I just finished watching this week's episode of Grey's Anatomy. I'm alone in my dark bedroom at the end of a happy day. I have (or will have) what I want: a lead in a play this summer; a good paying job so I can move away in August; my AA in May; the beginning of a journalism career; a (physically) healthy family; so much more.
That theme song, though, the little quirky beeps and the lady's haunting voice "Nobody knows..." reminds me of my life a year ago, of dark quiet nights in this bedroom, watching that show, fearing that I will forever be alone because one man, one boy, decided I wasn't good enough. And it still hurts, to feel that rejection all over again, to feel it only because a few bars of a melody reminded me of it.
But I'm okay. I'm happy. I have a full day ahead of me and full days ensure me that I am not empty, that people in places need me to be there, that they will notice that the spot I sit in is empty or that the lull in coversation is a moment I would fill with a question about someone else's weekend, or a subtle joke about the teacher, or the guy outside with... ya know, the hair. Or I would mention the way I just embarrassed myself by singing that song about birds from Broadway really badly, really off key when I thought no one was looking.
I have two stories for the Star Banner, which makes me happy.
I have a guy who wants to hang out with me, which makes me happy and scared. Scared because even though I'm happy, I'm happy because I feel good enough in my little bubble of family and friends. Other people still have the power to make me feel not good enough. And that sucks.
I'm working on it though.
I'm still a work in progress.
Amanda 2.0... still only 1.4. But tomorrow is a chance for 1.5.

fave1

fave1
Originally uploaded by faithforever2001

dfs

ring.

When my grandmother was little, she used to cry. She sat alone, in the dark, in her bedroom. She cried as her mother's various boyfriends came by the house and drunkenly partied until dawn. So she swore she would never drink or have drinking in her home.
Today, I cry too. But it is not because there is loud, wild, intoxicated laughing, crying, and fighting. I cry because of the silence. Today, Billy came into the house like it was nothing. Like he hadn't moved out in October because he was in love with another woman, who he had been with for a year and a half. He walked in, looked at me. We made eye contact, he said nothing. He went to the refridgerator, then went to his former bedroom and plopped down on the bed. I hear the croak of the bed as he shifts.
The phone rings. But I've left the room. I'll not answer it. I've retreated to my own bedroom, like my grandmother before me.
There is another silence. Another creak.

The phone rings again. This time, my mother comes outside my door, asking where the phone is.
"By the game, where I just was."

The front door squeaks. I'm unsure of who is coming or going.
The door closes. It always makes a squeak, then a thump as the whole foundation of our nearly forty year old home gives a little shudder, as if to say, "There's just too many opens and shuts, squeaks and slams."
The last time I saw that door and Billy was when he picked up a chair from our dining room and threw it across the room, where it bounced off the wall and into our glass table. The table gave a shrill sigh as its pieces were suddenly relocated throughout the kitchen, dining room and living room.
He and I paused, as if unsure whether we were caught in a bad dream, some unreal reality. In another world, I would be the first to scream, to rise up to the anger from my mother's devistation, to throw something back, to make him know what a terrible human he was, what a painful position he had put my family in, how much it hurt to see, to hear, my mother hurt. But in this world, he is the first. His words don't even make any sense. All I hear is the piercing bullets of his screams, as "fucks" go flying and his anger heats the room, setting my armhair up, my ankles unsteady, my adreniline pulsing.
Why didn't I just leave, retreat to my room, let him destroy the house? It is his, after all.
I took it. I let him scream at me, until he was crying and racing to separate parts of the house, turning on the lights, turning on the lights. Checking every room, as if to find a sign that this was not his life, that this was not where he had quietly lived for most of his life.
But it was. This was real. The phone rings. He was real. Ring. I was real. Ring.
Finally, he quieted to sniffles. He pulled out a trash bag.
Still, I stood there, afraid for what would happen if I let it go, if I didn't speak to him in a convincing tone of reassurance and calm, if I didn't baby him into not harming me or anything else in the house. Ring Ring Ring.
Finally, I answer. My mother says that she is coming home. I tell him. He doesn't want to be here. He leaves. He says he's sorry, that he loves me.

L-O-V-E

Inspired by Laura's post.

Love is difficult and long. It is ambitous and a bitch. It is heavy and insecure, but crazy-soft to touch. It is hard to say and hard to hear, but easy to hang on to. It is really whatever you want, but it is rarely whatever you need. It is a flash of warmth on a winter Florida night. It is a constantly ringing telephone that you just cannot answer. It is not how they write about it in movies and songs. It is unstable, explosive at any moment. Love changes. It is never the same as you left it last night. It has different forms. It is impossible to be in love with someone who hurts you, but you will probably continue to love them. Love is when you cry when it is gone. It is when you look into the sun and see that light can come from other sources. Love is a candle that flickers and melts, leaving you with wax to mold into another candle.

Love is only you. When you are lucky and probably when you don't know it, love is someone else too.

Realistically Michael

Oh. My. Good. Lord. Can we talk about how much I completely adore Michael Buble? I've got a fever now and it's not just cause I'm sick today.

I'm not the type of girl who chases after boys. I've only had three boyfriends my whole life. One I liked, one I didn't, and one who lived 600 miles away, so I spent 3 weeks trying to pretend like it could work.

But Michael. He's the brand of boy I want, I need.
I have to get up in like four hours or so and I there's no way I can go to sleep after watching interviews with him.

Maybe that should be my goal, to become a journalist just to get a chance to interview him, convince him that he needs me in his life forever, then take me home and sing to me while removing my clothes.
Okay. That's unrealistic. Why would he sing to me? Duh, we'll be making out.

I do feel sorry for him. He's essentially every girl's brand of guy, so women just go crazy for him, so he gets weird presents, weird fan mail, and even weirder people at his concerts.
But he's great. He's awesome. That's why everyone wants him and that's why I'll never get him. Even though it is deemed that a good man will come into my life... (maybe one day, in like 10 years when 30 is the new 58)... it will not be him because he's too good for that.

Kumari Schmuari

Virgins in Nepal have long been worshipped and thought sacred, especially the Kumari, or Living Goddess.

This is a girl chosen as the reincarnation of Taleju, a former mythological queen of Nepal who caught her husband playing games with a snake, so she left with a vow that she would only come back to her life as a girl, pure and happy.

Today, the Kumari are selected by a process in which the girls go through odd rituals in an effort to determine whether these girls are really the reincarnation of Taleju. An examination of the girl's teeth, hair, skin, and body (including the intimate areas) determines whether she is physically akin to the once-queen. After the girl is decided to be physically flawless and bodily healthy, she is matched with a test of her fears and insecurities in a dark room of slaughtered animal heads. If she keeps calm and unafraid, she is even closer to the title of Living Goddess.

If she wins over the other contenders, she is given the title and the respect of millions of adoring Buddists and Hindus. Carried on her own throne at all times, she is cared for and attended to at all times. Rarely leaving her own palace, she allows audiences with people in need of blessings and hope. The people kiss her feet, which remain uncovered at all times, and watch her for signs of their own fates. If she is still and silent, it is the highest blessing of all.

Once she begins to menstrate, however, she loses everything and is returned to the family she only knew in formal, public engagements. It is rumored that any marriage to her is cursed and the husband will not survive six months. Essentially, these girls are doomed to maid-hood for their lives if the superstition is believed. However, most of the former kumaris have had long-lasting marriages with several children.

Right, three-year-old Matani Shakya was named the highest kumari on Oct. 7, 2008.

Children's and women's rights activists worry about this girl's future. She is blessed and adored now, but she will be shunned by men once she reaches womanhood. Is this a healthy practice?

Healthy or not, it's an ideology that's been around since the 17th century, yet it's an ideology opposed by activists, who should be saving their energies for the problems of prostitution and malnourished, orphaned children in Africa. There are 12-year-olds taking care of their younger siblings because their parents have succombed to the AIDS virus.

Activists fret over the pychological implications of the kumari. What about the pychological implications of children without parents and without food?

Story Ideas

1) How is it decided that school should be closed? Who decides what amount of rain is unsafe?
Need to talk to:
Students (get opinions, do they think that the schools are choosing the right amount of time to be open/closed? how do missing classes due to hurricanes affect them?)
VP of School (when is it unsafe for students to come to school?)
Teachers (how does missing a day of class change their classes?)

Hurricane Plan

Stepdad: Okay, so while we're all here, let's talk about our emergency plan....
I'm in the kitchen, mixing eggs, vegetable oil, water and brownie mix. His tone catches my attention and I lean toward the wall to listen.
Stepdad: Who do we eat first?

We bought crackers, pickles, powdered milk, juice, Capri Sun, ravioli, pudding, cookies, and other dry snacks. Hurricane plan: Eat lots. If we run out, eat the next largest person in the house.

It's been 6 months and 8 days...

There's definitely a lot going on.
My second article for the Star Banner will print tomorrow.
I'm taking pictures of Kayla Dumon on Saturday, followed by a show in Orlando.
My second year of college begins in three days. I'm taking five classes this semester. I have six more classes to go in the spring.
My play opens to an audience in three weeks. Every time I think about it, I'm nervous. I hope I'm getting it all out slowly right now rather than all at once on stage. I know it's not a big deal, but I have a lot of lines and it's the biggest role I've ever had. There's a lot of people to keep from being let down.

It's been six months since Tara died. Six months and one week.
It just wonder now... in all that I'm doing... keeping busy, exhausting myself... and I wonder what it's like to just be. To be still in the last moment of busy. Tara was getting out of her car, going home after another day at the movie theater, busy getting home. What does she remember? What does she know?
Does she forgive?

Dreadred LDR?

Long distance relationships. More than 1.7 million American couples live in seperate cities. More than forty percent of these couples are married. That means that 1.4 million married people live apart, and happily so. Is this a rising trend? More so, is there even the distant possibility for love in long distance relationships?

For some people, it works, maintaining a relationship with someone special, and keeping the status quo in their lives. Communication is the tool vital to a healthy relationship over the miles. With the internet, cell phones, webcams, and even snail mail, this should be easy, right?

Not always. The disadvantage is in the lack of touching, of smelling, the memory's most powerful sense. One half may be enjoying the distance. The other can wind up feeling like their relationship is akin to a frozen computer screen. You've clicked the 'X' in the corner of the screen, but nothing is moving. Sure, the mouse moves, but nothing on the screen reacts. Why? Maybe it's the fault of a dead cell phone battery. Maybe they haven't checked their inbox. Maybe... are they ignoring... no... maybe?

It's this indecisiveness, this room for possibility, that can quake the bridge of a relationship. Then again, this is true in any relationship. An unsure pause, a misheard reply... these are The Things We Carry in our connections to one another. These can also be The Things We Drop, or more literally, the reasons why we drop our relationships.

So, if the partnership can end in the short distance as easily as in the long distance, why not find someone really great, someone really special, and choose to connect with them, over the miles, over the hours, over the phone. Be stingy with your heart. You've only got one.

"Most important, being far apart gives you a chance to maintain your individuality - something that can get lost in the shuffle when couples spend all their free time together. " (http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Long-Distance-Relationship-Work)



"According to stats compiled by the Center for the Study of Long-Distance Relationships (yes, there really is such a thing), the myth that most long-distance relationships fail is just that: a myth. The reality is that more couples are making it work than you might think. Over one million couples are living in separate U.S. cities today, and another 700,000 LDR couples are actually married." http://www.askmen.com/dating/heidi_200/218_dating_girl.html

Absence makes the heart grow fonder? "Distance dating"

V-card

"If sex today is about sharing our desires, making ourselves vulnerable, fulfilling our fantasies and being intimate with another person, then our concept of virginity today should recognize that." - Colin Adamo
Virginity. It's the Halley's Comet of sex, happening once in a lifetime. Special because it's a one time deal, or it used to be thanks to plastic surgeons who promise to "revirginize" with surgery, it's a time-old ideal of waiting. But in America, no one waits. Not for a hamburger, not for a message, not for traffic. Not for love.
If no one seems to hang on to their virginity, why is it an issue? Because Americans only want what they don't have, thus the appearance of "revirginization," and lately, it's even found it's way into the political race of '08. After more than a decade, and $1.5 billion in state and federal dollars" of abstinence-only education, the new presidential contenders are promising a more cost effective way to teach safe sex in the U.S.
So, with new ways to bring back virginity, like it's a fad, what does it mean to be a virgin in America?
Anatomy class teaches that it means penetration, but it isn't always necessary to penetrate to have sex. There's no miracle or immaculate conception involved in the pregnancy of lesbian who is artificially inseminated, is there? She is "with child," without the touch of a man, right?
Maybe this proves that there is a distinct difference between being celebate and being a virgin.
Colin Adamo, the singular and unfortunate fellow to be working on a woman's magazine, says that virginity has more to do with experience than genital bumping. He says that first fumbles, soft touches, skims across the skin, they're all part of a sexual encounter, one that should count as a v-card swipe.

Anyone who has had to anxiously undress someone else for the first time, be naked in front of another person in an erotic setting, fumble through words of an inexperienced conversation of seduction, or squirm in and out of uncomfortable first try positions deserves to have swiped his or her V-Card just as much as the next person.

Well then, credit or debit?
He does, however, raise an excellent point; sex has more to do with satisfaction than reproduction, which is now only a side effect.

President Bush might encourage abstinence, but Americans in general are tossing the idea out the window. Are these pants, sold exclusively in K-Mart, representative of the American perspective on the subject? Do t-shirts like this one, made for guys and girls, show how Americans really feel about the idea of virginity?
In the end, is it "just a word?"
Really, it's impossible to diffrentiate between someone who has gone all the way, someone who hasn't, and someone who is caught somewhere in between. The label, and the implications, positive or negative, that go along with it, is an individual matter.

yellow

The box of shoes rests in my living room. They are, after all, just shoes. Lacey, tall, dark, loud, and beautiful bought them and then needed to get rid of them. I took them as another measure of her generosity. Now they’re an assurance that she had it all planned out. So they reside here by the front door, jumbled in a cardboard box soiled with the invisible residue of loss.
“Lorrie,” my mother calls. “Lorrie, I bought the eggs.”
I tear my eyes from the box, and I meet her in the kitchen. I take some plastic grocery bags from her hands, and we both land our heavy loads on the counter. She massages her wrists and checks her watch before pushing her deep red curls out of her face. Her green eyes are still red from tears on the way home from the store.
In South Carolina, the dogwood trees blossom in the spring and her eyes constantly look just the way they are now. In April, she could get away with blaming her tears on the trees. The November chill outside the kitchen window, however, won’t let her get away with anything.
“You tell Lacey that she is welcome here anytime,” she started telling me in third grade. Even until high school, she made sure Lacey made regular visits to my house. Then in college, we planned to go to school together. I got into a university; she didn’t. She stayed behind to help out her single dad with a job as a waitress.
“I’m saving up,” she promised me with a wave of her hand and a nonchalant flick of dark hair over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”
She won't meet me again.
“You have three hours, honey. Then you need to get ready for the funeral,” Mom says. I nod and pull my brown, thick hair into a frizzy ponytail down my back. She leaves the kitchen carrying the yellow carnations I knew Lacey would love.
This kitchen is at one foreign and familiar. It does not feel like the same one in which Lacey and I made cream cheese cookies on a midnight trip to my kitchen. Then, the dark room flickered with a soft yellow in the candlelight. We shared dozens of the golden treats, laughing and crying over our lives.
Now, the walls are an ugly tan. How is this the same room? Where are the bowls? Which drawer has the spoons? I let instinct tell me what I can’t immediately remember as I gather the items I need.
The recipe isn’t difficult. I know it without looking at the sheet Lacey wrote for me after our first sleepover in fourth grade. I set the oven to 375 degrees. My fingertips twitch as I pull the cream cheese and the butter from the refrigerator.
The cream cheese lands with a soft but solid thud in the plastic bowl. I take spoonfuls of butter fling them into the bowl. It clumps on top of the cream cheese in a greasy half-moon.
Is this why, I wonder, as I cream the two ingredients together with pressured strokes of my spoon. Is it because she felt mashed between life’s bowl and spoon? But, there is no answer to this question, just as there are no answers to any of the other millions of questions I never asked.
I pour vanilla extract into a teaspoon, and my hands tremble, spilling it onto the counter. Only a drop actually makes it near the bowl. It slides in a brown trail down the outside of the container.
Damnit. Why can’t I do this? Lacey did this. Lacey made these cookies any time I needed to be cheered up. I was the recipient of many a Tupperware container full of these golden treats, made with chocolate sprinkles when I argued with my mom, red sprinkles when I was single on Valentine’s Day.
Why, then, didn’t she make these cookies for herself? Green sprinkles for the thousands in debt she incurred over the past few years. We could have laughed about it, maybe even used copper-colored sprinkles to match the pennies we had to our names.
Or, why didn’t she let me make them for her? She only had to ask… or shouldn’t I have known? But, I didn’t know. She didn’t tell me. She knew we had different debts. Mine was books, tuition, and boarding. Hers was clothes, jewelry, and… shoes.
I catch the salty droplets sliding from my eyes with a kitchen towel before they can fall into my bowl.
“Sweetheart.” My mom is behind me. “You don’t have to do this so soon.” Her aged hands are sources of soft strength on my shoulders. I shake both her hands away. I am even surprised at my reaction to her, but I know I have to continue.
She shrinks from the kitchen. I take a deep breath, knowing I shouldn’t have pushed her away. I wish I could wipe up our pain just as easily as I wipe up the vanilla on the counter. I can’t though. So, I will do what I can.
I pick up my teaspoon and the vanilla extract. I steadily measure out what I need, then tip it into the bowl. I pick up the white, foam carton containing the eggs. I pick out an egg and crack its shell. As I separate the yolk, I try to push away aching thoughts... thoughts of how the flow of the egg whites between my fingers resembles the red flow from the gunshot she put through her head. Pouring in the yellow cake mix, I push away thoughts of the crumbles she thought her life had become. But, watching the cookies rise in the oven, I did remember her low, genuine laugh, how people around her watched as she passed, and how, once, she met me in a coffee shop to consol me after another heartbreaking boyfriend. She spent her last ten dollars on Mocha Lattes for the two of us, and put the change in the tip jar.


The smell of the cookies floats faintly through the house, from the oven through the living room and into my bedroom. I know the cookies are almost finished. I walk past a mirror reflecting the black dress I’ve changed into for the funeral. I try to keep going, past the box and toward my cookies, toward my first steps of acceptance, but I stop. A pair of pale yellow pumps rests atop the others.
I sit down beside the box, and my hand impulsively reaches for one of the shoes. These were her addiction. She could never resist a pair of yellow heels. I want to pull it into my chest, to pull her more near, but I know these were a cause of her pain. I throw it as hard into the opposite living room wall as I can, and my mom is beside me once again. Finally, I release myself into her arms, and I let myself cry into her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers into my ear.
“Me too,” I tell her. She pulls away to look into my face. My first words since I’d heard the news. She wipes my eyes with her soft fingertips.
“Lacey loved you,” she says. “She just didn’t love herself.” My mom stands and helps me to my feet. I rise, knowing I will miss Lacey every day for the rest of my life.
The vanilla aroma is now rich and warm, drawing our noses toward the source. We travel together into the kitchen. She takes a mitt from the drawer and pulls out the cookies. They are a perfect golden yellow.


For Tara, who wanted a golden dog and taught me to make golden cookies... and most of all, had a golden heart.

.stuck.

It's a month and ten days later.
Tara is gone. You still see Rich outside of Wal-Mart. He sits, just hiding his face behind a person, a tree, a shopping cart... anything. Closer, it is not him.
"You won't be seeing him for a while," says Josh. "Actually... ever."

You entertain yourself with magazines, with plans, with trips... but you avoid those things, those people, that might actually move you forward. You shop, you read, you write painful fiction to put it out on paper. So desperate are you that you change what you wrote into what you will write.

Stuck.

This is what you will do

This is what you do.
You make a new plan. The plan won't involve either of the following: your heart-broken fragility or him.
You realize that you are better off. You realize that he wasn't good at being there when you cried. You realize that he was good at making you laugh. Laughing makes you feel better. How is it better not to laugh?
You pray for a phone call, an acknowledgment. You get nothing.
You write him letters you want to take back and forget.
You think of conversations you want to have with him, things where you are strong and assertive and you make him see that this is all him. It's his fault he dumped you.
And then a day passes. And you wake up feeling better, then worse. Then you realize that today, you will make a plan. Today, you will be happily singularly free. Today you will go to Trigonometry class and history class. Today you will visit your boss and put in your two weeks notice, although now you go to your job to stay busy, and even though you dislike the charming smell of popcorn on your skin and in your clothes, you're afraid for that period in which you struggle to have something to do, somewhere to go.
But life always works out in the end, you remember. Never before have you been stuck out in the streets. Never before have you not felt God's blessings of health and family and understanding on a daily basis... Never before have you been heart-broken.
Never before has he blatantly not cared... but then you remember that he has not cared. When he did the same thing to his last girlfriend, you know he didn't care. So you resolve not to care.
You resolve not to be heart-broken. You resolve that tomorrow is a different day. Tomorrow is a different chance you have to change.
Tomorrow, you will follow your instincts and you will do what is right for you. You will quit, and you will start. Quitting is the first step in starting.
This is what you will do.

I decided to decide.

Life (n): that unexplainable, incorrigible mass of weightless opportunitistic possibility; that lovingly hateful existence of happiness and sadness, each day ending in a good result or a bad result, both of which withhold negative connotations: the bad days are, well, bad and the good days have to end; that short chance every person gets to live, to try living, even in the hurt and the happiness.
Life is short. What do I want to do with it? I decided to decide.

I want to take for granted that my work get published on a continual basis and pretend not to appreciate it when someone talks to me about something I’ve written.
I want to fall asleep and wake up with a person I know will always not only love me, but always be in love with me.
I want to see my play on a stage, any stage.
I want to be a good sister.
I want to learn about a different country in its native language.
I want wear beautiful clothes to beautiful theatres.
I want to spend most of my wedding reception dancing with my best friend, then live with him, want him, fight with him, love him, for the rest of my life.

I want to be in tune with what my body needs, but not over- or under-indulge.

I want to name my daughter Liv.

generally, everyone else is generalizing

I'm thoroughly fed up with discriminatory comments about the promiscuity of women and girls. And just as a side note, let's think: when's the last time anybody gave fuck about male promiscuity. Never.


That's not the point I'm trying to make, though. What I am trying to say is that it's exhausting being so frustrated by generalized comments like:

Implicit in this argument [about whether girls should get the HPV vaccine] is the assumption that good girls don't get cervical cancer; only "loose" ones do—and they may get what they deserve. [Slate]

And therefore only the girls who, oh I don't know, want to save their cervixes from cancer, would ever want to get the HPV vaccine, and of course that means that all girls selfish enough to want their cervixes are automatically sluts.

It doesn't matter that "the CDC reports that at least 50 percent of Americans are infected with HPV over the course of their lives, and a whopping 80 percent of American women are infected by age 50." It's also not important to note that "approximately 13 percent of American women ... are or will be a victim of rape over the course of their lives."


I mean, if you're raped, then you "deserve" to have cervical cancer. Yeah.


I think I understand why feminists are generalized as being constantly pissed off. They are. People keep on with their stupid comments, and feminists are the only ones commenting (and yeah, mocking, a little) back.

aNorEXING the unhealthy-skinny

Yesterday, a photo of this woman appeared in Italian magazines and on billboards sparking debate.

From this photo, she looks like she needs some sleep and a few hamburgers, but otherwise, she looks okay. That's only because from that angle, you can't see the breasts she doesn't have, because breasts are made up of fat, or the ribs protruding from her body, as if she has slipped from the Holocaust directly into today. That's what Italians woke up to in their morning papers on September 26.

This was a diliberate message about the dangers of anorexia by famous, and equally infamous, photographer Oliviero Toscani. Toscani is known for his outrageous photographs, so he is obviously well picked for the job by Nolita, whose message to fashion-lovers everywhere is that anorexia is not the pretty ideal of completely effortless "skinny" that most girls want to be.

"I've been looking into the problem of anorexia for years. Who's responsible? Communication in general? Television? Fashion?" said Toscani. "So it's very interesting that in the end a fashion company has understood the importance of the problem, and with full awareness has found the courage to take the risk that this campaign involves."

This comes from a guy who fights HIV through bare bottoms. But it also comes from a man whose aim is "to use that naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion." Reuters

Good job fashion industry, well, Nolita in particular, who went forward with the idea with the total support of Livia Turco, the Italian Minister of Health. She says that this can "open a communications channel" for youngsters hoping to make it into the fashion industry to "promote responsibility towards the problem of anorexia."

Well, maybe they're doing some good. Others, like the guy in charge of the Association for the Study of Anorexia, thinks that girls may use this as a competition for "extreme thinness."

Why would girls find this attractive? They shouldn't! Fashion week in Milan banned all those unhealthy-skinny chicks from the runway, just like Madrid. A BMI under 18 isn't just unhealthy, it keeps you from walking the runway.

Get pretty and get no respect

"You're a pretty girl," is what I was told by a man with a physical disability in a wheelchair. I thought this comment was sweet, reminding me of the kiss on the hand and the promise that I was pretty by another young man a few years ago before a concert I was to perform in. That was sweet. The man in the wheelchair, however, went on to say, "No, you're a pretty woman, because that's what you are now," almost as if he had been an observer of my growth process since I got my first period in the summer after fifth grade. It was at this point that I smiled politely and promised myself he meant it in the best way.

Let me here state that I wasn't offended by his comments; it just made me think about what it meant to be a woman, if that's what I am, against what it meant, or means, to be a girl.

Maybe Ms. Spears was a good role model (for once) in sharing her confusion of those in-between years of mixed girl- and woman-hood. She let the world know that even though she had the body of a woman, she had the feelings of a girl. This is a communal feeling among girls-becoming-women everywhere. And it's okay.

It's funny, though, what society expects of women and girls. Even yesterday, a man commented to me, "You women are all the same, all of you." I smiled politely, hoping my real opinion wouldn't show through in hopes of supreme Regal customer service, but he continued on. "You expect the men to carry it all for you." It's so hard not to be offended, not only because he honestly believes that all women are the same, but also because he believes he carries everything.

Think about it. Women, quite literally, carry everything. They carry a full separate human being inside of them for almost a year. Why? To carry on the line of that man's family.

Women also carry the stresses of today's highly judgemental social group without ever showing it. The current style for women is careless grace. Models depict sexiness by making it all seem easy. If you saw the real stresses that the model is facing, the strives she endures for her lean body, the family see never sees because of her busy lifestyle, the agent who wants her to weigh 110 pounds, even though she's 5'11", you'd never think she was beautiful. A man, though, who carries and shows his stresses can be sexy. Remember Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca? Remember the handsome, yet saddened look he carries as he awaits Ingrid Bergman's return to his cafe? Even in 1942, men could be sexy while stressed. Keifer Sutherland depicts this today in every episode of 24.

The spectrum between guys and girls seems to grow ever wider. Recently, my boyfriend enlightened me as to a custom among guys, one involving what seems to be dominance code. It's subtle, yet present. It's a nod. If a guy is checking out your girl, depending on how he responds to you, he gets a nod or a dirty look. If his nod says something along the line of "Good job," he gets the nod back. Anything else, the dirty look comes on full force.

Umm, what?

It's essentially condoning, even reinforcing, the attitude of women and girls as equal to something nearing an impressive breed of dog. The bitch (literally) who won the Eukanuba Tournament of Champions probably gets more respect.

I'll admit it; I like taking time to dress myself, straighten my hair, paint my nails, and, just for the record, I will not stop shaving my legs or under my arms (Note to the feminists: It's not just for the social standard; those tiny hairs are irriating!). It's true too that I like the attention and the compliments I get. It's not true, though, that I do it because:

"This current generation of young women... believe they will find any sort of satisfaction, emotional or sexual, through allowing themselves to become the sex objects of young men's fantasies..." thus "fueling a sorry state of affairs." Daily Mail

It's not true I like how, right under our noses, our very own guys are, perhaps unintentionally, carrying on a form of oppression through our own attractiveness. And it's right out liar-liar-pants-on-fire that the girls are to blame for this.

"They want to be taken seriously, but, by behaving like this, no one can blame the young men who treat them like sex objects and little else. "

Can't win.

slicing marriage after seven years

Maybe it's just me.

I'll accept that, because a lot of things are, honestly, just me. My continue forgetfulness and inability to recall, well, much of anything, along with a vague consiousness as to what, exactly, I am doing, definitely leads me to accept that, okay, it may be just me.

Let's back up. We all come from two parents, okay, technically an egg and a sperm. A guy and a girl. Whether the possessors of these gender-specific items decide to unite in marriage is completely up to them. Often, they try. Often, they love. Often, they hate. And often, they divorce. That's okay. It's legal. Let's not encourage any Robert Dudley's to (possibly inadvertantly) kill their wives just to get out of the marriage to get to their Queen Elizabeth I. Just divorce.

Or, as "glamourous politician" Gabriele Pauli puts it, dissolve.

"The basic approach is wrong ... many marriages last just because people believe they are safe," she told reporters. "My suggestion is that marriages expire after seven years." After that time, couples should either agree to extend their marriage or it should be automatically dissolved, she said.

Basically, she's saying that, since so many people who are married don't really belong together and aren't happy, they should just give up and make the whole situation easier by just letting it dissolve, you know, melt away, disappear, act as though it was never there.

Coming from a home of divorced parents, I understand that the "D-word" happens. But my parents didn't go into it knowing that if they didn't like how loudly their partner snored, they just had to get through it for a few years and it would be like it never happened.

Personal ads can now save 35 cents with the deletion of "divorced," because, after all, you were never married if your marriage was mutually dissolved.

Honestly, this woman has some serious cajones in suggesting this. She's been divorced herself twice, so perhaps she'd like to be viewed as more than a woman with two failed marriages. Maybe this would make her seem younger. Forget Botox, just dissolve your marriage! Takes those wrinkles right away! Then again, who wouldn't want to be shacked up with this beauty.

Mind you, she's a politician running for the leadership of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria, an organization created as "an answer to the spiritual and material hardship left as a legacy by the Nazi dictatorship... based on the Christian human image and Christian values."

She appeared in a popular fashion magazine wearing latex gloves, a smirk and a poufy white, well, thing, earlier this year.

The only satisfying part of this article was put so well, I have to quote it.

"Viewed as a party rebel, Pauli stands almost no chance of winning next week's vote." This is from the non-partial Reuters.

It looks like you're posting bullshit to the Internet

It looks like you're posting bullshit to the Internet
Originally uploaded by marnanel

Along my journalistic, feminist journey, I hope this message never pops up.