IN DEFENSE OF CLEAVAGE

Friday

"Friday"

We were watching Saturday Night Live. Amy Schumer comes out to open the show and she's wearing a dress that shows off half her boobs. I may have said "that's a bold choice" out loud. Then at the end of the show Nicki Minaj comes out to join the crowd and she's wearing a dress that showed off way more than half of her boobs and Michael and I both raised our eyebrows. Then, this reaction made me a little mad at myself. When did I become so prudish and judgmental? I am not prudish. I am not judgmental. I was just raised with the idea that there are parts of a woman that should not be revealed in public. Excess cleavage was one of those parts. It's hard to shake off years of training dictating how a woman should be dressed. 

In the 1830s, people were arrested for performing the cancan. When I say people, I mean women. The dance was a bit scandalous. Underthings where revealed while lifting skirts up and high kicking. Woman were scorned for showing an ankle. Heaven forbid showing a whole leg. Since the beginning we, meaning us girls, have been taught to cover up. Those before us bound their breasts, wore multiple layers of underthings, cinched their waists with corsets and sat demurely in the corner where a woman belonged. Or where the men felt the woman belonged. This leaves me scratching my head at how this all came about. Early homo sapiens didn't fret over clothes and men and women worked together as a team to survive. Gathering enough food and fending off sabertooth tiger attacks just seemed to be a bit more important than the length of a loincloth. Somewhere along the line a man got hit in the head with a coconut or a rock and declared that God spoke to him to say that women and men were not equal. Men are by far stronger and better. Since that happened, women have been punished for being woman. Everything about our bodies is shameful. 

But then women won the right to vote. Bras were burned in the 60s and we passed reproductive rights laws. Women are CEOs of major companies. We've gained back most of that equality we had back in those early days of man. We tell our daughters, sisters nieces, stranger's girls that they can do anything a boy can do. You can play baseball. You can fight fires. Equal rights and blah blah blah. Yet we are still restricting ourselves with the clothes we choose to wear. Then Halloween rolls around and every costume for a woman on the sales rack is titled "sexy" fill in the blank. When we are at our Halloween parties and we see a woman show up wearing one of these sexy costumes, we pretend to sneeze the word "slut". I want to make it very clear that I have a serious problem with commercial costumes and this idea that everything marketed to a woman has to be sexy, but it's because Rick Grimes is not a sexy female Halloween costume. It's dumb. Adding the word "sexy" to every thing on the planet to sell a costume is dumb and the expectation that if you are a female your costume has to be "sexy" is also dumb. 

Slut is a word that we need to stop using. Period. It is an outdated demeaning word that has no value in this day and age. We are working so hard for that equality thing and when we see a woman wearing a tight dress and showing off her boobs our brains immediately say "slut" even when we know this word does not apply. It's easier to turn lack of confidence into something hateful towards a person who does not lack confidence. The only reason I'm not trying to squish my body into a Nicki Minaj style dress is because I lack the confidence to wear it. I am uncomfortable when fabric is actually in contact with my skin or I feel exposed. Though the other day I did glance down and notice that the blouse I was wearing made me look like I was having a good boob day.

It has become such a ridiculous contradiction. On one hand we are screaming about equality and telling our girls to be confident and when they express their confidence, we make it negative. That short skirt she's wearing is making boys look. I'm sorry, but when's the last time you were in a young person's clothing store like RU21? ALL THEY SELL ARE SHORT SKIRTS. Hey, don't dress that way, but all we're going to sell are clothes that will make you dress that way. No wonder we are all so mentally screwed up and have issues. 

How about the next time you have the urge to mutter "slut" under your breath, instead you just say "I wish I were that brave" or "I wish I had that kind of confidence". No, seriously. I really wish I had the body confidence of Nicki Minaj. 

MY THIRTEEN YEAR OLD SELF

Catawba blooms

"Catawba blooms"

Last night I groaned as I climbed into bed, putting pressure on the bruise that was forming on my knee. Tiny dots of blue had already filled up one side of my knee where a softball had bounced up and hit and the skin was slightly puffy. I looked at my legs and thought "my legs used to be pretty." Both knees are sporting blue bruises from softball hits. The patch of poison ivy on my shin has healed, but left behind a strawberry colored rectangle that resembles the state of Tennessee. I have an abrasion on my calf from banging it on the ladder while cleaning out gutters. There's a scrape up one shin from my bicycle peddle. On second thought,  I realized that my legs resembled those of my thirteen year old self. I always had scraped knees and bruises from climbing trees and bicycle crashes from speeding down a hill as fast as possible. 

There was a mimosa tree on the southeast corner of my parents' lot. It wasn't what I'd a call a very big tree, but it was big enough to climb with a few sturdy branches to dangle from. For years it was my climbing tree, even after I fell out of it, breaking my arm into two pieces. I can remember Dad threatening to cut down that tree then. As if that would have stopped me from climbing trees all together. I can remember begging him to not cut that tree down. I can remember sitting in that tree one summer watching the sun eclipse the moon. The moon was just above the eastern horizon and huge, in that way that the moon gets sometimes. It looked like you could reach out and touch it, it was so close to the earth. I watched the colors of the moon shift from white gold to blood red while the cicadas buzzed in the distance. Mom was mad because I wasn't inside helping her clean the house. We were getting ready for Janell's wedding and there were family coming into town. There was a large pile of wedding in the living room. Bouquets and flower arrangements. Ribbons and lace. Boxes of those chalky mints that taste like toothpaste and mixed nuts for the punch table. Mom was at her wits end getting it all together and organized neatly while I sat in my tree watching the moon. 

I was thirteen that summer. Officially a teenager, but still a gangling wild child climbing trees and ducking through barbed wired fences to go fishing is some farmer's pond. That was the summer I spent weeks and weeks camped out on the couch in Randy and Katrina's house. J and I would walk down to the pool every day. We watched MTV while folding clothes or doing housework. I laid Katrina's bicycle over while racing down a hill and trying to make a turn while going to fast. My body, trapped between road and bike, slid down the road scraping up my whole left side. That was the summer I'd be putting on my first bridesmaids dress, one I wasn't happy to wear. The dress was too low in the front for my comfort and at every fitting, I tugged and tugged at the bodice. It was too low, too tight, too floral, too "girly". Katrina took pity on me and sewed a piece of ribbon in the back that I could tie tight enough to keep the front from gaping open. My shoes had kitten heels; they might as well have been stilettos. I spent hours walking around in them thinking that they'd eventually get more comfortable or I'd get more graceful in my gait. That did not happen. I felt like a hippo, clomping down the aisle in uncomfortable shoes and a dress that did not fit. 

It was an in between age, somewhere between liking boys and desperately wanting to pull off the latest fashion look while at the same time climbing trees and racing down hills on a bicycle. It was somewhere between scrapped knees and elbows and lady like grace. I wanted to be both but was starting to give into the voices telling me I could not be both, that it was time to be proper and lady like. Act like a girl. Come on. We've all heard it. All of us are the same. We all climbed trees and crashed bicycles. All of us at one point were told to be little ladies. Now I hear those words "act like a girl" and it makes me cringe. What does that phrase even mean? What's so un-girly about climbing trees? Apparently I never really learned how to "act like a girl" as much as I learned to just act like me. I am almost forty and I still have the same scraps and bruises. 

More like badges of honor.

THE UNFAIRNESS OF IT ALL

Lost art

"Lost art"

I wanted to sit down and tell you about our weekend. I wanted talk about moving a cubic yard of dirt from the back end of Michael's truck to the new garden boxes that I put together. I hauled dirt while Michael put the lawnmower back together and worked on getting metal cloth on the chicken coop. I wanted to tell you about how we put the chickens in a small pen outside so they could feel grass under their feet and sun on their beaks. I wanted to tell about the funny moment when Foghorn flew up to the top of the pen and Michael said "NO! Foghorn, NO!" like she was a dog. Then I wanted to complain about tree pollen and how it's pretty much done me in and I am now in the market for a new allergy med. It just doesn't seem fair that someone who wants to be outside can't be outside.

Then I realized it's been one year since 300 girls where abducted from their school in Nigeria. One year and those girls are still missing. Those girls, if they are still alive, have all had a birthday. Each one is a year older. Each one has a mother and father who have spent the last year wondering where their little girl is, if she's at least being kept warm and fed. At the very least. Because we know in reality, that girl has been forced into a religion other than her own, raped and brutalized, forced to marry and enslaved. It's 2015 and we still live in a world where slavery exists and women have less value than livestock. My sinus headache from allergies doesn't even make a mark compared to the scars on these girls. I am at once shamed by my minor complaints and how shallow they sound when voiced out loud. It makes me feel gross and disappointed with myself because I remember a year ago. I remember jumping up and on the hashtag bandwagon to Bring Back Our Girls. I remember at the time wanting to stay vigilant about this. I did not want these girls to be forgotten.  

Time passes. In the year since those girls were taken, I have traveled the Dakotas, lost my Dad, ridden over a thousand miles on the scooter,  gone on a number of adventures, witnessed a good friend's wedding, bought chickens and started a new garden. One year. All of that in just one year all while forgetting my promise to keep this story alive. It was weeks after the girls were taken before the news here even started to cover any of it and I was so angry that it was not front page news from day one. Now, even I have allowed this story to become a footnote. It is easy to fall into the trap of feeling helpless and insignificant. I am sure those feelings of helplessness and insignificance pales in comparison to how helpless and insignificant the parents of those girls are feeling a year later with still no word of where their child is. 

I forgot that while my year was spinning forward in a mixture of love, sadness, laughter and joy, the year for the missing Nigerian school girls just stopped. I broke my promise to them with my complacency. I broke my promise to them by forgetting that even though I can't do much, I can keep the conversation about how these young girls matter alive. Because at the end of the day, all lives matter regardless of race or gender. All lives matter.

Bring Back Our Girls! 

FAT

I have two dresses sitting in my closet that I haven't worn in probably two years. Yes, I realize that this qualifies them for the donation pile, but they're really nice dresses and you never know when you're going to need to dress up for a wedding or a funeral or both. I tried one of these dresses on the other day because I thought maybe I'd wear it to a wedding at the end of February. I got the dress over my head, but there was no way I was going to get it zipped up the side. Then I had one of those panicky, I'm going to rip this dress, moments as I struggled to pull it back over my head. An inch. An inch and a half. That's what's gotta go from this body in order to zip that dress up. The thrill and pride of losing five pounds just flew right out the window.  

Here's what's ridiculous. I am right around the same size I was the last year I was with Chris (or Chris was with me, take your pick). At that time I was the skinniest I had ever been in my whole life. I knew that I would never be thinner and I was so happy and amazed that I was as thin as I was. I was thrilled to be the size I am now. I was happy, healthy and content with that body. Then Chris died and I lost about ten pounds. I lost ten pounds which I thought I couldn't lose. I mean if anything, I should have weighed more. Grief is so damn heavy. Grief should at least weigh twenty pounds. No, as it turns out it doesn't. Grief is light as a feather. Or at least light as pebble. 

I've been watching Awkward while I walk on the treadmill. I switch back and forth really between Awkward and Girls and the latest Downton Abby. There's a character in Awkward named Sadie. She's horrible and cruel. In season one she explains herself by crying to her mother "what do you expect? I'm surrounded by skinny petite girls while I have to write down every thing I eat and buy things from the special fat girls store." Sadie is a big girl. That's her excuse for being so mean. I hate this. When I look at Sadie, I see a perfectly normal girl. She's active, has won all kinds of horse riding awards and is on the cheerleading squad. Her character infuriates me. She really wants for nothing other than to be a size zero. This is a show that is meant for teenage girls. 

Counter this with Girls. They make no excuses for their weight. Laura Dunham's character, Hannah, admits to hating her body, but wears and doesn't wear clothes with a bold confidence that, frankly, I am jealous of. The show portrays girls with real bodies. Honestly, watching the show, I can see how their weight is the least of these girls worries. Figuring out what the Hell they're going to do to pay the bills is enough. I have mixed feelings about the show in general, but I will applaud the genuine female bodies.  In one episode you hear Hannah say that she finds her body disgusting and in the next episode she agrees that she is beautiful. That is the way. We all do it. One day we're disgusting, the next we're beautiful. 

I've wracked my brain trying to examine what it is exactly I'm doing differently now versus then. I no longer skip meals on weekends. Friday night dinners have gone from a bottle of wine and a sleeve of crackers to an actual meal. Usually pizza. I've added one and half people to my life. Turns out love weighs more than grief. I can go back to skipping meals on weekends. I can continue walking my 10,000 or more steps a day. I can continue to get on my mat and eat my kale. By the end of February, I just might be able to zip that zipper. Worse comes to worse, I buy a new dress and finally decide to put those others in the donation pile. 

I took a picture of myself once. It was during my first year into the whole 365 day project thing. It's a boudoir type photo. I'm naked, lying in bed with my legs up the wall. It's a tastefully sexy photo, taken when I was not even close to my second thinnest moment. I was just learning the art of liking myself. I remember being so proud of that photo. Where has that girl gone? I'm not sure, but I think I'm going to work real hard and bringing her back. 

STEP IN TIME

My sugar skull

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

Sunday morning we were eating biscuits and gravy while watching my favorite Sunday morning program, CBS Sunday Morning. There was a story about a boy who was a ballet dancer and then he joined the Marines. Actually, there was more to the story than just that. It was a very difficult story for me to sit through, but that's not the point of this entry. Anyway, boys doing ballet. The Cabbage is playing with her Barbies when she hears this story and she looks up all surprised and says "Boys can't do ballet!" This came a couple of days after hearing her say "Only pretty kids get candy." Honestly...when she said that, I was really tempted to say "I guess you're not getting any candy then" because at the time, she was cute, but I wouldn't have said she was all that pretty. Her hair was a total birds nest and she had something sticky smeared on her face. I refrained from saying that though. Instead we had a conversation about how every kid who dresses up for Halloween is going to get candy and the word "pretty" is subjective. Sunday we had a whole discussion about boys and girls being equal.

Age four is looking like the re-programming years. We spend a lot of time at home debunking these stupid things someone is teaching her. I've had several people at work tell me that this happened to their kids at age four. They all came home with this distinct idea that boys only did "boy" things and girls only did "girl" things. One guy said that his oldest son threw a fit once over being handed a purple cup. There was no way he could drink out of a "girl" cup. I work with like minded people who believe in gender equality. Yes there are times when they treat me like the office secretary from Mad Men, but really it's because they're lazy. I would never imagine any of them teaching their children that boys can't do ballet or pink is for girls. Which leads me to guess that someone is feeding this garbage to our children at school or some idiot is feeding this garbage to their child who in turn is passing it along to our kids during recess. 

When I first met the Cabbage, she said she wanted to be a firefighter. She even had a little red firefighting truck that she'd play with. Twilight Sparkle would climb the ladder and rescue Dog Walker Barbie from the fire. Historically, there have been women firefighters for over 200 years, but it would be the mid-70s before we'd see actual career female firefighters. Up until then women were mostly volunteers. On the outside, firefighting looks like a male only job but mostly because it's still very male dominated. Sort of like how ballet looks very female dominated, but I'll tell you something. I've seen some pretty amazing male ballet dancers out perform anyone on stage. The last Tulsa Ballet performance I saw of the Nutcracker, the guy who danced the part of the Russian dancer (a minor part), brought the house down. He was outstanding. That boy could totally do ballet. 

This all got me thinking though. I'm constantly telling the Cabbage she can be anything and that colors don't have a gender and that toys shouldn't have a gender, but am I also passing on the ideas that what's true for girls is true for boys? I mean how do we expect to teach a boy that girls are equal and deserving of the same considerations if we don't give them the opportunity to walk in our shoes. Or tell them that they can walk in our shoes. Remember that little boy who wanted to wear the princess dress to school? Hell yeah, he can wear the princess dress to school and there was a huge out pouring of support for this kid. Because there should have been or else we run the risk of double standards. 

Really...it's all very simple. All of this falls under the Golden Rule umbrella: Luke 6:31 - Treat others the same way you want them to treat you. OTHERS. It says "others." It doesn't say gender or race. In this case, I'm pretty sure "others" is referring to ALL PEOPLE, not aliens (as ET) alien...but it might actually work with extra terrestrials. Who knows? Try it.  

AND SO IT BEGINS

Typical Tuesday

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

The Cabbage came home from school the other day and said "Cindy...I like a boy color." I looked at her questionably and asked her what exactly is a "boy color." "You know. Boy colors are colors that only boys can like and girl colors are colors that only girls can like." Some little boy, who is also four, told her this at school. According to the Cabbage, he's not wrong because he's four. Michael and I both went on to stumble our way through an explanation of how there's no such thing as girl colors or boy colors, but it really didn't matter because she's already got it in her head that colors have a gender. I'm not going to lie. I had to shove that rising bubble of rage down pretty deep. It's not really that little boy's fault because he was taught that colors have a gender and he was probably taught this by some idiot who calls them self a grown-up. One of those grown-up types that are too stupid to know better. 

The problem is that if it wasn't this kid, it would have been someone or something else. When's the last time you walked down the toy isles? The "girl section" is a sea of pink and purple. Then you move over to what's supposed to be the "boy section" and the only colors absent in these isles are pink and purple. PLAYMOBIL makes these sets of little people action figures. I want you to just go and look at the City Life section.  In PLAYMOBIL's world, only women live in cities and all they do is shop and get their hair done. All the men live in the City Action section doing things like construction and law enforcement. Boys are astronauts while the girls get to wear roller blades. 

NPR played this story last week, When Women Stopped Coding. It discusses the decline of women in computer science and what happened to give men an edge over women in this field that started out dominated by women. The drop happens in 1984. This is also right around the time personal computers start showing up in stores. We're not talking about personal computers of today. We're talking about program it yourself DOS type computers. These computers were marketed to boys and not only in commercials, but movies as well. Geeky nerdy guy uses tech to win a pretty girl was a common theme in 80s movies. The message here is that girls don't need to be smart. They just need to be pretty. Nothing's changed. The toys out there today are still teaching the same message. Girls shop and get there hair and nails done while men build buildings and roads and enforce the law. 

The other night one of the Royals pitchers threw a pitch at 73 mph. Mo'ne Davis' average pitching speed is 70 mph. At age 13. "Boy" and "girl" are just adjectives. 

The Cabbage likes the color blue. She's obsessed with Frozen and wants to be Elsa when she grows up. Elsa wears a blue dress, so of course the Cabbage likes that color. But that kid at school told her that blue is a 'boy' color. There are things that I will never correct the Cabbage on like how she calls McDonald's "Old McDonald's." She's been calling the World Series, the World Serious all week and Michael and I just nod our heads in agreement that yes indeed it is the World Serious. There was a time she called Oklahoma, Ownahoma and I never corrected her on that one. But I will correct her on this one. Because just like there's no such thing as monsters under her bed, there's no such thing as 'girl' colors or 'boy' colors. There are just colors. A beautiful array of colors. Each one with it's own unique beauty just like each one of us. 

BOO-HUMBUG

And carved

elephant_soap's photo on Instagram

We have always been a dress up kind of family. My mom has spent hours meticulously constructing costumes. She makes the best witch noses ever and don't even get me started on her brilliant rendering of Lucy Little. I was Lucy Little. Button and all. Our costumes were creatively handmade. It's probably spoiled me. I still rummage through the racks at thrift stores for costume ideas, but I will also admit to browsing through the costumes online. Every year I "window" shop online looking at women's Halloween costumes and my heart grows a little heavy.Or maybe it's my butt that actually grows heavy. 

While scrolling through costumes recently, I noticed the usual Sexy Nurse, Sexy French Maid, and even (finally) the Sexy Doctor (because you know, women can be doctors now too). Then I discovered there's a whole sexy animal list of costumes. And then there's the costumes that really have no rhyme or reason to them except to wear these crazy muppet fur boots with some fishnet stockings. Hell! Even Amelia Earhart has a new sexy look. Needless to say that it all not only discourages me, but I find myself conflicted. I want to be sexy. I want to wear a frilly short can-can skirt or skin tight ninja costume. I look through those costumes and think "I want to look sexy just like that". Then the reality sets in and I know that no matter what shape my body is in, I will not look anything like that sexy model in her sexy kitten costume. I lack the confidence. Put me in any one of those costumes and I will spend my evening tugging the skirt down while pulling the bodice up before finally giving up and borrowing someone's jacket. Not to mention that it's cold in October and I'd freeze. 

This is not to say that I am not a sexy woman. Michael tells me I'm a sexy woman all the time. I have my moments. It's just that these costumes are not for me. So I start to wonder who these costumes are really for. I posted a link to a sexy skunk costume on facebook saying "What woman ever says 'Hey! I want to be a sexy skunk for Halloween!'?" and there was a comment left on that post that kind of stuck out. It was something about "one letter difference between 'skunk' and 'skank'". OK...now I find the idea of a sexy skunk to be ridiculous. I don't understand why all animals have to be sexy for Halloween. I think it's also ludicrous that Amelia Earhart has been turned into a sexified version of herself or that we can all be sexy My Little Ponies by wearing a maned hoodie with a mini skirt and platform shoes. But what about the woman who actually buys and wears this kind of costume? If she chooses to be any of those sexy whatever costumes, does that make her a skank or a slut or a whore?

I want to believe that a woman is wearing that sexy costume because she feels confident and good about herself. She has no ulterior motive in wearing it other than to say "Hey! I look good and I know it". In other words, she's wearing that costume for her and more power to her. Except I also know that it's human nature to seek out praise and validation and that even if she knows she looks good, she wants others to tell her she looks good. Most likely, women who buy these sexy costumes are buying into the idea that this is what her boyfriend/husband/potential sex partner wants to see. Let's face it. These costumes exist because men find scantily clad women attractive and Halloween is all about fantasy. If you scroll through the costumes available for men, you'll scroll through images of men fully covered in costumes ranging from Batman to cowboy. Eventually you'll pass by a sexy male cop, but for the most part the men costumes are just costumes, as opposed to sexy costumes. 

Halloween is the new excuse for objectifying women through the over-sexualiztion of costumes. It's not fair to label girls "skanks" and "hoes" when our society teaches them that this is what is desirable or this is how they are supposed to dress. Because that's the same thing as saying that a girl is asking for rape when she wears a short skirt. What we should be demanding is that these costume companies stop putting ears and tails on underwear and trying to sell it as a "costume". We should be redefining the vision of "sexy" with realistic librarian, nurse, firefighter, Amelia Earhart (dangit!) costumes. Come on. You can't tell me that guys do not find female firefighters in full gear attractive. Jim James's vision of a sexy librarian is not the one wearing the short can-can skirt with glasses. Because real men, the kind worth having around, are the ones who know that smart and strong are sexy.

And that's what we need to be teaching our girls AND boys.

CAN I GET A WOOP WOOP?!?

I'd like to take a moment to throw a fist bump into the air for some feats of awesome that's happened lately. Things that tend to be swept to the bottom of the news piles and things that may have been near the top of the pile but just slightly ignored. Let's start with Maryam Mirzakhani, the FIRST woman to be awarded the Fields Medal, the most prestigious prize in math. It's the Nobel Prize equivalent for math (there's not a Nobel Prize for math). There have been 52 winners since its inception in 1936 by the International Mathematical Union and all of them have been men. I think it's also important to note that IMU's president is Ingrid Daubechies, a prominent female mathematician. Though the number of women math majors are finally reaching parity with male students, women still make up less than 10% of full time math professors at the top U.S. universities. It's important to note that Maryam did not win the award because she's female or the president of the IMU is female. Maryam won because of her contributions to geometry and understanding curved surfaces. 

When I was in high school, boys took shop class and girls took home economics. I don't remember anyone pushing me into the math and science area, but I was definitely under the impression that boys were just better at math than girls. Girls were better at English. I was reading by the time I started kindergarten so this was logical reasoning. But really, I have no recollection of what age where I noticed the shift between gender "roles". Don't get me wrong. I was never discouraged. I gravitated to biology because I found it (still do actually) absolutely fascinating, but I did see a great divide. This is the part where you think you're going to get a sermon on how important the STEM program is for girls. You would be wrong.

The STEM program is great. It's just fine and dandy. But here's an idea. What if we stopped associating things with gender all together? I love that Lego has released a set of girl scientist Legos, but I hate that they've had to release it as a special thing. Just have girl scientists in the regular Lego sets. Let's teach boys and girls how to use sewing machines. Then teach them how to create programs to run sewing machines. Stop using "you throw like a girl" as an insult, which brings me to my next moment of awesomeness. Friday afternoon, 13 year old Mo'ne Davis pitched a shutout at the Little League World Series. It's the first shutout by a girl recorded in the series' 75-year history. Baseball. So yeah, I wish I threw like a girl. Mo'ne, you are my hero.

I just have this one other thing. It's an old video, but worth it.