AGING AND WOMEN AND PINK PONIES
Cindy Maddera
I hadn’t planned to go the Chappell Roan pop-up concert even though I wanted to go. I glanced at the concert ticket lottery but dismissed it immediately. First, I’m going to Paris. This has been my mantra all year whenever I think about spending money. Secondly, I lacked the energy required just to get the tickets. Then a couple of weeks ago Melissa sent me a text saying her friend had an extra ticket and asked if I wanted to go with them to the Saturday concert. My heart screamed “YES!” while the rest of me said “Let me consult the financial advisor.” Which used to be a magic 8-ball until Michael showed up. I have been teaching extra yoga and I used that as my leverage and that’s how I ended up on the Liberty Memorial Lawn with about 30,000 people Saturday night, dancing around to the tunes of Chappell Roan.
I took very few pictures and most of those were not great, but I was more focused on being present than filming. The concert was great. The ADA services could have been better. Melissa was able to see most of the concert from a big screen, but we had limited access to food and water. Mostly water. The water station was in the middle of a grassy median surrounded with curb, no ramps. So….there’s room for improvements, but all in all we had a really great time. The people watching was spectacular and spotting bare butts (lots of wardrobe choices that included thongs and ass-less chaps) became a drinking game. After the show, Melissa and I sat in the backseat of her friends’ car doing running commentary on the poor choices in footwear for those who walked miles to the concert. We watched one girl take off her boots and walk down the street in her socks. Melissa and I could both recall moments in our youths where we were that girl in sock covered feet, walking down a street.
Oh…youth. I don’t envy it but I envy it a little and here’s why.
During my youthful concert going days, women artists where not the big show. They were the opening act, but not the big 30,000 sold out ticket show. Women were never even marketed for such a thing. Women I’ve seen in concert because they were the opener include Traci Chapman and Annie Lennox. Annie fucking Lennox was an opening act for the Police reunion tour. I would have paid those ticket prices just to see her. Sarah McLaughlin built Lilith Fair while people were telling her that no one is going to spend money on concert tickets where women were the headliners. Lilith Fair toured for two years with sold out shows at every venue. The media was merciless the whole time mocking the event with terms like “lesbian fair” and making fun of the artists based on their appearances. Does any one remember how crazy people went over Paula Cole’s unshaved armpits? As if this is something we should even care about, but it sticks. That gets filed away into the brain of a young girl into a folder labeled ‘Never’. That folder holds all the rules for our bodies. Never get fat. Never be too skinny. Never have hair growing on arms, pubic area or armpits.
It’s a big fat file.
But the current generation of youth gives zero fucks about that stuff. They fully embrace all that is their bodies and it is lovely and beautiful. And quit frankly, makes me jealous because of the amount of time spent wasted as a young woman worrying about some aspect of my appearance. Granted, I have now reached an age where I also give zero fucks about how my body might look to others, but that wasn’t always the case. There is so much about being a woman that involves concealment of one’s self, wrapping ourselves up for invisibility but also approval. In 1991, Demi Moore posed nude with a large pregnant belly for the cover of Vanity Fair and people crawled out of the walls to bitch and scream about the indecency of it all. “How dare she?!?” they cried out. “How obscene!” they yelled. Baby Tate, the opener for Chappell Roan on Saturday, stepped out onto the stage in a two piece outfit that showed off a 34 week pregnancy belly and the crowd screamed with joy. They basked in the glow of it. As they should have.
The frustrating part is how long it took us to get here, to a place where woman can be truly happy in their own skin without the judgment. Okay, I know there are still people out there who like to leave their judgy comments about appearances. And yeah, I know a number of those people are women, but those women, those people, don’t get far with their comments before others come in to defend. They quickly get shut down because the world is filled with enough negative noise, we don’t want to hear any more of it. I do not have time or brain space to have the audacity to judge another person’s appearance or read other’s judgy comments.
And I heard that there's a special place
Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day - Pink Pony Club, Chappell Roan
The Pink Pony Club doesn’t have to be a place of fiction or an imaginary club. It doesn’t have to be delegated to one tiny crowded building. We may be taking baby steps against the patriarchy and the hate mongers who call themselves christians, but we are making progress.
We are building a Pink Pony world.