Cassandra Says

2009-06-07T02:13:00.000-07:00

Anyone know a great tailor in the Bay Area?

Local readers, help me out. I have a tailor that I use for simple things like hemming jeans, but I don't think he can handle what I have in mind. I was cleaning out my closet and found a vintage Red or Dead skirt in this amazing subtly sparkly purple denim. Seriously, this thing is gorgeous, but I must have been heavier when I bought it because it's a bit too big. Also too long - oh high end designers, why do you assume everyone is 5ft11? So it needs hemming, but I'd also like to have them narrow it a little all the way down, and make it taper in at the knee to make it more pencil-ish.

Anyone know a local tailor who can handle that? Normally I'd just take my chances with my own tailor but hey - vintage, one of a kind, etc, don't want to ruin it.

2009-05-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

I am a huge sap

OK, I admit it, this made me cry. Normally I'm a cynical bitch but when it comes to animals that seems to totally go out the window.

You have to love the use of music too.

2009-05-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

Whiny loser with possible OCD issues meets feminist blogosphere, hilarity ensues

Cock bibs? Seriously? OK first of all…do you not want women to lick your balls too? If so, how are they supposed to achieve this, by ducking under the bib, thus rendering its use pointless? And how exactly would you end up with a quart of saliva in your pubic hair? Are your pubes made out of shredded ShamWow? Are they super ultra absorbent? And why is saliva in your asscrack bad thing anyway?

Look, sweetie, here’s the thing. Sex is messy. By definition it involves copious amounts of bodily fluids, which do tend to get everywhere. That’s why they invented towels, Kleenex and showers. Though given the level of maturity indicated by both the idea of the Cock Bib as humor and the idea that saliva is icky, perhaps baby wipes might be more appropriate in your case.

I keep meaning to post about the ridiculous Double X launch and particularly Linda Hirschman’s stupid potshots at Jezebel. The comments on this post are actually a perfect example of why Hirschman et al seem to hate Jezebel, and why I love it. Oh no, women being all crass and direct and unladylike! Help me to my divan before I swoon! If we go around talking openly about sex how will we ever convince men to value us on the grounds that our special feminine delicacy gives us moral authority? It’s not like part of the point of feminism was that women should allowed to be people, crass humor and all. Nope, it would be far better for all of us if we maintained a po face at all times, lest we be suspected of being unserious.

If that’s your idea of a social justice movement, fine. You’ll have to excuse me though, I have the online equivalent of a bar table full of witty female friends to get back to.

2009-05-08T05:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there are just no words

You know, it's not like I don't know that a lot of people on the right are batshit crazy bigots. It's not like they do a very good job of hiding it. But sometimes, when they're talking amongst themselves, they don't even try to hide it. Sometimes the level of condescending racist bullshit is so thick that not even the strongest galloshes will allow you to make it through.

Witness this article on Redstate.com, always the place to go for intellectually rigorous journalism. It begins with the salutation "Dear Black Americans" and just gets worse from there. Quotes in bold.

"Sometimes — no, actually always — the true friend is the one who tells you what you don’t want to hear. The one who does not indulge you, the one who will neither promise you nor give you candy and other bennies. Instead he tells you to sit down and eat your green beans and spinach — and if you want that nice car, then quit whining, get an education, earn a good job, and earn that nice car."

Yep, Republics are just like your dad, always there to remind you to eat your vegetables even if they aren't tasty. This is not at all patronising or racist, it's for your own good.

" I ask you to consider, why is it that you hate Republicans so much? "

Gee, I wonder why?

"We received not one ounce of gratitude from you, but we did it anyway."

No I don't.

2009-02-25T17:05:00.000-08:00

On what Chris Brown did

Notice that I’m not saying “on what happened to Rihanna”. That’s how things are usually constructed when we talk about violence against women – “she got herself beat up”. By fairies apparently. Certainly not by an actual person who bears responsibility for what he did.

So I’m going to just say it. Rihanna didn’t just “get beaten up”, someone beat her up. We know who it was, because he turned himself in to the police. Stop it with all the shit about “we don’t know what happened”. Yes, we do in fact know what happened. Chris Brown beat up his girlfriend. Why he did it really doesn’t matter. I don’t care if she hit him first – if that’s what happened then sure, he had a right to defend himself. But looking at Rihanna’s face, that’s not a picture of what happens when someone is just defending themselves. That is not a proportionate response. That is what happens when someone decides to beat someone else up.

It doesn’t matter if she was jealous, or cheated on him, or gave him an STD. Those could all be reasons to dump someone, but none of them are reasons to beat someone up. Even if he did “just snap” in the middle of an argument, he had the option to walk away before things got that far. He chose not to. That means that yes, we do know what happened here, and there is someone to blame.

Every single friend of his and every single member of the media who’s insisting that we don’t really know what happened, that this is just unfortunate for both of them, should be ashamed of themselves. We know what happened here. A man beat up a woman. It doesn’t matter why, the fact remains that he didn’t have to do it, but he did. That’s a choice that he should have to live with for the rest of his life. Can we please, as a society, try to make sure that he does have to live with his choice instead of trying to make excuses for him?

2009-02-20T01:27:00.000-08:00

More health-related oddness, and the slow drip of ideas adding up to a need to mainstream the Fat Acceptance movement

Anyone else ever taken the Real Age test? Mine is 29.6 (my actual age is 35.4). Sounds good, right? But there are a few…issues. First off, who designed the nutritional analysis and why do they think it’s still 1965? They ask you to estimate how many servings of various vegetables you get per week, but offer only about 10 to choose from. OK broccoli is cool, cabbage sure, but where are all the other options? What about eggplant and zucchini and snow peas and bean sprouts and yams and…So they end up telling me I don’t get enough veggies, when I eat a couple of servings of veggies for both lunch and dinner. Do I need to start adding broccoli to my breakfast now?

Speaking of veggies, I get a dire warning to “vary your veggies” with a big red X for failing to do this is making you older. OK, so in an average week I eat…drum roll please…eggplant, zucchini, broccoli, yams, sweet potatoes, mushrooms, carrots, some sort of fresh green beans, and spinach. Also bell peppers and asparagus, but only in the spring and summer because in winter they, like strawberries, are a sad imitation of themselves. Plus black beans, kidney beans and garbanzos (plus lentils too). Yeah, about beans – it tells me I should be eating more of them. Problem is, the test won’t allow you to indicate that you eat more than 1 serving of beans a week. Um, what? I probably eat at least 5 or 6 servings a week. Gotta say, a bit culturally clueless there…there are cultures where legumes are a daily staple, shouldn’t the test make space for people to indicate that consumption? The whole food section is very “stuff white people like”. Then it suggests that I’m probably low in vitamin E, and recommends that I eat sweet potatoes… which I actually DO eat, but there’s no place to indicate that. So I’m baffled – why not give people a wider range of veggies to choose from, and include the option to indicate that they eat beans if you’re going to count those as veggies? Were they high when they designed this part of the test?

It also scolds me for not knowing my exact blood pressure, which is apparently really really bad because OMG everyone has high blood pressure now! Except I’ve had low blood pressure my entire life. Another scolding for not knowing my exact cholesterol numbers…and then it helpfully lets me know that I’m consuming about half the recommended cholesterol limit a day. Um, think maybe we could connect the dots here? Again, it’s been a while and I don’t know my exact numbers, but they’re low and always have been.

Then it tells me I eat too much saturated fat. I eat chicken breast almost every day, maybe 1 oz of cheese a day and no other dairy, lean beef about twice a week and lots of olive oil, and maybe 1 serving of ham or sausage a week (and I mean literally one serving, as in one sausage, in pasta sauce). That’s too much saturated fat? Seriously?

Also why does it tell me that I could be getting more fiber even though I already get tons? “Eat more grains”. Um…I eat some form of high fiber grains at each meal – unless I’m calculating the serving sizes wrong it just wants me to eat bigger portions? Basically I eat brown rice or occasionally brown pasta with lunch and dinner, and sometimes some sort of sandwich with whole grain bread as a snack. Plus a small portion of whatever I had for dinner the night before as breakfast (I don’t like most Western breakfast foods, other than oatmeal).I’m confused – how in the hell could I be getting MORE grains? Also why doesn’t it let you indicate that you’re consuming whole grains rather than the processed white versions? Makes a big difference nutritionally, that.

The one piece of nutritional advice that they’re totally right about is that I don’t get enough calcium. I’m not sure how I could get enough, though, since I’m lactose intolerant and hate the taste of milk. Suggestions?

But my favorite part was the section covering exercise. I get at least 30 minutes cardio a day, plus strength training 6 days a week, but apparently that’s not enough! Oh no, I get a little blurb about increasing my cardio plus a helpful hint to increase the number of different types of cardio I do. Not that it gave me the option of indicating the ones I already do, I guess it’s just assuming that 30 minutes a day = only one type of exercise? Not quite sure WHY it would assume that…And then a little blurb about flexibility training, which is pretty damn lulzy for someone who used to be a competitive gymnast.

So yeah, overall I think this thing is a useful tool but it could do with being a bit more precise and expanding the range of options you can choose from. Especially the food section – people, there are veggies other than peas, cabbage and cauliflower! No, seriously! And some of us eat legumes every day, not just “at least once a week”!

Pop quiz – do people really think that healthy adults under say 50 need to be constantly monitoring their blood pressure and cholesterol even if they have absolutely no indicators for developing high blood pressure or high cholesterol? Do other people constantly track this? Because from my POV, well, it’s been low every time it’s been tested and nothing about my health or lifestyle seems to have changed, so…

Also, I’m not sure I’m thrilled to see them pushing high consumption of soy products. Isn’t the jury still out on whether that’s good or bad for women with a family history of breast cancer? Because my Mom died of breast cancer, and my Dad’s sister had it too, and yet they’re still telling me that I should try to eat more soy.

Now here’s the point where all the reading of Fat Acceptance blogs I’ve been doing comes in handy. So I get to the fitness section and see the following. BTW, just FYI, my BMI is in the “healthy” range and nowhere on the survey did I indicate a desire to lose weight, and I did indicate that I already get some form of exercise every day.

If you’re not getting the results you want from your workout, try adding a different cardiovascular activity to your weekly routine. Here's why: Based on your answers, we estimate that you burn close to the number of calories needed to help you grow younger, but you may be able to do even more. Most people can safely burn up . . . to 3,500 calories per week. However, talk to your doctor before you change your workout. Regular cardio activity can make your heart and arteries younger and stronger, enhance your immune system, protect you from stress and depression, and boost your brainpower.4 Ways to Increase Your Cardio
Keep moving. Do anything that requires steadily moving your large muscles (thighs, butt, back, and chest) -- running, skating, cycling, skiing, power walking, swimming, dancing, jumping rope, and doing household chores that take a little hustle (raking leaves, washing windows).
Hop on a machine. Try the stair climber, elliptical trainer, treadmill, stationary bike, rowing machine, or cross-country skier.
Take classes. Sign up for dance, step aerobics, kickboxing, or water workouts -- just to name a few.
Play games. Try singles tennis, basketball

OK, so, my BMI is normal…why is it assuming I’m not getting the results I want from my workout? Are we now just assuming that EVERYONE wants to lose weight, even if they’re not actually overweight? Note the part where it says that based on my answers I’m probably burning enough calories already…so why assume I need to do more?

And that, my friends, is what prompted me personally to move from passively supporting the Fat Acceptance movement as simply a moral necessity in that all people deserve to be treated decently into wanting to get actively involved. When we’re starting to assume, just as a matter of course, that everyone wants to lose weight and should do so even if the medical establishment says that their weight is “normal” (mine is in the 35th percentile for my age and height and look, I’m still automatically being offered weight loss advice) and they already work out…we have officially jumped the shark as a culture. Even if you’re not fat, don’t get too comfy – what if you GET fat? Basically everyone should worry about their weight, a lot. Because we all know that there’s nothing better for your health than stress, right?

2009-02-17T21:06:00.000-08:00

So I’ve been reading a lot of blogs from the Fatosphere recently since the lovely Theriomorph directed me to Shapely Prose. It’s been rather a revelation, and there’s a post coming up about that. In the meantime, it got me thinking about the idea of healthy eating and what that really means. I know what it means to me – eating foods that make me feel good physically and also give me pleasure. What it seems to mean to a lot of people is something very different, though – low fat, or low carb, or some other diet plan based on the idea of banning certain “bad” foods.

I don’t think there are any bad foods. Well, OK, high fructose corn syrup is pretty much entirely bad, but that’s sort of a frankenfood and not a naturally occurring food item. If our food suppliers had stuck to using plain old sugar to sweeten things we’d all be a lot better off.

My idea of healthy eating is based more around trying to make sure I eat as many good-for-me things as possible rather than trying to eliminate “bad” things. I used to totally buy into the “x foods are bad” way of thinking, and it wasn’t until my late twenties that the seismic shift in my thinking occurred. Since it did I’ve been a whole lot healthier, and happier. I’m not a child; I don’t need a list of OMG FORBIDDEN SINFUL foods to scare me into eating well. I just need to pay attention to what I’m actually craving and give my body what it wants.

So, to start me off writing about this stuff, how about a recipe? I’m a serious foodie so I cook a LOT. I love talking about food, and am seriously considering trying to broaden my journalistic focus to include food writing. Anyone else who reads this like talking about food? Have a good food blog you want to share? Let me know.

Cassandra’s weird and wonderful Vietnamese/Japanese hybrid curry

This recipe came about because I love Vietnamese curry, and I love Japanese curry, and one day I was making a Vietnamese curry and thought “hey, I wonder what would happen if I added mirin to this”. The answer? Awesomeness.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large chicken breast
5 zucchini, or 1 eggplant, or a pound of carrots
2 small onions
3 heaping tablespoons curry powder
5 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons mirin
1/3 cup coconut milk
5 cloves garlic
1 inch piece of lemongrass, finely chopped
Chicken stock

Sauté veggies in olive oil till softened. Add onions, garlic and lemongrass and sauté for another few minutes (don’t let garlic burn). Add chicken and brown. Add curry powder and stir fry until fragrant, then add soy sauce, mirin, chicken stock and coconut milk. Simmer until preferred consistency is achieved. Serve over rice – I use brown jasmine, but any rice you like will work. Serves 2.

This is especially good on a cold day when you need some comfort food to warm up.

2009-02-14T00:47:00.000-08:00

Body Image Stuff

It’s taken a while for me to admit that I have some body image issues. Which is silly really – what woman doesn’t? Our culture is pretty much designed to give women body image issues – they make us better consumers. And keep us too distracted to focus on stuff like, say, equal pay.

For some reason I’ve always been reluctant to actually talk about my own personal body image issues, though, but lately I find that I want to. Why? Because I think that the veil of silence surrounding this stuff is part of the reason that the issues are so widespread in the first place. Because I think that the pressure not to talk about them is a form of sexism. Because women aren’t supposed to say this hurts me.

So, with a hat tip to Theriomorph for posting this wonderful essay that finally pushed me over the edge into actually being willing to talk about it, here’s my personal situation.

My entire life I’ve felt like I needed to lose weight. The funny thing about this is that this feeling seems to exist independently of what my weight is at any given time – I pretty much always feel like I need to lose 20-30 pounds. I felt like that at size 14, and I felt like that at size 5. Right now I seem to waver between a 6 and an 8, and yep, “I need to lose 20-30 pounds” is always there at the back of my mind.

The funny thing is that technically I’m not even overweight. According to ye olde BMI chart my weight is just fine. Even at the upper end of my personal scale – an 8 – I’m still thinner than most women my age (35). And yet I feel fat. I look in the mirror and see someone who needs to be thinner.

I suppose part of the reason I’m reluctant to talk about this is that I know that some people will read it and go “oh ffs quit whining, you’re not even fat, not like me!”. And they would in fact have a point. Like I said, I’m not unaware of the fact that the average American woman is bigger than me. The average woman in the media though…ah, now there’s the rub.

If you were to go by the media standards a woman my height (159 cms) should be a size 2 at most. Even that has been considered a bit hefty on some occasions (anyone remember when they were calling Jennifer Love Hewitt fat? She’s a size 2). Never in my adult life have I been that small. Not even when I went through what I can only 20 years later admit was a bout of borderline anorexia as a teenager and was eating less than 800 calories a day. The smallest I ever got was a 5, and that was on the aforementioned nothing but rice cakes, chicken broth and bananas diet, with an extremely active lifestyle. Even when I’m thin enough that you can see my bones through the skin my hips are still 36 inches. I have D cup boobs. I’m just not blessed with that wispy ectomorph type of physique. Blame my stocky Celtic ancestors, with their muscly legs and their childbearing hips.

Why the persistent wish to be an ectomorph? I’m not even attracted to female ectomorphs. I’m most often attracted to women with builds a lot like my own, just a bit thinner. I am however extremely attracted to male ectomorphs, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe it’s a fear that if I don’t lose weight I won’t be as appealing to the men I’m attracted to as I would like. Maybe it’s just being aware of how the world treats fat women, and fearing the weight of all that loathing crashing down on my head. Maybe it’s just a desire for approval.

That’s the sick thing about dieting, that even when you’re displaying blatantly unhealthy behaviors it gets you tons of approval. When I went through my less than 800 calories a day phase not a single friend or family member went “ok, this is nuts”. Not when I obsessively tallied everything that I ate, not when I started refusing foods that I’d always loved, not when I felt like I was drowning and I was desperately waiting for someone to say "no, stop, you don't need to do this". For at least a year I was hungry all the time. Even in the summer I felt so cold that I needed a sweater. I shivered when everyone else was sunbathing. And no one said a damn thing other than gee, you look so much prettier lately, what’s your secret?

How do you deal with that, the rage that you feel towards the people who were supposed to love and protect you for watching you hurt yourself and praising you for it? It was my mother who bought me the diet book that recommended the appropriate serving of rice at each meal as being two tablespoons. My father still asks me how my weight is doing before any other question, and no amount of visible discomfort on my part or requests that he please not go there has ever dissuaded him from doing so. How do you process the fact that other people actually approve of your acting like a nutcase? That they like you better when you’re miserable but highly decorative?

I haven’t behaved like that for years now. I made a deliberate decision in my late teens never to count calories again, because it just wasn’t worth what it was doing to my mental health. I eat a healthy balanced diet that even includes sweets. And yet, the voice in my head persists, the one that says if people knew what you looked like under your clothes they’d be horrified. The one that says, no matter how hard you try it will never be enough. No amount of reassurance from adoring partners both male and female that my body is just fine has ever been able to make that voice go away.

What scares me is…is this even unusual? The wall of silence around women’s feelings about their bodies is so solid that most people just don’t talk about this stuff. Sure, we make the publicly required protestations like “oh my ass looks so big in these pants”, but we never talk about the real stuff, the stuff that hurts. And I’m finding more and more that I want to talk about it, because I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that not talking about it is part of what got us all into this situation in the first place.

So, hey, if you want to talk I’ll listen.

2008-12-06T00:19:00.000-08:00

Observe my photography skills

You know, when I decided to start writing about music again I had no intention of doing anything other than writing. When I discovered that photography would be part of the deal it was just kind of...OK. Not something I've ever made any effort to learn how to do, but it can't be that hard, right?

Many months later I'm here to tell you, it's a lot harder than it looks. Half of what I get ends up being out of focus (discovery - it's actually much harder to shoot in digital than with a traditional camera), it's a lot more complicated when you can't use flash, and I really need a better camera. However, like most things, if you keep it at you do eventually improve.

Lately I've been getting a few shots that I actually, gasp, kind of like! A most unexpected development. Now if I can just figure out how to pull that off more consistently...

These shots are of Dir en grey at the Regency Center in San Francisco, if anyone's wondering.

2008-11-28T21:00:00.000-08:00

Oh my goth

Ah, my people. It's not that I don't love you, honestly, but you have to admit, sometimes you are a bit ridiculous. Hark unto this piece of ad copy.

EAU DE GHOUL They all started telling stories, then, of how fine and wonderful a thing it was to be a ghoul, of all the things they had crunched up and swallowed down with their powerful teeth. Impervious they were to disease or illness, said one of them. Why, it didn't matter what their dinner had died of, they could just chomp it down. They told of the places they had been, which mostly seemed to be catacombs and plague-pits ("Plague Pits is good eatin'," said the Emperor of China, and everyone agreed.) They told Bod how they had got their names and how he, in his turn, once he had become a nameless ghoul, would be named, as they had been."But I don't want to become one of you," said Bod."One way or another," said the Bishop of Bath and Wells, cheerily, "you'll become one of us. The other way is messier, involves being digested, and you're not really around very long to enjoy it.""But that's not a good thing to talk about," said the Emperor of China."Best to be a Ghoul. We're afraid of nuffink!"And all the ghouls around the coffin-wood fire howled at this statement, and growled and sang and exclaimed at how wise they were, and how mighty, and how fine it was to be scared of nothing.Dessicated skin coated in blackened ginger, cinnamon, and mold-flecked dirt, with cumin, bitter clove, leather, and dried blood.

Yep, that's what I want, a perfume that makes me smell like dirt, dead skin and...cumin? I'm so confused.

Also this company makes a scent called Glowing Vulva. Um, yeah. If this is a realistic scent I'm thinking dabbing it on your neck and wrists might not be the best plan.

Then again, let's look at this in a positive light. I might quite enjoy having a glowing vulva. Why, think of the money I'd save on lightbulbs! Next time I wanted to create atmosphere during an intimate moment I wouldn't need to get out the candles, just undress. Also, guys, just try claiming that you're unable to find the clitoris when it's GLOWING.

And then there's this.

BRIMSTONE In Hermetic alchemy, brimstone is one of the Three Heavenly Substances, one of the primary alchemical Priciples. It represents the strength of will and the vigor of passion, and it is a symbol of the process of fermentation. A smoky, gritty blend, husky and gray.

Um, isn't brimstone supposed to smell like sulphur? Mmm, sulphur, what a perfect scent for a perfume.

More mocking one's own later. I mean the Twilight movie did just come out...

2008-11-24T22:58:00.000-08:00

Need some input from the workout junkies

So I've been having an odd issue when I lift weights recently and I'm hoping some of my lovely readers might be able to help me figure it out. Whenever I start doing bicep, tricep and chest exercises I get a wierd pain in my elbow. I mean literally in the ball and socket joint. It's only there while I'm actually doing the exercise, and it's a sharp pain that happens as I bend the joint. It tends to fade after the first set of reps, and by the third I can't feel it at all.

Could this just be a sign that I need to warm up more? Am I using weights that are too heavy? Advise me, people. It's not a sharp enough pain that I feel like I'm injuring myself but it's odd enough to make me wonder what's going on.

2008-11-04T18:44:00.000-08:00

So far, so good

The numbers are starting to come in and it looks like Obama is in the lead. Everyone has Ohio going to Obama, and if he wins Ohio he's pretty much in. Guess the voter suppression didn't work this time, huh?

I've been staying out of the whole online debate ever since I realised that it was going to turn into a massive intra-left food fight, but I will say this. Initially I would have preferred Clinton (because of a stronger committment to feminism and more foreign policy experience), but once it was all decided, I always said I would support whichever Democrat was chosen. And I have.

Gore actually won the popular vote in 2000, but Republican cheating handed Bush the Presidency. This time it looks like even with them making every effort to suppress minority voters Obama is still going to win by a clear majority. Which tells me that the Bush govenment is so unpopular that even with all the attempts at fraud (calling Latino voters and telling them they can vote by phone ffs, how stupid do Republicans think people are?), they still can't win. Part of it is the war, of course, but I really think the collapsing economy might have played a bigger role. And I think that the banking crisis was the real nail in the Republican coffin.

So, first order of business of an Obama presidency - sort out the economy. People are hurting, and it needs to be fixed ASAP. Second, foreign policy - the Bush administration did a lot of damage to America's image overseas, and a whole lot more people hate us than did 10 years ago. Pulling out of Iraq is a necessary start, but a start is all it is. There's a lot of work to do. Even those of us who would have preferred Clinton, this is not the time to hold a grudge about that.

Everyone, it looks like we're in. Now let's all roll up our sleeves and get to work.

2008-10-14T21:22:00.000-07:00

First day home from the hospital

Hell Week, or, what happens when your beloved pet gets sick

I really have been intending to blog more lately but the last week has just been such pure hell I haven’t gotten around to it. So what happened was…

The weekend before last my cat (who shall from now on be known as CC for Cassandra’s Cat) starting acting weird. Listless, antisocial, hiding under the chair, not eating. At first I thought he was just in a bad mood but then he started throwing up. And then I figured he was trying to get rid of a hairball, but it just got worse and worse over the next few days.

Then on Tuesday night he started wailing at me ever time I walked past. It was a really weird upset sound like he only makes when he’s really in distress. So of course I started freaking out but the vet’s office was closed. I ended up staying up all night trying to see if I could make him feel better and worrying. First thing in the morning I called the vet and made an appointment, and by the time we got there CC was clearly fading fast. He could barely even stand up by that point, and he really didn’t like the vet, wouldn’t interact with her at all.

So then the vet takes a look, asks me how old he is, feels around for his internal organs, and tells me he has kidney failure and probably lymphoma throughout his intestines and we should talk about putting him to sleep. At which point of course I go “WHAT? But he was fine up until a few days ago.” So she says that we can put him on fluids and she can take X-Rays and see what happens. I very reluctantly leave CC in her care, because I do not like this woman at all. A couple of hours later I call her (note that she doesn’t bother to call me) and she says they did an X-Ray and he has a mass near his heart that she thinks is a tumor. Again she starts talking about putting him to sleep. But I press her and she says well actually the pet hospital could run some more tests and maybe we could get him chemo, though she’s still painting the direst picture possible. So I say “OK then let’s do that right away”.

So finally at about 5PM CC arrives at the proper pet hospital. At which we finally find a vet who actually seems to like cats. By this point CC is so miserable he’s hardly responding to anything and he has no strength at all. The nice vet admits him to the hospital to run more tests and is very understanding about how upset I am and promises to call me if anything changes, and with an update in the morning.

Well, after a mostly sleepless night I get a call and guess what? CC does not have a tumor, or any signs of cancer. What he has is a benign cyst (note – NOT a tumor), weakening kidneys (he’s 17) and anemia. So they treat the kidneys with a fluid drip and the anemia with an iron shot. Later that day I go to visit and he’s weak but moving around and wanting to explore. He also actually EATS when the nice vet tries to feed him – not much, but at least a bit. I leave scared and upset but a little more hopeful.

Next day nice vet calls me all happy to say that his blood count (anemia) is getting better and he’s drinking on his own and generally looking livelier. In fact he tried to bite the vet techs when they gave him a pill. She wants me to take him home and see how he does there, and she feels confident enough to release him since his kidney numbers are also improving.

Finally I get him home on Friday night and he’s SO HAPPY. Weak and a bit wobbly on his feet, but purring and happy to be home. All weekend I’ve been watching him and giving him his medicine and trying to coax him to eat. He’s still a bit weak, but he’s eating well and drinking on his own and the fluids I give him under the skin once a day are clearly helping. He’s still not a totally healthy kitty, but he’s doing better and he’s clearly happier.

The moral of this story is…don’t give up. If you love someone or something, be prepared to fight for them. Positive thinking is powerful.

And also, always ask for a second opinion, and trust your gut. If I’d listened to the first vet CC would now be dead, and he would have died lonely and scared in a strange place. I still don’t know for sure how much time he has left, but however long it is at least he’s comfortable and happy, and I’m appreciating every day I have with him.

Also I HATE the attitude American society has towards old people and old animals. As soon as vet # 1 heard how old CC is she wanted to put him to sleep, without even running any tests to see what was actually wrong with him. I really feel sorry for her elderly parents – I wouldn’t want someone with an attitude like that taking care of me when I’m old. What is wrong with this society that it doesn’t treasure its elderly? After a lifetime of caring for others we just want to throw them away?

I think I’m moving back to Europe when I get old.

Of course now I have to figure out how the hell I’m going to pay off the massive vet bill but you know what? Whatever it takes it’s worth it. There aren’t many living creatures in this life that any one of us truly love, it’s worth holding on to the few that you do.

2008-09-26T02:16:00.000-07:00

Call for career advice

Hey there blog friends. So, I'm at sort of a turning point career wise and I could do with some input from some smart people. And then I thought, hey, lots of smart people read my blog, why not ask them?

I'd particularly love to talk to people with any experience in print journalism. If you're willing to play career counsellor/sounding board drop me a line at cassandrasez at gmail dot com.

2008-09-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

Population control and ethics

I read an interesting article in Salon today. Interesting for lots of reasons – the interaction between population levels and the environment is a complex one and worth exploring – but mostly interesting in this case to see a group of experts who disagree on many things all agree on the fact that the problem can only be solved by allowing women to control their own reproductive capabilities. Which is exactly the opposite of what one side in the upcoming election wants to see happen.

Now I know that abortion is a contentious issue for American society. I don’t think it should be, because the fact that women should be allowed to control their own capacity to reproduce is so simple and obvious that anyone who doesn’t grasp it is, in my opinion, an idiot. It’s interesting to note that all the experts seem to agree that this is in fact that key to controlling world population numbers – give women education and choices and they tend to choose to limit their reproduction to the replacement rate or below.

But really it’s not abortion that’s the big issue in this debate, in my opinion. What it really comes down to is that there’s a set of people in American society, who have more and more influence in American politics, who believe that any attempts to control reproduction are morally wrong. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of these people are distrustful of science. Even the most cursory look at the science suggests that unchecked population growth is a disaster.

So I’m just going to come right out and say it. A generalized opposition to the idea of women controlling their own reproductive capacities is morally unacceptable. Not just for the feminist reasons, though those are obvious. Also because the world cannot sustain an indefinite number of people, and because this society in particular already consumes more than it’s fair share of the world’s resources. Anti-abortion policies are bad enough; anti-contraception policies are a crime against humanity that endangers us all.

And that, folks, is one of the biggest reasons to vote against McCain and Palin. These people aren’t just obnoxious ideologues, they’re dangerous. America already consumes more than any society in the world – more than even China, which has a population far larger than ours. For America to even contemplate not limiting its population growth is completely unethical. We have no right to allow our collective hubris to overwhelm our rationality. We need a government that understands that contraception is a good thing. Right now we don’t have that, and if McCain is elected we’ll have another one that actively opposes the idea of women controlling their reproductive capacities, which research the world over shows is the key to keeping population numbers under control.

These people are dangerous. Don’t let them win.

2008-07-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

When I am an old woman I shall give young women compliments
(I already wear purple)

I’ve been seeing more and more comments about women and appearance around feminist blogland recently (not that this is a topic that ever goes away for long) and I find myself feeling rather irked about the whole thing. This is one of those issues where I feel fundamentally out of step with most of my fellow feminists. I don’t have an instinctive distrust of the very idea of conventional beauty, as it seems many feminists do. I don’t distrust or resent women more attractive than myself. I don’t hate younger women for having tighter asses. In fact, what is it with the constant “perky boobs” references from so many feminists? Seriously, what is that about? Are they under the impression that those women in possession of such boobs have chosen to tweak their own genetic make-up in such a way as to make their boobs perky on purpose, just to spite the less perky? Why is this being used as a dismissive insult by feminists?

This is one of those moments where I bless the fact that I didn’t grow up in America or the UK. I grew up mostly in the Middle East. In all honesty I think that growing up there influenced my feminism in all kinds of ways, but one of the clearest ones is that I find this sort of constant ranking of other women in terms of their appearance and inability to empathize with those women who fall at different points in the ranking absolutely baffling.

I like looking at beautiful women. Now, admittedly this is probably in part because I am attracted to women. I think it’s more than that, though. My mother also loved looking at beautiful women and she was as straight as a ruler. Most of my mother’s friends were the same. I remember my mother’s friend Elizabeth, a gorgeous woman who looked like Natalie Wood, who I spent much of my childhood observing. As a little girl I always thought that it would be great to grow up to look like Elizabeth, but even knowing that I wouldn’t (I always wished that I could have really dark eyes like her, instead of the light brown I ended up with), I still always found her fascinating to observe simply because she was really, truly beautiful. And I wasn’t the only one. I can remember my mother’s much older friend Theresa, whose house felt almost like mine as a kid and who used to cut my hair till I was in my teens, fussing over Elizabeth, doing her hair and helping her with her make-up. It was always clear to me that she took pleasure in having young, beautiful women in her home, and that part of the reason was that she had three sons and no daughters or granddaughters. When I hit puberty, it was those two women, Elizabeth and Theresa, along with my mother, who taught me how to take pleasure in my own appearance, how to see personal adornment as a game, as something fun and creative that you did because you felt like it, and that if you didn’t feel like it on any given day you just didn’t do it. That was how I grew up, with the idea that beauty is a fun thing, something to be enjoyed, a way that women bond with each other.

I was always aware that there was another way to see things, but it seemed sort of blessedly irrelevant to me, cocooned in the warmth of my mother’s circle of friends (a circle, by the way, in which it was always clear that men were essentially peripheral – they were allowed to share part of us, but there was another part that we all reserved just for each other). That other way never really hit me full-force until I went away to school, and was confronted with just how much ugliness British and American culture is able to create out of women’s beauty, how it poisons the pleasure that we take in our own appearance and that of other women, how it teaches us to rank ourselves and hate those above us on the scale, and despise those below. And every holiday I would go running back to my mother for reassurance that things didn’t have to be that way. I would sit cuddled up in a big chair with Elizabeth’s daughter (my pretend baby sister since I never had a real one) and watch her putting on her make-up and re-learn the fact that beauty could be a game, sit at Theresa’s kitchen table and let her remind me that food is supposed to be a source of pleasure too and wish that she really was the grandmother that she felt like to me (my own paternal grandmother was a horrible, bitter, angry woman who never had anything good to say about another woman in the entire time I knew her). And then I would go back to school, and try to shut down and not take in any of the poison that was being fed to me, and deep in my heart refuse to learn to hate other women just because some of them were prettier than others, because I knew that it didn’t have to be that way.

It wasn’t until my thirties that I realized that there was a term for what I was doing, the way that I talk about women and beauty around the women that I grew up with and the women that I trust who I know now (Mr. C’s mother and his brother’s wife, a few close friends) and the different, more careful way I talk around all the other women who I don’t feel it’s safe to be honest with. The term is code-switching. Like most other people who code-switch, most of the time I do it without even being consciously aware of it, pick up subtle cues about which people I can be my real self around and which people I need to be wary with and adopt the way of speaking that is expected of me. I still think that the mainstream American way of talking about women and beauty is poisonous, and I go out of my way to avoid people who gulp down the poison and insist on feeding it to others, but really, it’s impossible to avoid completely. It’s too pervasive. All that you can really do is to observe which people are completely invested in that framework, which ones automatically rank all other women and either envy or scorn depending on that ranking, and try not to get too close to them.

It hurts me to see that poison coming from feminists, though. It hurts me no matter which target it’s being aimed at. Every time I see someone making generalized comments about “blonde bimbos” or “fuckbots” on a feminist site I lose a little more of my faith in the ability of the movement to effect any lasting social change. Every time I see the term “collaborator” being used in a way that makes it clear that the judgment being made is being based purely on the appearance of the woman being described, I wonder where it all went so horribly wrong. How can we possibly achieve anything if we don’t learn not to hate each other? How can we work together if we can’t learn that the fact that a woman doesn’t look like us doesn’t mean that she can’t be trusted? The anger that some women are treated differently by society than others based on their looks is a valid anger, but why the hell are feminists directing it at the women who happen to fit the preferred look rather than the system that insists on ranking all of us?

So, this whole thing has been bothering me. Of all the odd things to bring it back to me, it was actually a random meeting with a stranger that did it. I was on the train on my way to meet a friend for dinner and there was an older lady sitting in the seat in front of me. She wasn’t familiar with the train system and asked me how many stops there were until the place she was going (presumably because I was the only person around who looked like they might speak Spanish…which I actually don’t very well, sadly, but I do know enough to give directions so we managed). So we chatted back and forth for a while, and I was trying to explain that I was getting off at the same stop and could show her where to go, but my Spanish sucks so I wasn’t able to say it properly. So, we get to the stop and she gets up, and she doesn’t realize until we’re actually getting off the train that I’m getting off too. The she sees me and smiles and we get on the escalator together and I lead her over to the map and try to explain where she needs to go. And then I realize that I’m running late and that I have to get going, so I say goodbye and I’m trying to explain in my crappy Spanish (I understand what’s said to me a lot better than I can speak myself), and I feel bad for having to run off and not just walk her over to where she’s going, because she’s an old lady and it’s kind of a rough neighborhood if you don’t know your way around. And then she smiles and pats my cheek and says “mi nina linda, esta bien”. And you know what? That little comment made my day. Hell, my week. Because it’s been so damn long since I had to leave the warm safe little cocoon that I grew up in where women were actually nice to each other and we gave compliments just because we could. And I want to live there, and not in this alternate hell-world that is mainstream America in which older women hate younger women for their perky boobs and fat women hate thin women and thin women look down on fat women and everyone seems to hate tall skinny women just because the fashion industry loves them. And the fact that that hell-world of ranking and competition and constant sniping has infected feminism breaks my heart, because we of all people should know that hating other women because of something as random as how they look is poison, and yet I see it all the time. Why do we do this to each other? Can we please just stop?

When I’m an old woman I want to be like the older woman I met on the train. I want to be like my mother, and her friends. I refuse to hate younger women because they have perky boobs, and I refuse to participate in this system where we cut each other down based on where we fall in some stupid ranking system that’s almost totally arbitrary anyway (this season big boobs are in! next season, super straight hair!).

When I’m an old woman I’m going to randomly tell young women they’re beautiful, just to make them smile. In fact, I may just start now.

2008-07-11T01:15:00.000-07:00

Finally, a serious post!

This (links to Feministe) really pissed me off. First of all, the idea of using scanners that show what essentially looks like a picture of a person’s naked body on women in a Muslim country? Culturally tone deaf at best, actively intended to provoke at worst. I commend the people who broke this story, and the reporter who allowed herself to be scanned so that people could see exactly what the scans look like. Now the question is, what can we do about it? Because forcing Iraqi women who work in the Green Zone to go through those scanners is classic colonialism at it’s worse, and it needs to stop.
Also, why do they need to save the images? Anyone have a good explanation for that? And, given that the technology exists to replace the individual’s body with a generic torso and only show security personnel non-body items that might represent a breach of security, why is that technology not being used?
To add yet another layer of fucked up, the same scanning process is also apparently being used in airports in the USA. This is an unacceptable breach of privacy in general, but it’s especially problematic for women, and for trans men and trans women who may not want potentially hostile strangers alerted to their trans status. Invasive, open to abuse, a clear overreach of government power…I’m not seeing the upside here.
So the question becomes, what can we do about it? In the case of Iraq and the Green Zone, who do we need to put pressure on to make them switch to a system that replaces the images of people’s actual bodies with generic torso images? In the case of the USA, is it possible to start a campaign to force to TSA to do the same?
I’m not kidding, people, this is a fucking outrage. If they must use these scanners (and I’m not convinced of that either, but putting that aside for a moment), why can’t they use the ones that prevent images of people’s naked bodies being shown to whoever happens to be operating the machine? And why the hell do the images need to be saved once the person has cleared security? This needs to be stopped.

2008-07-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

Controversial admissions (hat-tip to Octogalore for the idea)

1. I love the fact that I look younger than I actually am. I am also willing to take steps to maintain that illusion, up to a point and if and when they become necessary. Though probably not surgery, because I’m a wimp and fear pain.

2. Although I was properly Marxist in college, I have since come to the conclusion that Marxism is incompatible with human nature. People are competitive, fractious, uncooperative creatures, and attempts to impose Marxism on them always seem to end in nasty infighting and a trail of dead bodies. I’d rather people just be openly grasping and competitive – far rather a challenge to my face than a knife in my back.

3. I am not attracted to men who are even the slightest bit overweight. Most of the men I am attracted to barely make it into the “normal” range on the BMI scale, and none of them are past the middle of that range. I have nothing against fat people in a general interpersonal sense, but in terms of men and sex, the leaner the better.

4. With women I’m much more flexible on weight, but I’m only attracted to women who’re pretty femme. Not ultra-femme, but the slightest hint of butch and my libido is dead in the water. I’m also not attracted to women who don’t have fairly substantial breasts.

5. Lack of intelligence irritates me. I don’t mean lack of formal education – some of the smartest people I’ve met have had little formal education – but lack of genuine, biting intelligence is a friendship deal-breaker for me.

6. I eat lots and lots of tuna. I know that it’s bad for the environment, and that tuna (and most other big game fish) are overfished and endangered, but every damn time I go to eat sushi I order maguro and tuna sashimi. Given my choice of (barely) cooked fish I’d choose ahi every time if it wasn’t so damn expensive. I am a bad environmentalist.

7. I have no respect for ideological purity. I’m a pragmatist. If I want to get something done I’m willing to work with whoever can help me attain that goal (within some limits…rapists and child abusers I’d draw the line at). I think that the general leftist tendency to insist on ideological purity and refuse to work with people who don’t meet that standard is a big part of why we expend so much energy and end up with so little to show for it.

Anyone else want to join in? C’mon, you can tell me – what are your controversial admissions?

2008-07-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

Ah, Miyavi...

You know, I'm sure this is just a case of his trademark peace sign being rather unfortunately placed. He couldn't possibly be giving the universal signal for...well, you know.

The girls on LiveJournal are going to have so much fun with this picture.

Yes, I will at some point return to real blogging. Eventually. For now please continue to enjoy the pretty pictures.

2008-06-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

Still Female Desire Week

So, femminess in men. That’s a complicated one for me. I always LIKE it, but I don’t always find it sexy. Sexy up to a point, and then something in me shifts and the appreciation goes from being sexual to being purely aesthetic. Ironically the latter is actually more objectifying, in my opinion – I stop thinking of the person as someone I’d like to fuck (which after all is still very much an interactive thing) and start thinking of them as a beautiful object, like a painting. Yeah, I know, no one else thinks this way.

I’m going to take a stab at actually illustrating where the lines are drawn for me later, but it’s too late and I’m sleepy. For now, something simpler.

A couple of weeks back I interviewed a guy who got his own post last time we did Desire Week. My own response there was weird and interesting – in person I wasn’t particularly attracted to him, though I certainly would have described him as attractive. Part of that was probably being in work mode, admittedly, but still, I found it interesting that I reacted one way sitting talking to him and completely differently to watching him on stage. That ties in to another thing that I want to post about. To a certain extent sexiness is a deliberate thing – some people can turn it on and off like flicking a switch. In general this is something that women are better at (not by accident or genetics either, imo), but some men know how to do it too. And that, honestly, is what I think was going on in the case I’m talking about.

Anyway, back to femminess in men. While I was doing some research pre-interview I came across a really funny fanvideo on YouTube. Normally I find fanvids boring, but this one made me laugh. When you put a bunch of clips together…wow, he really is pretty damn girly, isn’t he? And again, I don’t find him sexy in most of these clips, but I do always have a special fondness for girly men. They make me smile. Check it out – I honestly don’t see how anyone could fail to find this guy adorable and endearing.

I really wanted to ask him about the whole crossdressing thing during the interview but I got the feeling that the American management dude would have been very much Not Amused by that.

BTW, just in case anyone doesn’t quite grasp the scope of the girliness in this case, behold! (Can’t find the original pic, this is a version that someone doctored to make it look like the cover of a woman’s magazine, but the pic itself is unaltered)

Little pink panties. Aw, bless. The funniest thing is that they look like the women’s panties that were actually designed to mimic men’s briefs, adding yet another layer of genderfuck. And that’s why we love him, folks.

2008-06-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

It’s Female Desire Week again

And I’m a bit slow getting started. Sorry. What can I say? It was a nice day. I went out for a walk.

Anyway, female desire. Things we crave. Things we like to look at. Men we like to look at.

Funny how taboo that still is to admit for a lot of people, that women look, that men get looked at. Personally I’m profoundly uninterested in associating with either women who won’t admit that they look or men who’re uncomfortable with being looked at. This is me, folks – I’m a sensual creature. I’m visual. I like to look.

So, men I desire. The basic characteristics have always been remarkably consistent…slender bodies with sleek muscles, smooth skin. Dark hair, dark or bright blue eyes, skin tones ranging from golden tan to ghostly pale. Pretty features. Sharp cheekbones, full lips, strong jaws. A combination of masculine and feminine elements, that’s what gets me every time.

I posted a few examples last time, but why not add some more? Let’s start with this guy, since he’s so thoroughly sexualized himself for female consumption over the years that it’s easy to find pictures of him in various states of undress and a multitude of styles. Hakuei. Lead singer, Penicillin. Face of hip Black Peace Now clothing brand. Sometime actor. 6ft, about 130 pounds, 38 years old, lean and toned and just about perfect. I love tattoos…this man has gorgeous tattoos. And an awesome natural sense of style.

I could talk about the music or the career but you know what? This is Female Desire week, so none of that matters, because I don’t desire him because of his career.

I desire him because he’s beautiful.

Much more below. Please try not to drool too much, it's not good for your keyboard.

2008-04-18T17:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the jokes just write themselves

I’ve been quietly watching the latest meltdown in the feminist blogosphere with my mouth hanging open for the last few weeks. First there was Seal Press showing everyone how not to do PR (“Hi, WOC bloggers! Pikachu, I choose you! Now let me be as patronizing as possible…hey wait, why are you mad at us? You’re so hostile!”). Then there was Amanda Marcotte showing how not to build a movement. I mean really, how hard would it be to just say “oops, sorry, I forgot to include links, I’ll go add them now”? Not to mention, you know, actually either writing in a way that demonstrates a deep knowledge of your subject or handing the task over to someone capable of doing so.

And then there was the angry, defensive meltdown with people coming in to defend the poor vulnerable white girl and everyone else rolling their eyes and going “you have to be kidding me”. And then there were a few people who actually tried to take this conversation in a productive direction – OK, so feminism as a movement is fucked up when it comes to race. We need to fix that. How do we do that?

But then there are some people who just have to make it all about them. Because heavens forbid anyone talk about the bigger picture when someone’s feelings are hurt. And then we have a white girl responding to criticism from women of color by comparing herself to Malcolm X. Seriously, you cannot make this stuff up.

So, in order to save everyone just coming into this mess the trouble of reading through 100 identical comments from Amanda explaining why no one is allowed to talk about the big issue until she feels better let me summarize. Shorter Amanda.

My only comment is this…a clever man once said that when you find yourself in a big deep hole you don’t ask for a bigger shovel, you STOP DIGGING. I can’t find a link to the actual speech, but guess what? I can still give him credit for being the smart person who came up with that idea rather than pretending it was all my idea. It was Bill Clinton, and it was during some sort of speech while he was campaigning against Bush.

See how easy that is? Even if you can’t pinpoint exactly where or when someone said something that stuck with you, you can still give them credit for influencing your ideas. Really, it’s not that hard. If I can do it so can everyone else.

My response to this whole mess…I’m not giving up the word feminist, no matter how many assholes use it too. It’s a good word and it means something, and I’ll be damned if I’ll let a bunch of racist, classist, arrogant jackasses have the movement that so many women worked so hard to build.

So, my own response to Amanda et al and the way they’re behaving right now. Since I started with a song, I’ll give you another one and let Favorite Band speak for me. Especially appropriate since the first words of the song are “shut up”, which is exactly what certain people need to do right now.

(Affectionately known as “the fuck you song”)

One final note…as well as being pissed off I’m seriously disappointed in some people over the way they’ve behaved here. Amanda, you used to be a decent writer. I used to read Pandagon all the time. You were smart and funny and interesting once. What the hell happened? Please, for the love of all that is good, rethink the direction you’re going in before the people who used to enjoy your work lose what little remaining respect they have for you. It’s never too late to wise up. And that goes for all the white bloggers currently making asses of themselves over this - all of you are smart people and all of you are capable of being better people than this. Please, be better people than this

PS I will probably come back and edit this later when I’m less sleep deprived…anything obvious that I’ve missed, anything I forgot to link, feel free to point it out and I’ll fix it. Because that’s how it’s supposed to work, people! Blogging is about communication, isn’t it? It should be.

2008-03-31T16:26:00.000-07:00

The final Ministry tour…no, they’re serious this time!

I get concert information e-mailed to me from a number of sources (LiveNation, friends, the venues themselves, Live 105 Radio), and guess what I found recently? Ministry is doing a farewell tour. Which is great, but…um, wasn’t that what they said last time? I distinctly remember going to what was supposed to be their farewell tour a couple of years ago. And yet here they are again.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just kind of funny. How many farewell tours are they going to do? Is this going to be like when a furniture store has a “Going Out Of Business” sale that lasts for five years? In 2010 am I going to be getting another set of “come see Ministry’s final performance!” messages?
Eh, maybe Jorgensen has kids he needs to send to college. Now there’s a scary thought.

2008-03-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

Body stuff, the TMI edition

OK, so there’s something that I keep running into in all corners of the blogosphere and the media, and it’s annoying me.

Personal grooming issues. Why are these any of anyone else’s business? I mean OK, if we’re talking about people who do not bathe and are thus offensive to the sensitive nasal passages of those who have to be around them then I’m right with you. But when it comes to stuff that’s purely cosmetic? I’m just not seeing why this is or should be a matter in which public opinion is relevant. Especially not public opinion that’s based on either traditional gender roles or the desire to defy them.

So here’s my story. I am generally not a fan of body hair, on either sex. I have never dated a hairy man and never will. I have been shaving my legs and armpits since I was about 11 and have no intention of stopping any time soon. Even really hairy arms turn me off. This does not mean that I feel any need to interfere in other people’s grooming habits – see post below. Unless I’m sleeping with them it’s really none of my business.

However, despite generally falling into the anti-body-hair camp the common assumption that women will remove all of their pubic hair annoys me. And don’t get me wrong – I have done so, and will probably continue to do so sometimes. I started trimming the sides as an adolescent because I practically lived in the swimming pool and didn’t much care for the sight of hair protruding from swimsuit. I started shaving everything off in my mid twenties because I was living in California and it was really hot one summer. I did it on a whim, liked the way it felt and decided to keep doing it.

I always hated the way it looked, though. I hate the way it looks in porn too – I feel the same way I do looking at bald heads. Like, something is missing and I find it aesthetically displeasing. It’s not even the political argument about it making women look childlike with me, because honestly, an adult woman with huge breast implants and a shaved groin does not look like a child. She does however look a little odd to me, and not in a way that I like.

I’ve never liked the way it looks on me either. It makes me feel sort of bald and oddly unsexy. Which interestingly enough is Mr. C’s take too – feels cool, looks weird. He shaves most of his public hair off too, mostly for tactile reasons and to feel less sweaty when it’s hot. So nobody in my immediate vicinity is exerting pressure in either direction. And politically I’m totally neutral on this issue – I don’t think it’s a political issue at all, but an aesthetic one.

And aesthetically I don’t like the way I look fully shaved. So I’m letting some if it grow back. I seem to be leaning towards the neat little triangle look, because landing strips make me think of Hitler mustaches and that’s just not sexy at all. Or the stripes that they paint on the highway – also not sexy. The way I feel with the little triangle of dark hair though? Totally sexy. Which generally leads to better sex, which is a good thing.

Note that I have no opinion one way or another about what other women do with their pubic hair unless I’m sleeping with them. It’s just not relevant to my life in any way. I am not critiquing other women’s choices or suggesting that they change what they do.

How the hell did this ever become a politicized issue in the first place? And why are we letting it stay that way? If I see one more discussion about this on a feminist website I’m going to start throwing things at the screen. And men who feel the need to opine about the pubic topiaries of women they don’t even know and what they feel would be best for them to do…STFU. Nobody cares, she’s not sleeping with you anyway, your opinion is irrelevant.

Why can’t issues of personal aesthetics be just that? Why the need to impose ones own preferences on the world at large? Can an aesthetic preference not be just an aesthetic preference?

Discuss.

2008-03-15T02:11:00.000-07:00

Body Stuff part 2 (the short bit)

Meant to write about this earlier but have been in a bit of a mood this week.

So last weekend I saw a girl that made me smile, and the reason why is sort of relevant to all this body stuff. She was maybe in her early twenties and was taking a walk with her (really, really cute) puppy. Left the puppy tied up outside the coffee shop/health food store while she went in to shop. Many longing looks from puppy, where oh where has mommy gone and is she ever coming back, etc.

The part that made me smile? It was a really nice sunny day and so the girl was wearing a little cotton minidress. Kind of alterna-looking girl in general, sort of punk/rockabilly, with tattoos all over her calves. And hairy legs. In a girly mini-dress.

I sat there watching people walk past and react to this girl, saw them double-take and try to grok pretty feminine girl + hairy legs + tattoos + cute puppy. It was so much fun – people love to slot everyone into neat little categories and this girl was clearly fucking with them big time. And it was marvelous to behold.

There’s something really great about watching a woman be completely comfortable in her own skin. Maybe because you see it so rarely. Anyway, it put a smile on my face.

And the puppy, which attempted to jump into my lap and licked my toes and was generally friendly and full of energy – gah! I want one.

Interesting how cool people always manage to raise cool pets. This one was a rescue puppy that the girl found on the street and it was so happy and well-socialized that you just knew she was doing a great job making it feel loved and wanted.

And there ends today’s story.