Another Girl's Paradise - Tori Amos

sorry it's been a while. this post has been consuming my brain and i had a really hard time putting it into print. it's hard to read and it's a little hard to admit, and i don't want to see any comments about how i look because that's not what i'm going for here. i just want to discuss what i see as a problem for women in society and want to see how you guys feel about it, too. also, this has way too many run-on sentences but i'm tired of trying to make it cohesive. sorry. carry on.

the other evening, i happened to look in the mirror. it was late at night, the boy was asleep, and dave was not yet back from work. kind of that glorious quiet time where i have the whole house to myself. sort of. so, of course, i was emptying the contents of emerson's potty and cleaning it out. you know, the awesome jobbies that we get to do behind the scenes in that glorious quiet time that used to be reserved for reading or blogging or whatever.

after i flushed and put away the cleaning supplies, i happened to look in the mirror. and, upon seeing my reflection, thought - hey, i actually look ok. and then i stopped dead in my tracks, because i never think that. not ever. it caught me off guard, you know?

and then i got to thinking - what the fuck is wrong with me? and, for that matter, all of western freaking civilization? why is it that i somehow believe that i weigh nine hundred pounds and am massively deformed and will turn you to stone like medusa if i even glance in your direction? and what about all the other women on planet earth? i mean, it's a sad day when we think that the dove campaign is all subversive and innovative for featuring NORMAL-LOOKING WOMEN. an issue of glamour came out a couple of months ago and featured a cute model with a little belly, and you would have thought we were on the brink of nuclear fucking war, everyone was so up in arms about it. the responses boiled down to two: yay, a real woman in a magazine that is mostly read by real women! or holy jebus, the nation accepts body fat now! we're all doing to hell, and all of you fatties are disgusting! and then some ad for ralph lauren features a model so airbrushed that her head appears bigger than her hips and that same model gets fired for being too fat? how are the rest of us supposed to deal with it?

SERIOUSLY. in a world with rampant plastic surgery and botox and ads with a 50-year-old andie mcdowell looking completely wrinkle-free, what are we supposed to think about ourselves? in a world where various a-, b-, c-list celebrities are extolled for getting their bodies back into shape so quickly after having children, and we print photos of them on every goddamn magazine cover in bikinis smiling so beatifically about their amazing weight loss and how EASY it was for them and all they ate was grilled chicken and veggies and GODDAMN, i'm over it.

and look at your televisions. every woman on the tv is about a size two, and has no wrinkles and always looks svelte and stylish and accessorized, even if she's a cop. if she is a size six or up, however, she's the comic relief or a punchline and magazine articles are devoted to how BRAVE she is for keeping her curves but then she loses 40 pounds and blames it on pneumonia or something, but everyone discusses how gorgeous she is now that she's thinner. meanwhile, men get work all over the place, nevermind that they're bald or chunky or short or old or bowlegged, which is how people look, for chrissakes! why do men on tv get to represent the entire population, but women have to measure up to some lameass ideal?

and i have no solution. NONE. because what are we supposed to do? and i'm not saying this is a necessarily new phenomenon, because women have felt this way for a long time. but it seems to be getting worse and more pervasive and it makes me want to throw the tv and computer and magazines and all forms of media out the window and live in a yurt somewhere off the grid in manitoba. and i don't even read magazines, except an occasional copy at the gym or here in the office. what would i be feeling if i had SUBSCRIPTIONS?

because we all have enough to deal with, what with the expectations that we are perfect mothers and perfect wives and i've discussed that before. but to put in perspective my reaction to my own reflection the other day...wow. i mean, i sat and thought about it rationally, and that's just disturbing. is this where we are in modern society? developing nations have to worry about other stuff, like war and hunger and rape and is this as a result of us having absolutely no worries at all? i mean, magazines like people and us weekly and the rest seem to have nothing better to do except obsess over what celebrities are too fat/too thin/too old/too ugly and whether we ourselves are the same?

i know i'm not the only woman (or possibly man - what do i know?) to have looked in the mirror and cried or cursed. and it's stupid and i admit it and am working on it. but when all forms of media beat this perfection shit into our heads on a daily basis, will we ever be free from our own twisted expectations based on it? and if you ARE someone who hasn't cried in the mirror, how do you do it?