudgeonly retired literary agent, and his wife Ruth newly retired and relocated to California in the 60s. They are still struggling with the death of their son, with whom Joe had a contentious relationship, when they find themselves hosting a hippie squatter on their land. Joe doesn’t like him, being opposed to all the values of the free love/free drugs generation, but can’t bring himself to kick him out either. At the same time, another newcomer appears in the form of Marian, a thirty-something mother with whom Joe is smitten. She’s like the daughter he wishes he would have had, even though she has some opposing opinions of her own. Stegner builds Allston’s philosophies about love, responsibility, wildness and order through his interactions with these two characters, blows everything away with a tragedy unlike anything I’ve ever read, then somehow ties it all together in a satisfying, if bitter, resolution. Masterful—and in my eyes, as good as anything he wrote.
The Spectator Bird takes place about ten years later, as Ruth and Joe are facing their friend’s, and thereby their own, mortality. Joe inevitably begins to recall and weigh his life, and he finds himself lacking—a spectator rather than an actor in his own story. He receives a postcard from a countess they boarded with on a trip to Denmark twenty years earlier just after the death of their son. That card leads him to pull out the journals he wrote that summer, and somehow his wife finagles him into reading them aloud to her. Dangerous memories are revealed and, finally, resolved between them as he recounts the life of this beautiful, tragic woman and the relationship that blossomed between all three of them. Not my favorite Stegner by a long shot, but still worth reading. Stegner, who had an enduring and successful partnership with his wife Mary, has something to say about both the challenge and the ultimate joy of being and staying married.
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
The Lonely Polygamist is a sprawling story about a sprawling, typical American family, albeit a polygamous family. Okay, so maybe some things about Golden Richards, his 4 wives, 28 children, a failing construction business and a forbidden flirtation aren’t exactly typical, but it’s surprising how relatable Udall makes his characters. They deal with the same things we all struggle to overcome—a desire to feel loved and connected in a world that is big and busy and chaotic and filled with competing needs. In this family, as in the whole world, it seems like nobody’s needs are being met, and the various ways characters try to overcome that conundrum are by turns hilarious and tragic. I hesitated to read this one, simply because my own thoughts and feelings about polygamy are not clear and most attempts at portraying it in media I find utterly uncomfortable and often offensive, but I’m so glad I did. It’s not about polygamy, really; it’s about family, just intensified exponentially by the sheer size of the Richards clan. The writing is admirable, as well. Definitely recommended.
Read on, my friends. Read on!
so some reviews are critical. I think that's a good thing though, whether you agree with me or not. I read some book reviewers and movie critics because I know what they like I won't, and what they don't like, I will probably enjoy. I think we should have an anti-staff picks shelf at the library. It would be fun and useful!
So, with that said--the inaugural "Gently Down the Stream" book reviews.
Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King (2011 Printz Honor)
There are going to be some people who have objections to this book, which is really too bad. King’s characters are the kind of kids who don’t get any breaks; in fact, they’re lucky if they don’t get broken. Her heroine is Vera Dietz, a bright high school senior growing up in less-than-stellar circumstances. Her parents were teenagers when they had her—an eighteen-year old alcoholic and a stripper who eventually decided that motherhood was not for her and took off with her lover to Vegas. Vera’s dad is now a recovering alcoholic and a reasonably successful accountant, but in their economically depressed town, Vera needs her pizza delivery job and the local thrift stores. She’s mourning the loss of her childhood friend Charlie who died under mysterious circumstances months before. Charlie, the son of a wife-beater and a doormat, had been drifting into a failing life of drugs, sex and trouble with the local “detentionheads”. He’d been drifting away from Vera in the months before his death, and Vera’s feelings for him have swung between loving and loathing. Now, nearly nine months after his death, Vera is unsure whether she should keep her head down and just survive, or whether she should speak what she knows and clear Charlie’s name.
There’s drinking, sex, and cussing, but none of it is gratuitous in any way. Kids who relate to Vera and Charlie’s circumstances need to see characters like Vera who, though flawed, is striving to take control of her own life and destiny. And kids who never have to face the kind of troubles in this book can gain some much needed empathy toward their less fortunate peers. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s an honest one, and I appreciate it.
Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy (2011 Morris YA Debut honor)
This fits into the category of great opportunity ultimately squandered by poor execution. The YA market is currently (still….) dominated by heroines of various stripes who fall in love with a supernatural creature and are thrust into some monumental battle between good and evil. Healy, a New Zealander herself, roots her version in Maori cosmology. Her heroine, Ellie Spencer, is seventeen and away at boarding school while her parents are traveling the world in a post-cancer scare long-term vacation. (Who does this? Drop your life and your kid for a year while you gallivant? Odd.) Ellie’s best friend Kevin (platonic) has wrangled her into helping another classmate with a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the local University. Ellie’s mysterious crush Mark seems to have some interest in her, and it turns out that he’s not just mysterious, he’s supernatural. He’s part of an ancient race of New Zealand fairy-like folks, and he’s trying to protect Ellie and her friends from his ravenous mom and other paranormal powers that would do them harm. Of course, it turns out Ellie has some latent powers of her own.
Admittedly, I was tired of this genre about ten seconds into reading Twilight, but I can’t understand how it hasn’t worn out its welcome in the publishing world. I think Healy has potential--this was an opportunity to do something really unique, but it just buzzes along in first gear. It never really soars, you know? Too bad. Next!
And here's a few for when you want to read "grown-up" stuff
All the Little Live Things and The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
Stegner never fails to amaze me. Of the two, All the Little Live Things impressed me more. It’s probably the best thing I’ve read in years—devastating and beautiful. After a somewhat slow build of tension, Stegner blew the top of my head off with the ending. This novel finds Joe Allston, a somewhat curmudgeonly retired literary agent, and his wife Ruth newly retired and relocated to California in the 60s. They are still struggling with the death of their son, with whom Joe had a contentious relationship, when they find themselves hosting a hippie squatter on their land. Joe doesn’t like him, being opposed to all the values of the free love/free drugs generation, but can’t bring himself to kick him out either. At the same time, another newcomer appears in the form of Marian, a thirty-something mother with whom Joe is smitten. She’s like the daughter he wishes he would have had, even though she has some opposing opinions of her own. Stegner builds Allston’s philosophies about love, responsibility, wildness and order through his interactions with these two characters, blows everything away with a tragedy unlike anything I’ve ever read, then somehow ties it all together in a satisfying, if bitter, resolution. Masterful—and in my eyes, as good as anything he wrote.
The Spectator Bird takes place about ten years later, as Ruth and Joe are facing their friend’s, and thereby their own, mortality. Joe inevitably begins to recall and weigh his life, and he finds himself lacking—a spectator rather than an actor in his own story. He receives a postcard from a countess they boarded with on a trip to Denmark twenty years earlier just after the death of their son. That card leads him to pull out the journals he wrote that summer, and somehow his wife finagles him into reading them aloud to her. Dangerous memories are revealed and, finally, resolved between them as he recounts the life of this beautiful, tragic woman and the relationship that blossomed between all three of them. Not my favorite Stegner by a long shot, but still worth reading. Stegner, who had an enduring and successful partnership with his wife Mary, has something to say about both the challenge and the ultimate joy of being and staying married.
The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall
The Lonely Polygamist is a sprawling story about a sprawling, typical American family, albeit a polygamous family. Okay, so maybe some things about Golden Richards, his 4 wives, 28 children, a failing construction business and a forbidden flirtation aren’t exactly typical, but it’s surprising how relatable Udall makes his characters. They deal with the same things we all struggle to overcome—a desire to feel loved and connected in a world that is big and busy and chaotic and filled with competing needs. In this family, as in the whole world, it seems like nobody’s needs are being met, and the various ways characters try to overcome that conundrum are by turns hilarious and tragic. I hesitated to read this one, simply because my own thoughts and feelings about polygamy are not clear and most attempts at portraying it in media I find utterly uncomfortable and often offensive, but I’m so glad I did. It’s not about polygamy, really; it’s about family, just intensified exponentially by the sheer size of the Richards clan. The writing is admirable, as well. Definitely recommended.
Read on, my friends. Read on!
Alexander Siddig is subjective. Definitely subjective.
There are two kinds of handsome men in the world. The first is what I like to call "objectively handsome." These are the kind of guys that are clearly good looking, but don't really do anything for you. They are symmetrical, appear healthy, have the ideal proportions, etc. But they don't make you wish you could kiss their face off or talk to them for hours, or, you know, not talk to them in affectionate ways. This sort of handsome man exists both in real life and on the silver screen. I'll restrict examples to the non-real life ones; it's not polite to discuss the ones you've actually met, I think.
Brad Pitt is a clear example of this. He's obviously genetically blessed, but he doesn't hold any attraction for me. I would not see a movie because Brad Pitt was in it. It's got to have some other interest for me, because watching Mr. Pitt for two hours just isn't enough. George Clooney. Ryan Reynolds. Any of a number of fresh faced lads on TV. Most of the men who've appeared on "The Bachelor" (or at least the ones I've seen--I haven't watched it, but those folks always end up on the cover of People magazine eventually). The animated princes in Disney movies. All objectively handsome.
Then there are the subjectively handsome ones. They might, or might not, be equally attractive on paper, but it doesn't matter. Something about these men resonates with some primal, subconscious need, or something. I don't know what it is--if it's a voice, the way they hold themselves, the way they move.
Don't misunderstand me, I don't put any stock in any of this, beyond just the fascinating and funny mystery of attraction. Why does one handsome man inspire little more than a half-hearted "meh--" from me, and another I just can't seem to get enough of. Some strange mix of nature and nurture like everything, I guess.
All this, however is just a long-winded way of saying that I loved Cairo Time. I don't really know if it was a good movie though, because my prefrontal cortex pretty much checks out, and my hypothalamus takes over when Alexander Siddig enters the scene. Dang. That man is... there are no words.
That's all I have to say about that.
Brad Pitt is a clear example of this. He's obviously genetically blessed, but he doesn't hold any attraction for me. I would not see a movie because Brad Pitt was in it. It's got to have some other interest for me, because watching Mr. Pitt for two hours just isn't enough. George Clooney. Ryan Reynolds. Any of a number of fresh faced lads on TV. Most of the men who've appeared on "The Bachelor" (or at least the ones I've seen--I haven't watched it, but those folks always end up on the cover of People magazine eventually). The animated princes in Disney movies. All objectively handsome.
Then there are the subjectively handsome ones. They might, or might not, be equally attractive on paper, but it doesn't matter. Something about these men resonates with some primal, subconscious need, or something. I don't know what it is--if it's a voice, the way they hold themselves, the way they move.
Don't misunderstand me, I don't put any stock in any of this, beyond just the fascinating and funny mystery of attraction. Why does one handsome man inspire little more than a half-hearted "meh--" from me, and another I just can't seem to get enough of. Some strange mix of nature and nurture like everything, I guess.
All this, however is just a long-winded way of saying that I loved Cairo Time. I don't really know if it was a good movie though, because my prefrontal cortex pretty much checks out, and my hypothalamus takes over when Alexander Siddig enters the scene. Dang. That man is... there are no words.
That's all I have to say about that.
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