Conversations. And Barbies.

I am sitting at my son's tae kwon do class while my daughter is at Vacation Bible School.  I sat amongst some friends of mine and two girls (ages 5 and 11 approximately) who were sitting on the floor playing with various Barbies.  Below are various segments of the conversation during the fifty minute lesson.

Mom 1:  As you can see, Ken is naked.

Mom 2:  All the Barbies are naked at our house.  We have a little Barbie Utopia.

Girl 1:  As she fits Ken with a yellow fairy skirt Well he has to wear SOMEthing on his bottom.  He's going on a date with one of these girls later.

There are three Barbies lying against a bookbag on the floor, all dressed in different clothing.  Multiple hair styles and colors.  The two girls are supremely engaged in their play.

Mom 2:  What's that?  she refers to a few sheets of paper in Mom 1's hand.

Mom 1:  Oh, that's my thirty day de-tox.  I got it at yoga.

Mom 3:  I tried that.  I only made it to day three.

Mom 2:  Let me see it.  She scans the document awhile.

Girl 1 finds a lip gloss applicator in the book bag and begins to apply imaginary make-up to each of the three Barbie's faces.  She is meticulous:  eye shadow, lip gloss, blush, etc.  Girl 2 brushes each doll's hair with a miniature brush.  

Girl 2:  She's getting ready for her date.

Girl 2 attempts to fit Ken into a new skirt (there are no "Ken" clothes around), but it won't go over his hips.

Mom 2:  It's just not meant to fit Ken.  His hips are too big.  This is a lesson in why Ken shouldn't be a cross-dresser.

There is some laughter.

Mom 2:  still scanning the thirty day de-tox  Okay - no sugar - not a problem, I don't really do sugar anyway...  scans further  Oh.  I couldn't do no starches.  I like my starches: corn, mashed potatoes...

Mom 3:  Yep, that's when I quit.

Mom 1:  I haven't even read it yet - you guys reading it out loud is the first time I'm hearing it.

Mom 4:  Are you doing this to lose weight?  She is incredulous.

Mom 1:  No, I'm not.  I'm doing it to be healthy.  I went to a nutrition class at my yoga place and we got it there.  I do need to lose weight though.

Mom 2:  Excuse me?  You do NOT need to lose weight.

Mom 1:  I just want to lose this gut.

Mom 2:  rolls eyes

Girl 1 puts the finishing touches on Barbie's make-up.  Ken is back in the yellow fairy skirt.

The conversation amongst the moms moves from bellies to breasts:

Mom 3:  Well I don't have anything up here.

Mom 2:  Well I'd give you some of mine if I could.

Mom 1:  I don't think your husband would like that.

Mom 2:  You're right.  He'd be all, 'where'd they go?'  makes desperate searching motions with her hands and arms.  All laugh.  

Mom 2:  You know men like big boobs and big booties.

Mom 3:  But I don't have big tits.  So I can't have a big booty.  I'd be all imbalanced.

laughter

Mom 1:  Right, it's a balance thing.

Mom 2:  Well I wouldn't want to be imbalanced.

Ken has now chosen THE Barbie for his date night.  He is donned in the yellow fairy skirt and only the yellow fairy skirt.  

Mom 1:  No underwear.

Mom 2:  Looks like he's got a Scottish thing goin' on there.

Giggling as we all acknowledge Ken's lack of undergarments.

Ken and Barbie hold one another as Girl 1 dances them across the floor.  The tae kwon do class ends.  We congratulate our kids on their accomplishments and gather their belongings so we can move on to the rest of our day.  


Mom 2:  I tried Weight Watchers - it didn't work for me.

The Barbies are packed away into the bookbag and the bag is zipped tightly.  The kids chatter.  As our car pulls out of the parking lot, my son sees Girl 2 walking with Mom 1 to their vehicle - he rolls down his window:

My son:  Bye, _________!

Wit. Chapter Three.

Tomorrow is press night.  I'm actually pretty stoked.  I think the show is coming together nicely.  And this is coming from a very superstitious theatre person who would normally not say positive things about a show before opening - or at least not quite THIS positive, but I honestly think I have had my fair share of stress thus far this time.

I have also had a very hard time "letting go and letting God."  I know that all my shows pretty much suck unless I allow God to just take over.  I know this, and yet I always still attempt to control everything myself and then end up having a complete panic attack...  okay... several complete panic attacks. 

But...  God is in control.  I will continue to repeat that until I believe it.  Not sure if there is any other way....

Aside from all of this, I am having a very hard time with some of the people on my production staff when it comes to authority.  All of them men.

I am not one of those feminists who hates men.  In fact, I like them a lot.  For much of my life, I preferred their company to that of other women.  For much of my life, I actually thought that women were very annoying and petty and completely uninteresting.  I remember going to this sleepover during this period where I thought that being popular was really important (this will be the subject of another blog, I am certain) and so I decided that I would concentrate on making myself popular, and after I succeeded, and went to a sleepover with the popular girls, I realized that it was perhaps the most boring and horrible decision of my life.  I couldn't believe that they actually talked about the things they were talking about.  It was like a poorly written teenie bopper film.  They literally spent the night talking about make-up and shopping and really stupid boys.  I eventually went upstairs and hung out with the girl's older brother and his friend. 

So, in light of all of that, I have never been one who really felt like I was all oppressed and disrespected by men.  There have been times when I've been upset or felt like I was treated as less than, but never so much as the times during this show.

I'm not going to name names because this is a very public blog, but it's really hard for me to deal with, to be honest.  I have trouble asserting myself when the need to do so comes out of nowhere.

I wish that I could be one of those women who is always prepared for exactly that sort of thing and had an arsenal of stuff to throw back at questionings of ability and insults to your intellect, but alas, I am not, so I've just walked around dismayed.

It would be different if it were about something I thought I sucked at.  I would pretty much just take whatever was dished out to me and agree with them sadly.  But when they question my vision for a show I'm directing, I really just want to punch them in the teeth.  And when they question my knowledge about how to run a rehearsal, I really just want to stab them with a hard, but blunt object.  Like a screwdriver.

Perhaps it isn't became I'm female, but moreso because this is my first time directing in the space.  Not sure.  I will say that I have had no trouble of this nature from the women involved.  Maybe it's because my head is shaved and so I fall into that category where I might be able to be viewed as a man.  I've been thinking about this a lot, especially today when a guy at Walmart who was putting away shopping carts asked Michael and me if we were out Mother's Day shopping for our wives.  I stared blankly and hoped he would figure out that I was, in fact female.

Granted, I was wearing my Dublin soccer jacket, which I admit I bought in the men's section, but I was also wearing my yoga pants and black Nike running shoes with a pink swoosh.

It was one of those times I really wished I had bigger boobs.

Someone else's.

My breasts were not  my own.

I wore a silk bra so that you hands would not find padding.

I looked at them in the mirror, and wondered if they were big enough to impress you.

If they were perky enough to matter.

If the darkness around the nipples was important, or not.

I stared at them in the mirror and checked them in the shower and waited.

I remember the first time someone touched them and I knew they did not belong to me.

With rough hands, pressing and poking, and there was merely pain.

A wet tear ran down my face and I cried inside and hoped that the teacher would notice and tell you that this behavior was not appropriate, or just tell you that you were hurting me, but he didn't see, and there was no stopping you.  I knew then that they weren't really my breasts.

I wondered about the hard places and the movement beneath the surface.

I remember when they came out for the first time and I hit them on the pool wall and I thought they were swollen from the beating, but the swelling didn't go down.

They could not be my breasts:

I was ashamed of them because they were small and then ashamed because of the padding and then ashamed because I had none and then ashamed because I just wanted to sit with you at the drive-in but you didn't want to sit with me - just my breasts - so I let you, because they were not mine.

You laughed because you hurt me.

You told your friends you "felt me up".

But it wasn't really me.  Just my breasts.  Not me.

I am still just a little girl.  I do not know what I am doing.

Today I sat in the bath tub and stared at them in abstract perspective through the drain pipe plug and realized that they were much smaller now, and saggy from bearing children and several doctors have poked and prodded and I have wondered about their sensitivity and I have shuddered at remembering the social studies classroom and the darkness of the movies and the towels over the basement windows so the neighbors wouldn't see us and I have used them and you have used them and they have been around and in and out of everything and they have spilled feminine milk over over-sized t-shirts and they have filled me with awe and they have been in the way and sitting in the bathtub I suddenly understood that they no longer belong to you.  They sit on my skin.
On my body.
A part of who I have become.
And I choose; and you can not control me.

Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer has caught on as the (for lack of a better term) "trendy cancer".  I honestly think that this is because it effects mostly women and those effects are relatively visible (i.e. a mastectomy) and they have the potential to effect the woman's sense of womanhood and femininity and self.

I am somewhat discouraged by this because while I think that breast cancer research is important, I also think that research on ovarian cancer or cervical cancer or any kind of cancer, for that matter, is equally important.  BUT...  if they find a cure for breast cancer, a cure for other cancers will not be far behind, so I support this.

Regardless, I do have to say that breast cancer has had a positive effect on my life.

I have not had breast cancer.

Nor has anyone close to me had it.

But I had the opportunity in 2006 to participate in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, and I can say, without doubt, that it changed my life.

My friend, Summer, had decided that she was going to do this thing.  Avon hosts walks all over the country, and we would be walking in DC.  You have to raise $1800.00.  Just to walk.  The registration fee is $50.

In my current financial state, this is something I can barely fathom, but then, when my husband and I were both working, I just figured if I couldn't raise all the money, I'd just pay the difference personally.  I ended up having to pay a little (you know, like $500 - again, something that boggles my mind today), but I got to walk.

I could re-count the entire event to you, from the first steps where I was frustrated that we were moving so slowly to the last few steps of the 22 miles I walked (the goal was approximately 40 miles over two days - I made it 22 the first day, and then called my husband to pick me up and take me home because I could no longer walk up steps without using my arms to lift my thighs over each one), after which I collapsed into the medical tent, barely walking and apparently a little hypothermic, but that's not really the point of this post.

The point is that it was the first event to which I had ever been where I felt the power of women and what we could do if we stopped competing with each other for a few minutes and actually worked together for a common goal.

It was the first time in my life, in that sea of pink (there were several thousand women walking, maybe a couple of hundred men), including cancer survivors and patients and sisters and mothers and grandmothers, that I said to myself, "Wow.  Women are awesome."  And I meant it.

I was pleased and proud to be a part of that 50% or so of society.  It was truly powerful.

I have not participated in the walk since 2006, though Summer continues and manages a fairly large team, but I have attempted to support the cause since by baking brownies for her bake sales and recently, agreeing to paint two torso castings of local women.

One of the castings is of me.  My torso.  Including my stomach, breasts, part of my back...

I have almost finished the first casting, and both will be auctioned off by a real live auctioneer to support the Thanks for the Mammaries Avon Walk for Breast Cancer Team.  It will be the first time anyone has had the chance to buy my art, which is scary and thrilling all at once, not to mention the fact that one of the torsos actually belongs to me.

I suppose what I want to say is that this research project - this breast cancer research - I think it is so popular a cause because of what it has done for the female psyche.  This is something tangible that we can get behind, together.  No competition.  No petty arguments.  No gossiping behind one another's back.  This is right out in the open.  Truth telling.  This happens to women.  This happens to people.  It causes pain.  We can do something about it.  And...we are.

Vasserette - you've got to be kidding me.

I recently received my monthly copy of Better Homes and Gardens. I know. I never thought I would be into it either, but I enjoy looking at the pictures and stealing ideas. Either way, I saw an ad in the magazine that was just plain offensive. I couldn't believe that this particular ad was pointed toward a female audience. Unreal.

The worst part is, for most of my life until my daughter was born and I went for comfort over silky, I wore Vasserette bras. I like the jewel toned colors and I could get bras without padding that were still comfortable and looked cute and were fun to wear. Never again. Sorry. Just lost a somewhat loyal customer. Fruit of the Loom all the way.

The ad features a woman in a Vasserette bra, but only shows the torso. Her upper face/head and legs are removed from the image, shown to the left of this blog. The ad reads: "Hope you're willing to sacrifice a little eye contact."

I honestly just want to vomit.

I can't believe that a bra company in this day and age would advertise in such a dehumanizing manner.

I should buy this bra because then men will only want me for my body? WTF, Vasserette.

I'm appalled that I ever bought into this company.

Perhaps some will see this as an overreaction, but I honestly can't help it. The message it sends to women is one that devalues them to the point of objectification. This ad, to me, says "You are worthless without your body. You are only worth the size of your breasts. You are not worth talking to face to face. No one cares what you have to say, only what you look like. You should be a brainless sex machine put on earth for the sole purpose of pleasuring men."

Gag me with a plastic spoon, people.

Seriously.