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He’s a fucking scumbag, that one.  At least his friend sounds like he might have had some manners.  I can’t channel Myrna Loy when I’m fried, either.  Just spew epithets like the one I’ve just done.

witness:  the heterosexual male in the wild.  they are unnaturally obsessed with pictures aren’t they?  2D or not, they are at the lower level mental state that must have pictures. 
i do often notice how oldman will just flat turn down anything i’ve cooked that doesn’t ‘look’ pretty.  it’s all in the presentation, and even if it’s doing something that makes absolutely no difference in the final product (oops- i’m talking about food, you see)- they want it.  spoiled insolent bratty children that i can’t just smack upside the head when i feel the need.

here i go, the man-bashing meme...*

I think I tend not to believe my husband when he says I’m beautiful because it’s just not “objective.” I know he thinks I’m beautiful because he loves me so despite the 40 extra pounds I’m carrying , eight years later, and the circles under my eyes and less than glowing skin after chasing our children all day, he just sees his wife, who is beautiful to him no matter what. I also think that when he looks at me, he doesn’t really see me now, but he sees me then - and I meant that in a very romantic way.

Oh yeah, and those guys? Impotent. Undoubtably

I have some very astute things to say but I’ve got to scramble off to *my* work at the moment so they’ll have to wait.  Suffice it to say that it’s more insightful than simple man-bashing and it reaches deep into the psyche of gender, modern life and culture. 

Might as well just wrap up the prize and send it to me now so as to avoid delay.

This is a twisted bunghole cracker of a puzzle.  Something I wonder about every single day.  I’ve made the following observation:

My cat never wonders if she’s beautiful.  No, I can’t read her mind, but she, and every cat I’ve ever met, and every dog and every nuthatch, trout, tomato, fir tree, dragonfly and pocket gopher, seems completely self assured and comfortable in its body space.

That isn’t to say I’ve never met an anxious animal.  I have.  Whining, beggy dogs, former strays who can’t help but yap and drool and debase themselves for something as trivial as a potato chip, who no matter how well fed will remember days of hunger and eat *any* garbage, no matter how rotten, which presents itself.  There’s a young of the year cottontail in my backyard--picture of unselfconcious beauty--which has to raise its head and freeze periodically--watching for the couching muscle or swooping shadow.  Now this bunny has a reason to exercise a certain level of vigilance.  There are dogs around here with unsocialable intentions.  There are hawks which fly over my yard.  And eons of evolution has bred vigilance into cottontails.  A certain level of anxiety about the world is adaptative.  Never look up from your grazing and you’re unlikely to move genes into the next generation and even if you do, will your wonderfully relaxed offspring have the same astounding luck?  That’s the measure of fitness from an evolutionary standpoint.

So what the hell does this have to do with loser pervs on the avenue?  Maybe not much, but we’re free writing here so....

Anxiety, at some point, in some fashion, was adaptative for us.  But how do you get from reasonable anxiety over storms, and whether your child is getting eaten by really bad ass squirrels, to lying awake at night worrying about going to lunch with friends because you don’t have anything to wear in which you don’t feel awkward and fat?  Not you Bakerina, just that general sloppy unliterary you.  It’s weird.  On the one hand, natural concern over staying warm, on the other, totally displaced anxiety over whether one’s ass looks too big to go to lunch.  There’s a dirty trick involved here.  I’ve known people who were aware of this problem and then beat up on themselves for feeling “stupid”.  Fuck that!  Somebody is responsible for this mess.  The meanest trick is to fuck with somebody’s head then convince her that it’s all her fault. 

Ok, I’m sort of coming round the topic, I think.  Should have opened Word and thought this out but…

On reaction to pervs--and by this I mean the universal perv, not any specific assholes in my own life--I think there are two ways to deal with the problem.  One, you can focus on what’s wrong with them, try to get revenge, try to change them, legislate, or carry a t-ball bat and whack their nuts, throw paint on them--but basically a reaction.  Or, you can focus on what is right with yourself.  I know that for better or worse these things are connected in our society, but just because our self-images have been influenced by media and peer pressure from the time we were born, doesn’t mean that we don’t have the power to change.

You can look at the why--I’d reccommend The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, and it is an excellent book--but I suspect that most women already know they’ve been fucked over by media, culture, the job market, and, too often, their families.  Where life gets messy is when you know that whether you like your body, your self, your beauty should have nothing to do with the misogynistic leers and comments and advice of moronic fuck nuts, but that you still feel desperate and sick inside. 

I guess I’m saying that it’s one thing to be prescient and know feeling a certain way is unfair to yourself, and it’s a whole other thing to change.  It leaves me sick and shaking with anger when I think about certain women I love hate parts of themselves.  Can’t sleep for self-loathing--and not because she robbed a liquor store and beat a toddler to death--but because of the shape of her body.  And this body is perfect!  It’s fucking whacked.  Sometimes I make a list of people I know have contributed to this situation and I imagine visiting them--but whatever, that’s my reaction and even if I kicked the shit out of everyone on that list--including a number of advertising execs--it wouldn’t change the way she feels about herself.  So, the question is, how to stop reacting, to stop being defined--even in one’s self righteous rage--by the abusers who gifted this disease?

Our society, maybe our species, is fundamentally abusive towards women.  Maybe it’s only when we form somewhat complex societies, but anyway, it’s abusive.  You can’t tell me that creating a service like breast augmentation, then marketing it isn’t straight up abusive.  You can’t tell me that blaming original sin on a woman isn’t abusive.  For fuck’s sake, paying women 70 cents on a dollar, then expecting them to be beautiful at work, but not too beautiful, can’t have seductress whores around the office--how in the hell is this not abuse just as plain as whacking somebody in the face?

Well, anyway, say you get angry, and say you realize that your feelings about your body are perfectly understandable given the world in which you grow up, how do you get to transformation?  That’s the question.  It’s all about transformation.  Not about reaction.  I wish I knew.  I imagine there are women who have the answer, such as there is one, and I imagine it’s a path and a process rather than a pill.  I do wish society would change and stop attacking the woman, and women, I love with ceaseless messages that they are not good enough.  It’s a profit seeking exploitation of a natural desire to fit in, I guess.  Advertisers exploit anxiety.  They exploit weakness.  They suck.  Since I don’t expect them to cease anytime soon, I wish one woman I know who find a fairy godmother or something, some woman or group of women who’ve walked a path of transformation and reached a place of self assuredness.  If self-loathing can be taught, perhaps too can self-acceptance.

For god’s sake, what an incoherent rant.  Sorry, but I hope this made sense, even if you don’t agree, or whatever.

Best,
Owen

We believe them because we rarely hear (except from our loved ones) that we’re beautiful.  Maybe the occasional whistle or appreciative glance (which we’re usually insulted/scared/angry about), but we frequently hear (most often from ourselves) that our hips are too wide, our thighs jiggle, our chests are flat.  These derogatory comments are sometimes mute, in that they occur as a dismissive glance on the bus or in a bar, but we know...oh yes, you bet we know, that we just don’t measure up.  It’s all a matter of frequency of compliment/complaint.  Maybe if we begin telling ourselves we’re beautiful, the good remarks will hit harder than the bad ones.

some (most?) parents believe that instilling a self-assessment of ugliness is part and parcel of inculcating good manners, family values, etc.  my dad told my younger sister and i, you two will have to get by in the world on brains, because you don’t have the looks of your older brother and sister.  he meant well.  for a while my older sister was a special kind of beauty, passing for 24 when she was 14, but by the time she really was 24, most of my lowlife buddies were drooling for my younger sister.  as for me, there have been times when i was feeling so pretty feelin so pretty and feedback from the world agreed.  otoh, i am often eraserhead, it’s not clear to anyone that i am a human being.  knowing both sides of the appeariential divide, mb i’m a bit detatched from my own appearance, the same kind of detatchment you may feel toward a knockout woman.  this mb an okay way tb.

Damn.  Owen gets the cookies.

I just want to add, however, that a few years ago I heard a very interesting thing about stress.  It was pointed out that there are two kinds of stress.  There’s the kind that’s caused by putting one’s hand in a fire.  Let’s call that one the “real” kind.  Reacting to it is literally hardwired into our systems as a means of survival.

Then there is the kind you feel when some fucker cuts you off on the highway or your boss yells at you or you day generally “goes badly.” That kind of stress we’ll call “in your head.”

Every single thing that’s pissing your off and raising your blood pressure or ruining your day is processed through your brain before YOU DECIDE how you’re going react.  It may only take a fraction of a second, but the calm/happy/non-depressed persons under pressure have mastered the fine art of intercepting the input and reacting differently to it.  (Incidently, I mention depressed people because most anti-depressants work by interfering with the chemical transfer of much of (but certainly not all of) the stress-type reaction.

So here I diverge from Owen’s remarks because I BLAME YOU.  (Not Bakerina, the unwieldly literay “you” who thinks you’re a victim of men/culture/advertising/whatever.) The operative word in the preceding sentence is “thinks.” The fact is, if you’re a victim it’s because you’re thinking yourself into being the victim.  You betcha it was programmed into you.  But YOU are the only one who has a chance in hell of capturing the visual or auditory input and re-programming your reaction to it.

You know what?  When some “jerk” with a “short penis” in his “fucking SUV” cut in front of me this morning I did not even think those thoughts in any meaningful way.  I thought something to the effect of “darn I wish people would stop cutting me off, I’m going to have to back off a bit further and move right if I’m going to get to court today calm, happy and alive because there sure are a lot of people trying to kill me on this highway today.” Same input.  Different reaction.

My daughter is 10 years old.  If I can give her one gift it WILL NOT BE SOME PC-APPROVED “SELF-ESTEEM.” It will be the gift for seeing (and reacting to) the world as Owen described initially, it’s an ugly, complex, insipid, advertising-infested place to which you can be an unwitting victim.  Or you can be a witting victim, rebelliously shouting, “I’m not going to be a victim.” Or you can take an even higher road and not let it play your emotions too strongly to either extreme.  This way you can live fairly free of unnecessary, self-created stress while you, hopefully improve what you can and let slide the things you cannot change.

I’d launch a somewhat tongue-in-cheek, devil’s advocate defense of the guys (and I may later if I’m bored) but I’m afraid that’d detract from what I’m trying to say.  For a more fun take on the problem, consider re-watching “Shallow Hal.”

And to think I almost took this post down, believing that no one would be interested in my petty little Mountain Brand Molehills.  Gosh.  Thank you all for replying.

All of you have left wonderful comments, comments I’ll be turning over in my head so that I can participate intelligently in this discussion.  I hardly know where to start...no, I know where to start.  Owen, you do not need to apologize for an incoherent rant. Trust me, you are being very coherent here.  I’m so glad you’re back among the blogging. 

Oh, and I just might have to send multiple prizes on this one, she said cagily.

The best way to feel better about yourself is to post a pic at RateMyRack.com. We’ll all go there and give you a perfect 10. You’ll never doubt your looks again. (Did I win the prize?)

hee heeeee.  Nice try, Tvindy.  But I salute you for trying, and I could kiss you for cheering me up.

thats a simple answer luv .. those who love us .. and know us ... KNOW us .. and are not judging .. the others .. the random fukwits of the world .. are judgers ... we trust that those who kow us have made reasoned judgements and THOUGHT about it .. the others . tossing off their “observations” as one would a used tissue hit that nerve in all of us that wants to matter and not be disposable.
The fact that they probably are usig the majority of their upper level income to BUY some class probably never occurred to them ....

I’m just crashing the party here, never commented before. (Hi, Bakerina! You have a very nice place here!)
But because I’m a woman & have been through the spectrum, I wanted to add some words. They won’t be pie-worthy or anything, but…
I got involved with bellydance four years ago and have found it, ironically, to be an escape from seeing myself through the eyes of all the males of the world.  What is thought “beautiful” in that world is not the narrow definition found in the popular youth culture of the U.S.
What a joy to discover a world where such a richness and depth of beauty can be appreciated! It’s very liberating and joyful.
For an anecdote, I was at a dance seminar last year in Manhattan. Every day another dancer and myself were joined by a little 19-yr.-old beginner student for lunch hour, which we often spent walking around the city. We were blown away by the reaction she got from men everywhere on the street. She was short, thin, had no hips, tiny breasts and big shoulders. Her proportions—honestly—were much closer to those of a 12 yr. old boy. She wore midriff tops and hip-huggers, had a very flat stomach with a belly-ring. Cute. But… far from womanly!! She looked more like Britney Spears’ kid sister than anything. We were dumbfounded to witness so many men, including men old enough to be her grandfather, leering at her.  --??!!?? --
Much later, a helpful male enlightened me: she looked like a typical porn star—like the really skinny, hard-bodied,barely-legal girls wearing heavy make-up who take jobs in the porn-film industry. Duh! How were we to know?
Later, this same little girl was chattering on about a famous dancer we all know and how when she was young (she’s in her 40’s) she “used to be beautiful”. After she walked away, I said to the other woman—a very lovely older African-American dancer , “How could she say that?!  ‘------ ‘ is STILL beautiful!” The woman looked at me and said, calmly, “ But—Nasreena. She’s young. They don’t know what beauty is.”
Her words were so great, they just rang like mellifluous bells in my mind for days: They don’t know what beauty is!!!
And because they don’t, is this good reason to shut our own eyes to it?