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The real nitty gritty has begun on the house.
Dust covers the heavy duty plastic covering on the furniture in the kitchen and dinning room. New copper pipes replace old rotted ones. Parts of the living room and kitchen have been knocked out to make way for a new bathroom on the main level. Old furniture pieces have been donated.
My back (and even a part of my chest) hurts from all of the packing, moving and even carrying my child around on a daily basis.
Change is here and in a big way.
In the midst of packing up my bedroom I've thrown away a lot things.
A couple of old book bags filled with classwork from my junior and high school years, old and broken trinkets and donated just about my entire closet of clothes and shoes to charity; stuff I hadn't worn since the late 80s and well into the 90s.
I came across old printed out emails, including one from my "Him from New York"; professing his "love" for me. Whatever...
I've come across many pictures and loose change.. I didn't realized I had so many pictures and money scattered about.
In the midst of all of this change I can't help but wonder what is in store for the future.
Indeed I'm in this new phase in life, but I don't know how to describe it. It almost feels as if I'm in the same position I was in during my first brink of real change.... very pivotal.
The urge to write has hit me and I'm a bit frustrated cause within this week alone soooo much had to be done before the walls could be knocked into no time to really write. i just pray that the thoughts retain in my head, even as I dream.
Now that the renovation work has officially begun, it sort of caught everyone in the household a little off guard - even though we've known about this since the planning stages. Yet, to see a drastic change to your HOUSE go on right before your eyes is "a hold your breath" kinda thing.
This is indeed not only a change in my life but in my parents as well. For 28 years all of us have LIVED in this house - a house that was originally built in the 50s(?) by an old white guy - who built it for him and his grown son. His son never moved in, because once the house was finished he had gone to live elsewhere and started a family on his own. This is the story my old Italian (next door) neighbor would tell our family over and over.
Speaking of which I miss Ms. Lovisa dearly. I grew up fascinated by her well kept garden in the backyard and her mini vineyard. Who ever heard of a mini vineyard with grapes growing wildly in Southeast Washington, DC? Ms. Lovisa may have very well left Italy, but Italy didn't leave her. And yes.. she did make wine and didn't hesitate in sharing with my father. She even picked me up from school a couple of times - once with a visiting relative from Italy and I got an earful of spoken Italian as I sat back and smile and nodded as if I understood.
It broke my heart when she was no longer able to care for herself. Her family placed her in a nursing home clear on the other side of town... more so in Montgomery County, MD near her sister. Her house was sold and I was a bit angry at the folks who now live in "Ms. Lovisa's House." How dare they get rid of her garden and dig up her beautiful peonies!
Again.. that was a change I wasn't ready for just yet.
Along with this change that is occurring there's Papi. I find myself haunted by past lovers; with opportunities that I could have jumped on but left alone. I'm definitely not the same girl. Each day I'm wanting Papi more and more. Still it's one day at a time. Just be. Last night we had gone to see The Roots and Erykah Badu perform. What's strange is, I've never been the cuddle in public type, but there I was with my head resting on his shoulder or my arm contently on his leg as Erykah Badu sang her heart out.
Side note: Can I just say I looked and felt sexy. I rarely say this often, even if it is about myself but I was hot! I found a dress at Torrid.. something like this - minus the pockets and mine is a dark gray. My jewelry from the Lalia Rowe store in Tyson's Corner... something like this - my necklace was multi-color with pastels pink, yellow, a mint green and light blue. My black six inch Steve Madden pumps and my black clutch from Aldo. Oh and of course the right touch of MAC make up. I even wore a little eyeshadow which is something I do once is a blue moon. Ironically, I matched Papi who was wearing gray and black; which is something I loathe when I see a couple matching. However, I had no idea he was going to wear such. Too bad we didn't take any pictures.
Change is in the air and I'm not talking about Obama's madness.
I feel like shedding more skin.
Recognize. Accept. Embrace.
Change.. feel it
You shouldn’t get to 50 to learn this …
Growing older is inevitable 
Be open about your age. You don’t have to broadcast it via electronic media (ok, I may have) , but don’t deny your age either. You will still die on the day you die no matter if you pretend you are 42 and 3 months….. when you are 92.
Your teeth wont fall out on the pillow over night – usually. However, look after them, as they need to be with you until the end!
You can get some great gifts on milestone birthdays – maybe it is the sympathy vote, who knows, or cares. Show other people how to do it with style. Plan a series of events, not just one party with a bang. Lots of smaller intimate events nourish the soul.
Thank anyone who acts surprised when they hear that you are turning 50. If it is a male thank him twice!
Lighten your hair color gradually. There is no worse give away than jet black hair on an aging dame. It makes one look older not younger. If your hair doesn’t start to grey, offer thanks to the god of genes!
Same goes for make-up and nail polish. We need style as we age not colour drama. Leave Technicolor nightmares to those that are still learning – and may they still enjoy.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Don’t give up your dreams and plans. You have at least 30 more years to achieve things, so plan what to do with them.
Go quietly sometimes. It refreshes and nourishes you
Be noisy sometimes. It refreshes and nourishes you.
Continue learning – something, anything. Get a degree, taking up whittling, or whistling or whatever takes your fancy but keep your interests alive.
Love the skin you are in. It has served you well. Eat well, drink plenty of water and moisturize. Cover up in the sun, use sunscreens and wear sunglasses and a hat outside – slip slop slap!
Don’t live through your children. Live beside your children.
Appreciate the partner you are with. Just that, appreciate the partner you are with.
Travel
Read
Listen
Debate
Consider
Have regular massages. We have a home massage service, so I can burn my favorite oils, play my favorite music and not have traffic hassles afterwards, thus prolonging the mellow feelings. It is one of life’s little joys. Stops me from eating my young.
Learn to say “I don’t know”
Get a good hair cut. This is important no matter what age you are.
Don’t expect your partner to do all the work on anniversaries, or Valentine’s day. It is equal opportunity relationships now!
You will have to remember all his relatives’ birthdays and send Christmas cards to his friends. He may not even remember your birthday.
Plan your retirement. It is going to happen one day, make sure you get to do it the way that you would like to!
Make a will. Ensure the things that are important to you happen (the children go to your family, not his) and that sentimental or valuable things go to the people that you want them to.
Walk – go outside into the world.
Spend time with children
Find the name of a good physiotherapist and establish a relationship, so that when you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t move they will slot you into an early appointment.
Never underestimate the power of the gift of a single flower, or a telephone call to someone who is having a bad day. Ok, sms then!
Get eye glasses as soon as you need them. You don’t know what you are missing until you can see clearly again!
Let go of people who bring you no good. Care for the ones that do.
Remember other people’s birthdays – it is the one day THEY alone get to be special. Unless they are a twin or triplet, then remember all of them, invite them over for beer and pretzels!
Get flu vaccinations
Spend money on a good pillow and a good mattress. Lack of either can ruin your life.
Don’t a. ask a woman when she is going to have a baby, or b. ask a woman when her baby is due unless she is on the way to the hospital. Avoiding both can save you much embarrassment.
Learn to say no and mean it. Balance it with saying yes when it works for you.
Don’t be afraid to say “You have no right to speak to me that way” be it at home or work. Remember the same works the opposite way.
Treat people the way you would like to be treated yourself.
Don’t bitch about someone on the work email. Some people have been known to stupidly cc the subject in on the email and have to explain their opinion away as a brain fade or early senility (ok, ok I confess, it was me, so at least learn from my mistake and make my pain worthwhile!)
If you don’t know if it is his wife or his niece, speak in the abstract
If a family member leaves their partner, speak cautiously until the divorce is finalized and they have remarried, as they often reconcile and remember everything you said and nothing they said!
Some days you will get the good parking spot, some days you wont
There will be days when the upside will be rolling into the fetal position in a corner and humming to yourself between sobs.
Some days you will call your child by the incorrect name
No matter how much you love your pet, it will die one day. Often sooner than you expect.
Respect the old – they did it all before you!
Return things that you borrow.
Be thoughtful about whom you sleep with. You are worth it!
You will have more than one career in life. Some you will choose, some will choose you and some will be necessity. Eventually you will end up where you are meant to be.
Marriage is more than a ring and a wedding day. Think past the wedding day.
Laugh as much as you can. Laugh with others, not at them! Laugh alone. Enjoy your own private thoughts!
Blog – it brings the world too you, and opens the way for the most amazing people to enter your life.
In 2002, the man I love lost his 19-year-old son to a car crash. Six months later, I had to face the growing evidence that yet another beloved family member was suffering from a mental condition which was causing him and those who loved him a great deal of emotional pain, but for which he was adamantly not going to seek treatment. Two minutes after that, I had still another falling out with my parents; regarding their obsessive control issues that dogged me right up to my mother’s death. A few months later, my 14-year-old son began his rebellion stage with a vengeance. Not to mention that throughout all this turmoil, I was making the slow and unbelievable discovery that a woman who I thought had been my friend for the past twenty years was simply…not. And then, of course, there was the Bush administration’s decision to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some people might wonder how I could possibly include that last sentence in my list of personal woes. But I do, because since I’ve been in my early twenties, I’ve had what some call the annoying propensity to read the newspapers and use my God-given strategic thinking skills to analyse the information therein. And I don’t just read American newspapers. There are all kinds of news reports one can find online, many in English, but if not, I find that if I use a dictionary, I can read the newspapers in a few different languages. And being able to do that gives me a bit of an edge, because world reports are markedly and sometimes, scarily different than American reports.
The reason I go to all this trouble to read whatever I can and think about all of it is simple - I want to know when policy-makers are lying to me. I don’t care what party they belong to, nor what country they’re heading. I don’t join teams and stick with them doggedly to the bitter end, no matter what ‘my’ team does or says, when it comes to politics. In fact, after the dirty play I witnessed by the Italian team during the last World Cup, a team I’ve been cheering for since I was a little girl watching European football with my uncles, I don’t even do it with sports any more. Because I know that whenever anyone who’s been put in power opens his mouth, whether in sports or politics, sh*t happens. And that sh*t usually gets dumped with a heavy hand on the littlest guy.
But reading the newspapers and analysing the news led me to having to face the final personal trauma of the many personal traumas between the years 2002 and 2003, which was that my country was going to attack another country for a reason that I knew to be an absolute LIE.
Five years and countless deaths (of humans and civil liberties) later, I’m proven right. Oddly enough, that doesn’t make me feel one bit better about it.
But I digress.
Regarding every harrowing incident I lived through between 2002 and 2003, well-meaning supporters said, “There’s nothing you can do.”
It was true that there was nothing I could do to prevent the series of events that led to my stepson’s death. Nor could I stop the deluge of grief that followed and that will trickle forever. I couldn’t force my family member to seek counselling, nor my parents to be anything other than what they were. And, like everything else my son does, he did his rebelling so well, that nothing I, his father and his stepfather managed to come up with, would alter his course until he was damn good and ready to alter it himself. As far as my long-held acquaintanceship…well, I thought about it long and hard, and at the end of the day, I saw I was pretty much powerless there, too.
Powerlessness is terrible. It leads to hopelessness. Even though I coped as best I could with these events, I admit to feeling hopeless more than once during them.
But when the President of the United States starting talking about invading Iraq, I heard, “There’s nothing you can do,” once too often. I wasn’t powerless in this situation. I could at least have my voice heard. And so I began writing, writing, writing. I wrote essays, articles and satires. I wrote emails and letters to Congress.
What difference can the voice of one woman make? Maybe not much, but add it to another voice and now you have harmony. Add ten more and it’s a chorus.
There are a growing number of us who are less and less afraid of singing against the norm. We are tired of the different factions sniping at each other and pointing fingers. It doesn’t matter who was playing the fiddle when Rome started burning, it's time for us all to step up and begin to put the fire out.
I haven’t written about the presidential campaign because I am disgusted by it. I am sickened that this past week alone there was devastation in China and Myramar and none of the candidates - one of whom is to be the future leader of the free world - could stop his or her own personal crusade for self-aggrandisement long enough to bring these up in any real context. If I thought that any of the three could sincerely care about anything other than, “I want to be the next president of the United States,” just for a single moment, that in itself just might give that person the one precious vote that is still mine to give.
When I lived in Greece, there was a devastating earthquake in nearby Turkey that rivalled the one China has just suffered. Greek television is not like the television here in the United States. Reality TV in Greece is not who gets picked by the bachelor, reality TV is seeing your Turkish neighbour clawing through the rubble of his village, screaming in agony because he hears his family crying beneath the stone, and he has no tools save his bare hands to free them. When you see the tears and the blood of your neighbour, does it matter then if he is Muslim or Christian, friend or enemy? It shouldn’t and it didn’t to the Greeks. Long time foes of the Turks, with centuries of ill-will between them, the Greeks were the first outsiders to step on Turkish soil to help.
I remember being in my little bookshop in Athens, crying with relief as my business partner and I watched on our telly downstairs, Greek police, Greek firemen, Greek doctors, Greek nurses, Greek university students, all doing their damnedest to help their sworn enemies save their children, their spouses, their parents and whatever was left of their homes. And when just the following month, Greece had its own earthquake, the Turks were there in a show of solidarity that should make every self-proclaimed follower of God or any kind of spirituality here in my country hang his head in shame.
When I asked one Greek why he was able to help so wholeheartedly a people who have been at war off and on again with Greece practically since the beginning of time, his answer made me think. He said, “It’s not the Turkish people we Greeks dislike. It’s their government.”
We are all citizens of the same country here and yet we don’t show the respect for each other that those centuries-sworn enemies did. And don’t think for one moment just because you assume you are on the ‘correct’ side of the “Republican/Democrat, Christian/Non” debate, that it gives you the right to slander anyone else, or feel smug and superior to anyone else.
First off, it’s not helping. What it does is keep us occupied while all politicians- all - screw us. All. We are all in this crappy economy together, we are all in this war together, we are all suffering under the same antiquated health care system, school system, and electoral system. We may all have different opinions on how it should be changed, but the point is we all agree it should be different and the only ones who are benefiting from it as it stands are the ones who set us squabbling about it in the first place.-the politicians.
Here are three thoughts for both liberals and conservatives both in and out of the United States:
1) How is political protest “anti-American” when it was what the country was founded on? There would be no United States of America without someone - or once again, that small chorus of people, who said, “This isn’t working. Time to start over. Let’s start by having a tea party.”
2) Did it ever occur to anyone who criticises those who believed George Bush unequivocally, that they should have been able to believe him? George W. Bush is like my mechanic. He’s hired to fix my car. If my mechanic tells me my transmission is out of whack, how can I argue, unless I take a course in car repair? I have to trust him. And I do. I hired him to do a job. How can a person who believes in the office of the president be criticised for that same trust? It’s this president who violated that trust. It’s this president who should be blamed, not every Republican. Are you telling me there are no lying Democrats?
3) And lastly, there are three hundred million people who live in the US. Can we all be alike? Do we all have the same levels of exposure to the outside world or the same education? I just met a man recently, a good man, who believes fervently that we need to “stop the terrorists.” He is a stone mason, he is out of work, and my guess is he has no clue that the reason he is out of work goes back to Alan Greenspan’s incompetent, partisan fiscal policies and George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. How could he know if he never had an economics class, maybe never even graduated from high school?
Granted, not everyone who is ‘pro-invasion’ is this man. And many people on both sides of this equation are just not nice people who have their own agenda, their own desire for personal gain. And then there are those who simply see things differently.
I see things differently than most people. I believe that we should all be able to learn from each other and that the differences amongst us should not be a threat to any of us, but an opportunity to grow and learn as a species. I want to know how the people in India came to believe in a God with an elephant face, and the ones in Italy believe in a God who was born again as Himself. I’m not alarmed by either of these beliefs, nor do I mock them. I’m intrigued by them. How did they start, and what can I learn from them? Most importantly, what do I believe myself, as an individual, when I gather these facts? Am I strong enough to stand alone if I have to, when my beliefs are different than those around me? Can I also use what I learn to help build a better world?
That is the purpose of my life. To learn and to teach. To help leave the planet just a little bit better than it was before I got here. It will most likely make only a small difference, really, one woman’s voice. But if I can add a chorus to it, well…you never know.
And that’s how I’ll introduce you today to my new online magazine and podcast, Harlots’ Sauce Radio. It still only has a small voice, but the sound is unique and beautiful to me, because the chorus is comprised of people from all different parts of the world, coming from all different perspectives. Yes, we can do that without snarling at each other.
I’ve sent this post as an invitation to everyone in my VOX neighbourhood and in my VOX groups today. Not only do I invite you to read Harlots’ Sauce Radio and listen to our podcast interviews of many extraordinary people who make up this planet, I urge you to add YOUR own voice. There is a wealth of talent here on VOX - writers, humorists, musicians, poets, photographers, and deep thinkers. Please go to the submissions guidelines page and offer up your talents. Then, enjoy the talents of your fellow human beings who have already been published there. If nothing else, we make a pleasant change from Yahoo’s home page daily reports on who got thrown off American Idol.
I hope you will take me up on this invitation. If we sing loudly enough, sooner or later, our song will be heard.
Geh. Pshaw. Whatevs. I know he's married (FOR NOW, ANYWAY). JMac's like 5 '7, you knows? ( and so is Emile Hirsch, according to IMDB) How revoltingly adorable is that shit? I can just stick him in ma pocket! Or put him in a little engagement ring box and bring him out to play!
Check out the LA Times article here.
In a 4-3 ruling, the justices rule that state marriage laws are unconstitutional.
SAN FRANCISCO — – The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.
The state high court’s 4-3 ruling was unlikely to end the debate over gay matrimony in California. A group has circulated petitions for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to block same-sex marriage, while the Legislature has twice passed bills to authorize gay marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both.
Finally, some decisive action on this!
Here's a quote from our shitty, shitty Governor, Mr. Schwarzenegger, that makes me feel a little more secure in today's ruling:
"I respect the Court's decision and as Governor, I will uphold its ruling. Also, as I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this state Supreme Court ruling."
At least according to Dr. George Crane. I tripped on this little gem while browsing some random non-Vox blogs, and I had to share. Dr. Crane was a marriage counselor in the 1930's, and wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column dispensing marital advice. In 1939, he came up with the genius "Marital Rating Scale," a testing tool for couples to assess how well they were doing in their prescribed roles. Demerits or merits were assigned, based on Dr. Crane's scale of most essential marital duties, and wives could figure out just how well they were doing by their man by adding up scores and getting a rating. Yes, indeed, I think Dr. Crane would have rated me in the "failure"* category.
*Incidentally, I love that a marriage counselor had a failure category. Very confidence inspiring for the fledgling marriage.
Clearly, I am a very bad wife. I think my score could quite possibly be negative.
As you read it over, does anything strike you as very ornamental about the identity of this perfect wife that emerges through this chart? Lots of contradictions between the merit and demerit list (a little bit, but not too much! of everything), molding the perfect wife into a very shallow and people-pleasing creature of delight for her husband's satisfaction. She is to be perky, intuitive, intellectual, and beautiful, but only because it reflects well on the marital union, so never in a way that advances her own interests or desires. It makes me shudder just a little.
I think some of my favorites might be "reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress," (for a whole 10 merits!Nevermind if husband is actually good at said congress, I guess wife should just put on Oscar-worthy performance) and the requisite cheery morning disposition (I'm a goner on this one...might as well sign the divorce papers now). On the demerit side, I particularly enjoyed demerits for shoulder straps or slip hanging out or crooked (bad wife!), being more than 15 pounds overweight (fat wife!), wears red nail polish (whore wife!), wearing pajamas while cooking (I'm going to wife hell for this one), too talkative (but of course spunky and well-versed in many topics, according to the merit list); and squeezes toothpaste from the top (please God, don't ever let my husband see this one).
I now fully understand why use of "happy potions" and qualudes were rampant by housewives in this era.
So, where do you stack up on the good wife scale?
It is no secret that I do not like Gov. Schwarzenegger. My 18th birthday was 2 weeks after the recall election, and I did not vote for him when he was up for reelection. I knew he would never be able to solve the problems he promised he would, and this is one situation where I hate being right.
The people of California (wrongfully, in my opinion) ousted Gov. Davis because of budget and energy problems back in 2003. Granted, it was a little more complicated than a budget crisis and energy shortage, but those were the main issues at the time. And now, shocker of all shockers, Gov. Schwarzenegger has failed to solve the budget crisis.
The Governor’s May revision was released yesterday and California is facing a $17.2 billion deficit, which is over $2 billion more than the original proposal. Instead of raising taxes to repair the budget problems – which, let’s face it, we knew he’d never do because he’s a Republican – Gov. Schwarzenegger has decided to target problems providing aid to children, the elderly, the disabled, low-income families, and immigrants. He has done this at a time when it has been projected that the need for state and government aid will increase during the next budget year. And, the biggest problem of all, his solution is only a temporary fix for the problem. The next person in office will be facing the same problems he is now, only they will be greater because of Gov. Schwarzenegger's reluctance to raise taxes (except for the 1 cent increase he has proposed, which the GOP is adamantly against).
On top of wanting to use lottery money as a temporary fix to the budget, he has proposed that the $828 million from gas taxes be taken away from public transportation and redirected to help with the $17.2 billion deficit. Myself and many other commuters in the state of California rely on public transportation to get work in a safe, cost-efficient, convenient, and green way. By cutting funds from public transportation during a time when gas prices are only going to continue increasing, you are making it impossible for people, like myself, to get to their jobs everyday. When my bus is full and I have to choose between buying groceries or gas for two weeks, I ultimately have to decide between keeping my job or being unemployed.
Personally, I find it ironic that a Governor who uses taxpayer's money to fly back and forth from southern California to Sacramento is impacting commuters by cutting public transportation.
I am extremely upset and I feel very betrayed by Gov. Schwarzenegger. I don’t think I can write about this anymore without resorting to name calling. Combine that with my lack of qualifications to talk about any of this with any real authority, I’ve pasted some quotes below from people who do know what they are talking about.
The Los Angeles Times has a complete list of the budget cuts and who they will/would impact.
From the Sacramento Bee:
The governor's failure is more than just a numbers game. It reflects his – and the state's – refusal to face reality. The public's desire for spending on schools, health care, prisons, welfare, roads and other services is not matched by the voters' willingness to raise taxes.
The result: budget deficits year after year. Those deficits and the borrowing to which they have led mean that we're still paying now for services the state provided five years ago, leaving less money available for the things we need today. And years from now we and future Californians will still be paying – with interest – for the services we're getting today.
The centerpiece of Schwarzenegger's latest budget plan is a proposal to take an advance against future earnings from the sale of lottery tickets. The governor wants to overhaul the state-run gaming operation so that more people play, and more revenue flows to the state from the tickets they buy. Then he wants to get private investors to pay the state $15 billion in exchange for the rights to a portion of those higher proceeds over the next 30 years.
But even if the Legislature accepted Schwarzenegger's lottery proposal, adopted every spending cut the governor proposed and embraced his budget reform plan, the state would still be facing a projected shortfall of about $5 billion in two years. In other words, when the lottery money runs out, the problem is still there.
From The San Francisco Chronicle:
His latest plan is not without severe cuts. While he has abandoned some of his earlier controversial ideas, such as early release of 22,000 prisoners and closing 48 state parks, the new budget still contains cuts totaling $11 billion.
Health and welfare programs were among the hardest hit. The governor has proposed cuts in health care for the poor, recent immigrants and disabled residents.
I sincerely hope that our next Governor is a Democrat not afraid of raising taxes, because this is just not going to work.
I was more than a little shocked to see this article on the front page of CNN:
As the weather warms each spring, women — especially in cities with active sidewalk traffic — once again face catcalls from men. It’s a situation some find unnerving and an invasion of their space, while others ignore it or are even flattered by it.
“I call it street abuse,” said New York filmmaker Maggie Hadleigh-West, 49. “It’s unwanted attention and invasion of space.”
In her 1998 documentary “War Zone,” Hadleigh-West confronted catcallers and filmed their responses. Many of the men literally ran away to avoid talking to her about why they whistled or made a provocative comment. […]
“Being in a public space with a strange man who is being sexually aggressive is potentially dangerous,” Hadleigh-West added.
On the other hand, some women appreciate the attention in certain cases, like Jessica, a 31-year-old health-care educator in Los Angeles who declined to use her last name to protect her privacy.
“Yeah, it’s objectifying and all, but you know, if I walked down the street and didn’t have men looking me up and down and catcalling, I’d think, ‘Boy, I must really be getting old and dumpy,’ ” she said.
This is absolutely disgusting. Is that how you feel better about yourself? BY being verbally assaulted by men? I think it’s a little sad that the state of the world makes women feel flattered when they are being yelled at by strange men simply for existing. Where is your self esteem? Do you really need that much attention to feel good about yourself? I know I’m being a little more than harsh here, but I absolutely hate women like this. Especially when cat calling isn’t as innocent as a man being a jerk and asserting himself on a woman:
“There seems to be some evidence that it increases self-objectification,” said Fairchild, who surveyed 550 women both online and at Rutgers University in 2006 and 2007. The women — who ranged in age from 15 to 64 in the international online component and from 18 to 24 in the Rutgers survey of women from central New Jersey — were asked about their experiences with street harassment.
Catcalling “encourages women to look at themselves as body parts instead of as full, whole, intelligent human beings” and can cause women to fear for their safety, Fairchild says.
“When a man catcalls you, you don’t know if it will end at that point or if it could escalate to assault,” she added.
I’m glad that there is research being done on this - but I’m sad that it’s getting attention only after the article’s author finds some random woman who just lives for the attention cat calling provides her with.
You know, I was totally fine with this article, even the bits including the attention-seeking woman, until I reached the end:
“A lot of men have no idea that women don’t like being talked to in this way,” she said. “It never crosses their mind, and yelling doesn’t educate them. If you yell, they often don’t understand why you are upset and so they take it personally.”
Often, Kearl says, an assertive, clear response can illicit a kinder reaction than one expects.
“A lot of the time, I find guys will just say, ‘Oh, OK, I didn’t realize it made you feel that way. Thanks.’ “
Ok, now, really, as a woman who experiences cat calling because she has to dress up for work, I can honestly say that no matter how you respond to a man making sexual comments about you, they will still take it personally and be even bigger of an asshole about it. I have asked cat callers more than once if they think whistling and making sexual remarks at women is really the way to get their attention, and I’ve either been called a bitch, stupid, or a lesbian because of my return comment.
What is a man’s expectation when he says these things to a woman he doesn’t even know? Does he expect her to fawn over him in appreciation? Does he expect his comments to be appreciated, or does he know they are offensive?
I’m doing my part as a woman to make it clear that we don’t appreciate these comments, but I’m only one woman living in one small city - I can only do so much.
If you’re going to make an endorsement because you’re trying to help a candidate win an election, that’s fine with me. But when you make an endorsement, make it clear why you’re selecting candidate A in favor of candidate B, don’t just simply state that you’re endorsing candidate A.
My favorite part of the endorsement had to be when Nancy Keenan said the following two sentences in the same paragraph:
Further, I believe Sen. Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee.
Sen. Obama will be our next president.
It’s nice to know that you aren’t letting your personal beliefs cloud your judgment and make endorsements on behalf of an entire agency. Why didn’t she just say “I like Obama better than Clinton, ne-ner-ne-ner-neeee-ner!” - because that’s what it sounds like.